Public power football

By Tim Redmond

The City of Santa Clara has a lot that the San Francisco 49ers find attractive: A nice site for a stadium, a local fan base -- and, it turns out, $200 million in cash. That money, which the team has its eyes on, is sitting in the bank -- it's the surplus from the city's municipal electric utility.

Isn't it funny: San Francisco may lose a football team in part because our competing city did what we should have done many years ago, and created a public-power agency. Now it's got some money to spare.

This all came up at Mayor Gavin Newsom's weekly department heads meeting March 18. when a mayoral staffer gave a briefing on the Santa Clara 49ers situation, including an explanation of how the Niners want that $200 mill (which the Santa Clara power agency is reluctant to part with). In the middle of the briefing, Sheriff Mike Hennessey dared to interrupt with the obvious question:

"Are you saying," he asked, "that a city can make a profit from public power?"

The staffer's response: "No comment."

Comments (1)

stadiumfacts

The "surplus" is actually the company's reserve fund, and if the City Council thinks they can tap into that, the stadium fight is going to get even uglier than it already is.

We had a great post on this issue on the Stadium Facts blog:

http://stadiumfacts.blogspot.com/2007/05/stadium-vs-rolling-blackouts.html

Posted by stadiumfacts | May 16, 2007 08:09 PM

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