Post by TheShadow on Nov 3, 2005 4:48:08 GMT -5
www.cbs5.com/
11/02/05 7:40 PST
OAKLAND (BCN)
After spending millions of dollars fighting each other in the courts for years, Oakland, Alameda County and Oakland Raiders officials said today that they've reached an agreement that resolves most legal issues and aims to improve their relationship.
Announced at a crowded news conference at the Oakland Coliseum, the agreement calls for the elimination of personal seat licenses, or PSLs, permits the Raiders to market and sell their own tickets, and calls for the team's Alameda training facility to be turned over to the city and county in 2011, when its Coliseum lease expires.
The agreement, which was reached between city and county officials and the Raiders Tuesday night, leaves one major issue unaddressed: the $34.2 million verdict the team won against city and county officials in a trial in Sacramento County Superior Court in 2003 that centered on poor PSL and ticket sales.
Raiders chief executive Amy Trask said, "We want to bring creative problem-solving to that matter as well," adding that she hopes it can be settled in the near future.
The agreement resolves 17 other issues that arose out of that case, including parking, advertising and operations issues, and avoids millions of dollars in potential legal costs, according to Trask, Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente and Alameda County Supervisor Gail Steele.
The agreement doesn't extend the Raiders' lease at the Coliseum, but De La Fuente said the parties are working on a possible extension. He said he thinks talks on an extension will begin in a few years.
The agreement must be approved by the Oakland City Council and the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. Officials said the issue likely will be on their agendas in December.
De La Fuente, who serves with Steele and other officials on the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority, said the pact means "there's a new direction and a new commitment" in the relationship between the Raiders and local government officials.
Steele said it's hard "to turn difficult relationships into a positive thing," but she said the parties were able to do so by trusting one another and putting aside their individual agendas for the overall good.
Raiders managing general partner Al Davis was more guarded, calling the agreement "something we could all live with, certainly for the next five years," referring to the amount of time left on the Raiders' lease at the Coliseum.
Davis, dressed in a black-and-gray Raiders sweatsuit, used a walker to slowly amble up to the podium. He said that having the Raiders take over ticketing from the independent Oakland Football Marketing Association "is important to us," stating that the Raiders sold out their games in Oakland in the past when they were in charge of ticketing.
Davis said, "This gives us five years to see if we can make the Raiders viable so we can compete with other teams in our league and our division."
He complained that of the 32 teams in the National Football League, the Raiders rank only 29th or 30th.
"We have to be economically viable, but we're not now," he said.
Eliminating the personal seat licenses, which were fees fans had to pay to have the right to buy season tickets, is another key aspect of the agreement, Davis said.
"The word 'PSL' has become a total negative," he said.
In the 2003 case in Sacramento, jurors awarded the Raiders $34.2 million in damages, ruling that the Coliseum Authority acted negligently when it negotiated to bring the football team back to Oakland from Los Angeles in 1995 by allegedly promising that Raiders games would be sold out.
But no clear winners emerged from the lengthy legal saga between the Raiders and local officials because the jury award was only a small fraction of the $570 million to $833 million the Raiders sought as compensation for low ticket sales and the declining value of the franchise by 2010, when the team's lease at the Coliseum expires.
Among other things, the two sides are quarreling over whether local taxpayers will have to foot the bill to pay the verdict.
Steele said it's "quite a windfall" for the city and county to be getting ownership of the Alameda training facility in 2011 because it's expected to be valued at about $50 million then.
The agreement also calls for the city and county to receive all parking revenues at Raiders games.
The pact also calls for the city and county to get 15 percent of revenue from Raiders playoff games, up from the previous 12 percent cut.