SAN DIEGO -- I'm trying to keep my cool, because cool is the state of mind that facilitates progress.
But this stadium situation is ridiculous getting drunk on preposterous, stuck in the mud of stupid.
And I know I'm not alone.
They're losing San Diegans.
Attorney Cory Briggs. The mayor. JMI. The hoteliers. The naysayers. The lawyers. The Chargers.
You know what happens when people get frustrated, don't understand something and feel like they can't affect any sort of change no matter what they do?
Fed up folks shut down.
In this case -- the mysterious, maddening case of the Chargers stadium saga -- that would mean not voting or voting "no" (or maybe voting for the thing they didn't mean to vote for).
I'm fighting the urge to simply stop writing. This is insane floating on ludicrous lost in a sea of nonsense.
The Chargers and Cory Briggs meet. City Attorney Jan Goldsmith basically says Briggs' Citizens Plan is screwed six ways to Saturday. Briggs says Goldsmith is wrong. Briggs says he has settled with hoteliers and has their endorsement. The hoteliers say they have not settled nor endorsed anything.
This all happened in a span of about 24 hours at the beginning of this week.
It may well have been the tipping point, as if we weren't already to that point. Enough. Already.
Can someone just have the gumption to say that we need to decide what we're doing here? I wasn't in the military. I've never run a major corporation or a municipality or even, one tiny woman would argue, worn the pants in a family. But I feel qualified to opine that we need a fricking plan.
Oh, wait. We've got two.
Huge problem. Huuuuuge. We've got two groups of folks who want to lead, seemingly no one who wants to follow and everyone getting out of the way.
Honest to God, we could have two initiatives on the November ballot sponsored by supposedly chummy factions working against each other.
If the initiative authored by Briggs wins, we'd then need another initiative and another election to get a stadium. If the Chargers' initiative gets more than 50 percent of the vote but less than 66.6 percent, we may not know if we get a stadium until the California Supreme Court decides just exactly what the state election law requires. Regardless of which initiative wins -- assuming at least one gets the required votes -- we will have lawsuits.
Fred Maas, the Chargers' stadium Sherpa, contends the initiatives can coexist on the November ballot. However, he says, "We're not in denial. It is better for (just) one of us to be on the ballot."
Briggs' Citizens Plan, which among many other things requires a separate stadium election, is purportedly very close to being submitted to the registrar. The Chargers initiative that calls for a public-private partnership on a downtown stadium-convention center is purportedly very close to being submitted to people entering grocery stores.
People on all sides (except Briggs' side) believe the Chargers initiative is more legally stable and that much of the Briggs initiative's intentions can be accomplished without it being voted into law. The Chargers, in fact, seem committed to helping make those things (like the responsible development of Mission Valley) happen.
Briggs needs to state why his initiative is legally sound. The answer might be that Briggs, et al, should back off. But how would a sports columnist being told six different things by a dozen different people know? How would any of us know? Let's not forget Briggs is pretty successful at this legal thing, but the city attorney (among others) seems deadset against this thing seeing the light of November.
Mayor Kevin Faulconer needs to state his position. That he is taking his time to assess the Chargers' initiative is fine. First, others at city hall have prematurely excoriated the proposal. Second, the city has something of a history of rushing into bad assessments. Third, the mayor and his staff have been consumed by a city budget that is due this week. When that's done, it's time for Faulconer to speak with clarity.
His Honor is decidedly anti-Briggs, so there seems one choice at this point, even if Faulconer's circle would add waiting for the Chargers to settle on Mission Valley as an option down the road.
The Chargers have stated their intentions. There are too many moving parts for them to push Briggs under a bus. They could one day end up needing him as an ally.
"We're going forward," Maas said Tuesday.
Maas is really the last thread keeping me hopeful this can actually be sorted out. Here's a rich businessman working for a relative pittance because he believes in a cause. That's the kind of guy you trust.
It would make sense for those who have an agenda of keeping public funds from aiding the Chargers in their stadium quest to simply stall. But they should not be too secure in that plan. The folks around here that are prone to inaction as a means of staying in power could drag this thing out and throw up enough roadblocks that public sentiment turns back to the Chargers.
Yes, there is ample distrust of the team right now. But its campaign -- and its season -- have not yet begun. Spanos and his family can still sway enough sentiment, and San Diegans are pretty easily won over when their Bolts are winning.
Those of us entrenched in this thing need to remember that the average citizen is hardly paying attention at this point.
Lucky them, unencumbered by this bizarre web spun from absurdity tangled in silliness and really, really ticking me off.
