SF
Prop
I
Sports Teams
Relocation of Professional Sports Teams
Conveys the opinion that the city should not encourage or condone the relocation of well-established sports teams to San Francisco.
Conveys the opinion that the city should not encourage or condone the relocation of well-established sports teams to San Francisco.
Prop. I would direct the city not to invite, encourage or condone the relocation of professional sports teams that have already established themselves in other locations. As a declaration of policy this measure would provide an opportunity for voters to express their opinion but would not directly lead to any legal, regulatory or budgetary change.
The Golden State Warriors are leaving Oakland for San Francisco; the Chase Center arena is under construction in the Mission Bay neighborhood and will open for the 2018–19 basketball season. Prop. I asserts that this move comes at the “emotional and economic expense” of communities that have supported the team for years. The proponents are especially frustrated that San Francisco actively courted the Warriors when the team was looking to leave Oakland and that the Oracle Arena, jointly owned by the City of Oakland and Alameda County, has been left with $40 million in outstanding debt. The Warriors and the Oakland Coliseum Authority are currently in arbitration regarding what debt, if any, the team owes the authority upon leaving Oakland. The Chase Center in San Francisco, however, is privately financed, and the city did not provide the Warriors with land or tax breaks for construction of the new arena.
Proponents seek to demonstrate that the majority of San Franciscans don’t want their city to play an active role in courting professional sports teams away from other locations.
The measure was added to the ballot by voter signatures collected by the Good Neighbor Coalition, led by a concerned San Francisco resident.
Sports teams are businesses, and like other businesses, they often choose to relocate for financial and other reasons. Cities, in turn, often compete to host these businesses. Certainly, there are policy arguments to be made about how actively San Francisco should court businesses or about how cities within the Bay Area should consider economic development more broadly. This ballot measure is not the right vehicle for those conversations.
As a nonbinding policy measure, this proposition would do nothing to stop the Warriors from moving from Oakland to San Francisco, nor would it require any changes to the city’s economic development policy in the future. From a process perspective, this measure would have made more sense as a resolution for consideration by the Board of Supervisors.