Members of Cleveland City Council continued to push back against Mayor Justin Bibb’s proposed $100 settlement agreement with the Cleveland Browns at a committee meeting on Monday. And they were joined by former mayor Dennis Kucinich, who showed up to urge all council members to keep fighting the team’s planned move to Brook Park.
The proposed settlement says that in exchange for dropping its lawsuit trying to prevent the team’s move, the city will receive payments totaling $100 million to cover the cost of demolishing the existing stadium, preparing the property for redevelopment and funding community projects to be determined later. If council approves the deal, the city would receive $25 million as soon as Dec. 1 and the rest over the next 10 years.
Council Members Mike Polensek and Brian Kazy went on record opposing the deal – and saying they would vote against it.
“We collectively cannot continue to make bad decisions,” like the commitments made in the late 1990s to build the existing stadium and secure a new NFL franchise to replace the Browns team that moved to Baltimore, Polensek said. The hundreds of millions spent to build and maintain the stadium could have gone to neighborhoods that are now struggling.
Polensek said he attended a meeting with the commissioner of the NFL at the time, “and I think he mentioned football maybe three times.” The discussion was mostly about personal seat licenses, concessions and other revenue sources, Polensek said.
“The people of Cleveland sacrificed” for the Browns, he said. “It was a bunch of B.S. They extorted us.”
Polensek also said he’s not convinced that the lakefront stadium needs to come down and asked for an independent analysis of its condition.
Kazy said the deal sounds to him like the administration saying, “We give up” and that losing the Browns will be part of Bibb’s legacy, just as it is part of the legacy of Art Modell, the former owner who moved the team to Baltimore.
“We don’t have to make it easy on [current owner Haslam Sports Group],” Kazy said. “We can continue the lawsuits.”
Council Member Richard Starr didn’t say how he planned to vote, but he questioned the value of the deal and suggested that $100 million is “the short end of the stick.” He cited other cities that got or are getting more investment from NFL teams in stadium deals.
Bradford Davey, Bibb’s chief of staff, said that those cities are negotiating the construction of new stadiums. “This is a situation where a team is leaving and making an investment,” Davey said. “I would argue that we are one of the only cities in America to receive” such payments.
At the end of the meeting, Council Member Richard Hairston allowed Kucinich to address the committee. The former mayor was serving in the Ohio legislature when the Browns left for Baltimore. He wrote the Modell Law, which said that teams that want to move had to give their host cities a chance to buy them first.
State lawmakers recently changed the law to allow teams to move within Ohio. Kucinich is suing to challenge the constitutionality of the amended law.
“We have something cities all over America wish they had — an NFL franchise,” Kucinich told the council members. “These are our Browns. We should not let them move.”
He urged council members to “look further, take your time” before agreeing to a settlement.
