A suddenly high-stakes vote on stadium financing for the Tampa Bay Rays nearly collapsed Thursday at the Tampa City Council, only to be salvaged in dramatic fashion when an absent member joined remotely and flipped the outcome.
Council members initially deadlocked 3-3 on approving a stadium bond, causing the measure to fail under council rules, due to the unexpected: The swing vote that approved the Rays stadium project, Council member Bill Carlson, was absent, seemingly due to illness.
The tie vote
effectively killed the proposal for the moment and triggered urgent efforts to salvage bond approvals before any key deadlines for the Rays stadium project come into effect.
Council member Luis Viera immediately pushed for a special-call meeting before Nov. 2, as he plans to resign from the council at 11:59 p.m. on that date as he pursues a seat in the Florida House.
Council supporters of the deal scrambled to find a date that worked for a majority of the seven-member body, but members reported scheduling conflicts.
In casting a no vote that forced the tie, Council member Lynn Hurtak told supporters of the project that they would “have to figure out how to pay for it, not my problem, no,” per Evan Axelbank of Fox 13, who live-tweeted the exchange.
A proposed Oct. 29 special meeting also ran into resistance.
Hurtak noted that rules generally require such votes at the next regular meeting unless a special session is properly called, and she said she would be out of town that day visiting her mother, who was recently injured in a car accident. Per Axelbank, she argued that, “we should all be here for it.”
Of course this would all be going down while the Rays were in the middle of Game 3 of the American League Championship Series and the council deliberated. This seemed set to be yet another complication in the long-running effort to secure a new home for the Rays, and a familiar one, as previous stadium plans in St. Petersburg had also foundered over bond votes.
Then came the reversal.
Councilmember Carlson joined the meeting via Zoom, Council members took a second vote, and this time the bond measure passed 4-3.
What had threatened to become another public setback for the Rays’ stadium ambitions was instead resolved in real time, before Griffin Jax had finished his starting performance for the Rays in ALCS Game 3.
It was just an enormous crisis averted in the never ending Stadium Saga, where nothing can be easy.
