The City Council kept San Diego’s pursuit of a new Chargers stadium on track Tuesday by approving $2.1 million for accelerated environmental studies required for a public stadium vote in January.

Mayor Kevin Faulconer said the council’s approval, which came in a 6-3 vote, was crucial to convincing NFL officials that San Diego is serious about building a stadium that would prevent the Chargers from moving to Los Angeles.

Faulconer said progress on environmental work for a stadium will boost the city’s credibility in meetings with NFL officials on July 28 in San Diego and on Aug. 10 in Chicago.

“San Diego’s stadium efforts hinge on this vote,” he said.


Council members who voted in favor of the proposal endorsed that strategy, while council members in opposition called the accelerated environmental impact report an improper use of taxpayer money that wouldn’t help keep the team.

Councilwoman Myrtle Cole, who was joined in support by Scott Sherman, Lorie Zapf, Mark Kersey, Chris Cate and Sherri Lightner, said she wasn’t ready to give up on a new stadium.

“Let’s keep the ball rolling and keep San Diego competitive,” Cole said.

Sherman said help from the NFL was San Diego’s best chance of getting the Chargers to resume negotiations, which the team terminated four weeks ago.


“People might say this is a fool’s errand,” Sherman said. “I still have faith with the right deal we can get the Chargers back here at the table. I think the NFL will tell the Chargers that ‘San Diego is committed, San Diego is ready to go and you guys need to come back to the table.’”

Councilman Todd Gloria, who was joined in opposition by David Alvarez and Marti Emerald, said the money would be a giveaway to environmental consultants with no guarantee of results.

“I want the Chargers to stay in San Diego, but I’m having a very difficult time understanding how this EIR will get us any closer to that goal,” he said, questioning whether local progress on a stadium truly matters to the NFL.

Gloria said St. Louis has made more progress on a local stadium than either San Diego or Oakland, yet the St. Louis Rams are viewed by many as the team most likely to get NFL permission to move to Los Angeles.


“The determination of whether or not a team or teams move to Los Angeles will be a subjective decision of the NFL owners,” he said. “From where I sit, San Diego is getting played at every turn.”

Emerald was more blunt, saying San Diego should give up on keeping the Chargers because the team has made it clear it opposes an accelerated environmental approval and January vote.

“The Chargers say they want no part of this and I say it’s time to listen,” she said. “What part of ‘no’ do stadium boosters not understand? We should stop throwing good money after bad.”

The Chargers say it’s not possible the city can complete a comprehensive and legally sound analysis of such a large project by the necessary deadline of Oct. 15, stressing that EIRs typically take 12 to 18 months.


Chargers special counsel Mark Fabiani reiterated that position shortly after Tuesday’s vote.

“The city’s quickie EIR will be full of holes and will be thrown out by the courts,” Fabiani said in an email. “The Chargers will simply not hitch the future of the franchise to the city’s misbegotten legal strategy.”

Councilman Alvarez said he voted against the proposal primarily because the city and the Chargers haven’t agreed to a financing plan.

“I don’t think the NFL will take this seriously,” he said.


Chris Melvin, the city’s lead stadium negotiator, told the council just the opposite before Tuesday’s vote. He said NFL officials told San Diego’s negotiating team last month to aggressively pursue the strategy they are following.

“The one (strategy) that the NFL seemed highly focused on was an accelerated process that would allow us to be in the position to have a special election — if we came to agreement with the Chargers — in mid-January,” Melvin said. “They encouraged us to move the ball forward.”

Having a vote by January is important because that’s when the NFL has said teams would be able to apply for relocation to the Los Angeles area.

If the NFL delays its decisions on Los Angeles, where competing stadiums have been proposed in suburbs Inglewood and Carson, the San Diego vote could be delayed to the June 2016 primary or November 2016 general election.


Mayor Faulconer and other supporters said the $2.1 million approved on Tuesday is a wise expenditure even if the Chargers eventually move to Los Angeles, because the environmental analysis would give the city a head start on any future projects at the Qualcomm site.

“Regardless of what ultimately happens with the NFL, this EIR is valuable to taxpayers,” Faulconer said.

Andrea Tevlin, the city’s independent budget analyst, said there was some merit to those arguments. But she also noted that the studies would be less helpful if something other than a stadium is built, and that how many years lapse before construction could affect the value of the work.

The total budget approved on Tuesday by the council for the EIR is $2.1 million, which includes the $1.2 million for consultants AECOM, $380,000 to cover city staff time, $200,000 for stadium design work and a $320,000 contingency fund.


The $2.1 will be covered with a one-time payment from the state of exactly the same size. The city recently received that money to cover the city’s costs to comply with some “unfunded” state mandates and new regulations.

Tevlin said the county, which has been splitting the costs of San Diego’s stadium pursuit since the spring, couldn’t help with the EIR because of a policy requiring an election before county money is spent on construction or renovation of a stadium.

To partly even things back out, county supervisors are scheduled to consider voting on Aug. 4 whether to contribute $500,000 more to stadium efforts. That would increase their contribution from $250,000 to $750,000, while Tuesday’s action increases the city’s contribution from $250,000 to $2.35 million.

Several devoted Chargers fans held a rally outside City Hall on Tuesday afternoon and then lobbied the council to approve the EIR money.


“This is an opportunity for San Diego to express its commitment,” said Rafael Alvarez, a season ticket holder since 1982 and a member of the fan group Bolt Pride.

David Agranoff, a member of Save Our Bolts, said the Chargers are a civic treasure that bond many San Diego residents together.

“I know $2.1 million sounds like a lot of money, but the fabric of the community is something that’s impossible to quantify,” he said.

The San Diego County Taxpayers Association declined to take a position.


“Let’s be clear — this is a large expenditure with an unclear outcome,” said Theresa Andrews, the association’s interim chief executive.

The city has scheduled a scoping meeting for the EIR at 6:00 p.m. Wednesday at Qualcomm Stadium.

City officials said Tuesday’s action would allow a draft version of the EIR to be completed in early to mid-August.