Birmingham leaders were sacked from their blind side over a city councilor’s hopes to woo the Oakland Raiders to play home games at Legion Field for the upcoming NFL season.

City Council President Valerie Abbott pressed Mayor Woodfin for details on Councilor William Parker’s plan because “I haven’t found a council member who knows anything,” saying she first heard of her colleague’s idea last week from a press release.

But Woodfin said he was similarly blindsided.

“I’m unable to communicate anything to you about a proposal, so I couldn’t articulate it to you,” the mayor told Abbott at Tuesday’s council meeting. “There has been nobody on our team that has talked to the Raiders organization, so there’s nothing I can tell you because I don’t know.”

Details on a proposal are scarce. The Arizona Daily Star of Tucson reported Tuesday that Tucson and Birmingham are partnering up on a plan to cohost the Raiders for 2019 but did not include specifics or whether the Raiders are amenable to the idea.

The Raiders are looking for a temporary new home; their lease at the Oakland Coliseum expires tomorrow and will be relocating to in Las Vegas in 2020. The team reportedly has not been in talks with the Coliseum about extending the lease, according to the San Jose Mercury News.

Parker said the Birmingham Park and Recreation Board is looking to field more sports tourism events at Legion Field and that the Oakland Raiders would be a fit for the Magic City.

“Legion Field needs more programming and that’s what we’re doing at Legion Field is to pursue all opportunities and let everyone know that Legion Field is open for business and the city of Birmingham benefits from that,” he said Tuesday.

Abbott suggested that the mayor and council should have worked together before Parker made his wishes known.

“We all need to be involved in deciding what the city’s willing to do because we don’t have unlimited amounts of money and the only cries that I hear is to pave our darn streets and fix our sidewalks and do infrastructure work, so it would behoove us – rather than people going out and soliciting on their own with no information to any colleagues – that we all work as a team,” she said. “I mean, were talking about team sports, but we need to work as a team with no lone wolves on this.”

City Councilor Steven Hoyt said he wasn’t surprised about not being up to speed on Parker’s plan “because I read a lot in the paper that has not been discussed in this council,” but still commended his colleague’s initiative, pointing out that Parker was instrumental in securing an Alliance of American Football franchise in Birmingham with the Iron.

“He has the ability and the acumen to do some things, and I think we all sometimes let folks do what they do well,” Hoyt said. “You can’t pave the road if you don’t generate some revenue, and so I think it goes hand in hand.”

Still, Abbott said it angered her to not have prior notice before Parker spoke to the media.

“I am a big fan of the wheeler dealer of the council, but when I read a press release -- of which I knew nothing -- that disturbed me,” she said. “We should all be on the team .. we should all at least be informed ahead of time. I just think the council needs to know about these things before it hits the airwaves. Our own team members, we need to be more team-like and keep everybody informed so that when it hits the fan we all know about it.”