San Diego Council President Sean Elo-Rivera said late Friday that he is pushing to slash the city’s share of Petco Park expenses while the budget is still in flux, putting a high-profile ballpark subsidy back into the middle of a fight over what San Diegans should keep and what they should give up.
He said the city faces a structural deficit and proposed cuts to services residents depend on, and added that he has a duty to examine every option to protect what matters most. Elo-Rivera said that includes questioning subsidies to highly profitable enterprises, and he drew a direct line between the ballpark and other looming cuts, saying he would not “blindly subsidize a $3.9 billion enterprise’s operations” while library hours are reduced and arts and culture programming is eliminated.
The numbers behind the dispute are large enough to make it more than a symbolic gesture. In the upcoming fiscal year, San Diego expects to spend $18.5 million on Petco Park-related expenses, while bringing in a little more than $8 million in revenue in the Petco Park Fund. The gap is covered by $10.4 million in transfers from the Transient Occupancy Tax Fund. At the same time, the draft budget would eliminate $11.8 million in annual city grants to arts and culture organizations, sharpening the politics around who absorbs the pain first.
The ballpark costs are governed by the city’s Joint Use and Management Agreement, known as JUMA. Under that contract, the city pays for police services outside the venue, event traffic control and 70% of ballpark ownership costs, while the Padres cover game-day venue expenses, police services in the ballpark and traffic control above the contract’s defined baseline. Elo-Rivera said he has asked for an analysis of the city’s options and said decisions can be made once those options are known.
The Padres responded Saturday with a defense of the current arrangement, saying the city has a longstanding contractual obligation to keep the public streets around Petco Park safe for 4 million visitors each year. The team said police and event-related costs totaled $11 million over the last three years and nearly doubled after the City Council increased fees across the board for San Diegans. It also said Petco Park generates almost $1 billion in economic impact each year, supports more than 13,500 jobs and has contributed $23 million to the city’s general fund through revenue sharing on non-baseball events over the last five years alone.
The clash comes as city leaders work toward a budget for the new fiscal year and as Mayor Todd Gloria’s revised draft preserves some earlier proposed cuts while still leaving arts funding untouched. It also unfolds against the backdrop of the team’s announced sale to a new ownership group at a value of $3.9 billion, a figure that will only deepen scrutiny of whether the public should keep carrying such a large share of the ballpark bill. The legal question is whether the city can change its contribution without reopening the agreement that sets the terms.
