{"id":429101,"date":"2026-10-16T02:02:45","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T02:02:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/429101\/"},"modified":"2026-10-16T02:02:45","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T02:02:45","slug":"tampa-city-council-averts-rays-stadium-bond-crisis-after-dramatic-last-minute-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/429101\/","title":{"rendered":"Tampa City Council Averts Rays Stadium Bond Crisis After Dramatic Last-Minute Vote"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">In casting a no vote that forced the tie, Council member Lynn Hurtak told supporters of the project that they would \u201chave to figure out how to pay for it, not my problem, no,\u201d per <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/EvanAxelbank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Evan Axelbank of Fox 13<\/a>, who live-tweeted the exchange.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">A proposed Oct. 29 special meeting also ran into resistance.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">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, \u201cwe should all be here for it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Councilmember Carlson joined the meeting via Zoom, Council members took a second vote, and this time the bond measure passed 4-3.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">What had threatened to become another public setback for the Rays\u2019 stadium ambitions was instead resolved in real time, before Griffin Jax had finished his starting performance for the Rays in ALCS Game 3.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">It was just an enormous crisis averted in the never ending Stadium Saga, where nothing can be easy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A suddenly high-stakes vote on stadium financing for the Tampa Bay Rays nearly collapsed Thursday at the Tampa&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,53240,137,136],"class_list":["post-429101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-bay-stadium-saga","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}