As the Angels take the field Friday, April 7, for their home opener, they will be battling back from last season’s winning drought and a City Hall corruption scandal potentially coloring team relations with Anaheim and its residents.
Political and sports pundits say winning solves a lot of problems and the Angels are heading home sporting a 4-2 record. With a new mayor, four new City Council members and a new season, many Anaheim officials say it is time to hit the “reset button” on city dealings with the baseball organization.
Others have a more jaundiced view of the city’s relations with Angels owner Arte Moreno and Anaheim’s tourism machine. There is distrust among some residents of the new council members and whether they will preserve the mechanisms put into place last year by the previous council to assure transparency.
Much remains uncertain. The dust has yet to settle on an FBI investigation that in May revealed allegations that ex-Mayor Harry Sidhu may have tried to help Moreno’s business partnership during negotiations to buy the city-owned stadium. There also is a separate city-commissioned investigation into Sidhu and an alleged cabal that may have improperly steered Anaheim’s dealings with the Angels and other business interests.
And there is an upcoming city assessment of needed repairs to the 57-year-old stadium — the fourth oldest in the league — that will be key in negotiating who should pay for them.
“Right now (the city) is still in the discovery mode, where they are not quite sure how it’s all going to shake out. …There is a hangover, it stems from the drunken behavior of city officials in the last administration,” said former city redevelopment commissioner and longtime Anaheim real estate agent Paul Kott. He estimated the stadium property to be conservatively worth almost double the $320 million in the defunct deal pushed by Sidhu.
In 2022, search warrant documents filed by the FBI alleged Sidhu leaked…
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