City of San Diego CFO Mary Lewis “questioned whether the city was being appropriately paid for a temporary name change of Qualcomm Stadium to endorse the company’s Snapdragon processor on the same day Mayor Jerry Sanders held a news conference touting the promotion,” according to Craig Gustafson of the SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE. Sanders allowed Qualcomm to change the stadium’s name to Snapdragon “for $1,000 despite receiving a Dec. 7 opinion from the City Attorney’s Office that the move wasn’t legal without City Council approval.” Lewis in a Dec. 16 e-mail to the mayor’s staff wrote, “Is the city being compensated for promoting a specific Qualcomm product? Is this above and beyond the original naming agreement? This kind of product exposure is worth a considerable amount of money and was this part of the negotiation?” E-mails show that Qualcomm execs “joked about city bureaucracy, rewarded city staff with Sprinkles cupcakes and were disappointed when the city attorney’s opinion hit the news.” The name switch “hit a speed bump when City Attorney Jan Goldsmith weighed in,” raising the issue that “the switch violated the city’s sign ordinance, which requires advertised products to be sold on the premises.” One staff member suggested that game attendees “could download a Snapdragon application on their phones and therefore comply with the ordinance.” City of San Diego COO Jay Goldstone in an e-mail response wrote, “Wow. That is creative. I like that kind of thinking.” After the switch “had occurred, the mayor’s staff put a one-page agreement in writing with Qualcomm that called for the company to pay $1,000 to cover city costs” (SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE, 2/2).
SEEKING COUNTYWIDE SUPPORT: Chargers Special Counsel Mark Fabiani yesterday said that a new football stadium “is more likely to get built with political and financial support from around the county, and that a public vote on the venue would almost certainly slip to 2013.” Fabiani: “We think we would do better on a countywide vote than we would in just a citywide vote.” He also “touted a stadium’s economic value beyond the city of San Diego” (SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE, 2/2).
