San Diego Council Agrees to Pay $3.5 Million Settlement to Chargers

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published September 25, 2007 at 6:57 AM PDT

This story was published more than 17 years ago.

The San Diego City Council approved -- without comment -- an agreement to pay the San Diego Chargers almost $3.5 million for lost revenue. The settlement stems from the city's negligence a decade ago.

The San Diego City Council approved -- without comment -- an agreement to pay the San Diego Chargers almost $3.5 million for lost revenue. The settlement stems from the city's negligence a decade ago. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

In 1996 when Qualcomm Stadium was remodeled for the Chargers, the city failed to install seats and ramps to meet the Americans with disabilities act. After a lawsuit was filed, the city had to tear out 1,500 seats and install ramps. This meant fewer seats for the Chargers to sell. So every year the city has to compensate the team. This year's payment of $3.38 million covers the years from 2002 to 2006

The city's Independent Budget Analyst Andrea Tevlin questioned why the money wasn't taken out of the city's stadium fund.

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Tevlin: Similar such payments have also come out of the Qualcomm stadium fund in the past -- the answer to that as I understand it is that there is no money in the stadium fund.

There are no estimates of what this settlement will cost the city in coming years, but the better the Chargers do, the more the city will owe.

Alison St John, KPBS News.

Alison St John

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.