Metro board won’t debate the Dodger Stadium gondola

When community members gather in a Metro meeting room next Thursday to advocate for and against the Dodger Stadium gondola project, the board will listen before voting on whether to move forward with the project.

Will the directors speak?

At a public meeting, officials often explain their position on a high-profile issue. At next week’s Metro meeting, the board could vote on the gondola without any board members talking about it.

Metro released the meeting agenda Tuesday evening. The agenda includes gondola voting under what public agencies call the consent calendar, which is a set of items that can be approved in a single vote and without any discussion among voting officials.

The elements of any consent schedule are generally common. Based on a staff report, Metro considers approving the gondola to be routine, too: Metro approved the gondola last year, a judge ordered corrections to the environmental impact report, and all Metro needs to do now is approve the corrections. The gondola project would still require approval from the Los Angeles City Council and various state agencies.

At a committee meeting last week — a week after the board urged Metro to stop the project — Karen Bass, Los Angeles mayor and Metro board member, put it this way: “Very quickly, I just wanted to reiterate or clarify that the subject of today’s vote is about certification of the EIR, certification of the project’s environmental documents under CEQA, nothing more. »

Two other board members – County Supervisors Janice Hahn and Hilda Solis – responded to concerns raised by public speakers. Hahn voted no on the gondola; Solis voted yes.

It remains to be seen whether Hahn, Solis or any of the board’s 11 other voting members decide to speak out next Thursday. All it takes is for a member to remove the item from the consent calendar and demand a discussion on the matter.

The gondola, first launched by former Dodgers owner Frank McCourt in 2018, would transport fans from Union Station to Dodger Stadium. The gondola’s developers have announced no financial commitments for a project estimated to cost $500 million to build and proposed as privately financed.