Cleveland council hears experts on $100 million Browns settlement as members split over lakefront and lost tax revenue

Council President Griffin convened a Nov. 24 hearing on proposed ordinance (the settlement term sheet introduced by Mayor Bibb) that would settle the city’s lawsuits against the Haslam Sports Group and provide $100,000,000 to the City of Cleveland in exchange for allowing the Cleveland Browns to relocate to Brook Park.

The session brought independent legal and economic testimony and public- and business-sector views to a council clearly divided over whether the payment and associated commitments deliver a net benefit for Cleveland.

Ken Silliman, a retired city law-department veteran who helped negotiate earlier stadium deals, told the council the Brook Park plan and the term sheet “is the single worst development deal for the city and the region” in his 38 years of public service. He flagged term sheet sections 2(e) and 2(f), which commit the city to “best efforts” to support Brook Park public safety, utilities and infrastructure. Silliman said that language could be interpreted to require the city to favor Brook Park projects in competitive grant processes and recommended deleting section 2(f) and tightening 2(e) to avoid unintended prioritization. He cited the city’s economic study and summarized projected harms as roughly $11,000,000 a year in lost tax revenues and about $30,000,000 in harder-to-quantify economic-development impacts to downtown if the team relocates.

Administration officials, including Director Mark…