49ers’ Christmas game sparking another fight with city of Santa Clara

The San Francisco 49ers and the city of Santa Clara are butting heads over who should be responsible for paying police officers and city employees additional overtime to work a football game on Christmas Day.

The Santa Clara City Council met Tuesday to discuss whether to offer double pay to public employees — police officers, firefighters and other city and county workers — to staff the Ravens-49ers game set to take place at Levi’s Stadium on Monday. City Manager Jovan Grogan highlighted that the stadium is facing staffing issues for the game, specifically with regards to directing traffic and dealing with potential “impact on neighborhood and businesses.” The idea is that by approving the increased compensation, more people would be willing to work the holiday.

The main point of contention during this part of Tuesday’s meeting came down to, as it often does with issues between the city and the team, who will foot the bill. Previously, the Niners had paid for those costs. The example given in Tuesday’s meeting was in 2017, when the team had home games on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day. The person behind those negotiations was previous City Manager Deanna Santana, who was fired in 2022 under questionable circumstances. (The San Francisco Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.)

This year, however, the team rejected a request from the city made in November to cover the overtime pay for city employees. The team blamed a new policy that requires double overtime pay for cops at every Niners game. The Niners also denied requests to cover overtime pay for the Christmas Eve game in 2022, though there was no provided explanation for that.

“It is not a viable option to further increase costs to the 49ers beyond its already inflated point,” the Niners wrote to the city in a message that Grogan read aloud.

SFGATE reached out to the 49ers, asking for comment on the topic. The team had not responded by the time of publication.

If the city were to foot the bill, it would come from the Santa Clara Stadium Authority, which receives its money from revenue made through non-NFL events at Levi’s. That revenue then goes into the city’s general fund.

Councilmember Suds Jain — one of the members of the “49er Five,” a group of lawmakers who frequently attended closed-door meetings with team lobbyists — supported the use of Stadium Authority money to pay to fund double pay, while Councilmember Kathy Watanabe said that it should be the Niners that “straight-up pay this bill.”

Mayor Lisa Gillmor, who won her election in 2022 by defeating a now-indicted opponent that the 49ers heavily bankrolled, backed Watanabe. When Jain brought up that the Niners were under no contractual obligation to cover the increased cost, and previous coverage was made on a voluntary basis, the mayor called for the city manager to renegotiate with the team.

“I say go back and negotiate a little harder because the public shouldn’t have to pay for this,” Gillmor said.

The council then unanimously approved the agreement to double the pay for the game and direct the city staff to continue negotiating with the 49ers.

Regardless of whether the team agrees to pay the additional wages or not, it is still another dispute in a long line of them between Santa Clara and the Niners. The team has sunk millions into the local elections of their stadium’s home city after years of litigation over management and revenue of Levi’s.

The Niners have certainly gotten their money’s worth, with five of the seven votes on the Santa Clara City Council belonging to team-backed politicians known as the “49er Five.” Over the last couple years, they’ve voted to fire a city manager — the appointed interim city manager was in charge when the Niners refused to pay for public employees’ overtime last Christmas Eve —  and a city attorney who were critical of the team. The Niners-backed faction is also pushing to move the city’s police chief from an democratically elected position to a city-appointed one. This move came after Chief Patrick Nikolai asked the district attorney to investigate the council members implicated in a grand jury report about their ties with the team.

The only reason there’s been pushback against the 49ers this year is because the team’s aggressive campaign to win the mayor’s office failed. Had the team’s candidate won in November, it’d be hard to imagine Santa Clara’s mayor criticizing the use of public funds for a 49ers event the way Gillmor did on Tuesday.

“In essence, the public is paying for our employees to be getting double time at the football game,” Gillmor said. “That’s wrong, that’s just wrong. I say go back, negotiate a little harder, but, at the end of the day I want to make sure they’re paid no matter what.”