Will the Coyotes be here next season? (Photo: Jesse Spector/flickr)

Yesterday Glendale City Council met to vote on a new arena management fee proposed by Greg Jamison as part of the sale of the Coyotes. The details of the deal can be found here. (Note: To those interested in keeping up to date, AZ Central’s website has done a great job following this saga from the beginning.)

After discussions from all sides, the deal was approved by a 4-2 vote (1 member of the council was missing due to personal reasons). So what does this mean? Well for 48 hours the Coyotes have an arena agreement which means at some point soon they may have an owner. Why only 48 hours? The good old Goldwater Institute has already said they plan to fight the vote.

I do realize that the Goldwater Institute is trying to do what is best for the citizens of Glendale. For that, I respect them. But at this point, I honestly believe that no deal will ever satisfy this group. No idea why but they want the team to leave. I fully understand that having the team costs the city and taxpayers money and that at this point, it will be years before they see green rather than red in their books. But Glendale just spent millions of taxpayers dollars to build the arena. How can it be better for the city to have that arena empty? To me, that doesn’t make sense. But I’m not a lawyer so maybe I’m missing something.

I have been trying to follow this saga since the original owners filed for bankruptcy and the team was sold to the NHL and to be honest, I still don’t understand all the ins and outs. But the fans of the team deserve this saga to end. No other perspective owner has gotten to this point so hopefully this is a sign that will happen in the near future. But as one die-hard fan replied when asked how they felt about the vote “cautiously excited, light on the excited & heavy on the cautious”. It’s bad that good news isn’t even looked at as that anymore…