I'm not nearly myopic enough to argue that the delay of the release of the arena term sheet is good news. City manager John Shirey intended to released the term sheet on Thursday, just in time for the first of three public workshops on the plan, which would all happen just in time for the Sacramento City Council to consider the term sheet on Tuesday. The term sheet -- which Shirey said Thursday is more than a dozen pages long -- didn't get released on Thursday after all. The workshop went on as Shirey answered questions from the public and updated renderings were shown off. (Spoiler alert: the arena is going to be really quite handsome.)

Shirey also said some interesting things about the timing of all of this. From Ryan "Lillmatic" Lillis:

If a deal is not reached in time for a Tuesday council vote, the council could debate the plan at its meeting the following week, April 2 - the night before Sacramento presents its bid for the Kings to the NBA in New York. Shirey said it "is not preferable" to hold that council vote on April 2, but that "if it carries over (to April 2), it won't be the end of the world."

Getting it approved March 26 was and still is an insanely aggressive timeline. Getting a term sheet to the public by March 21 was similarly insanely aggressive. From a PR standpoint, setting artificial deadlines you can't meet is not optimal. But this isn't all about PR: setting that aggressive timeline may have helped negotiations move along more quickly, which was needed whether the real deadline is March 26 or April 2. By pushing hard to get this done this week, the city is pushing the developers and apparently the county to find compromises.

Oh yeah, the county. According to folks at the workshop, Shirey said there's an element of county funding for the project, which is huge (even if it's small). But that's another hoop to navigate in short order.