The Vet’s a mess – so who’s to blame?

The teams? The food vendor? The city?

Publicly, both the city and the food-and-beverage vendor yesterday took responsibility for cleaning up Veterans Stadium.

But behind the scenes, everybody’s pointing fingers in the wake of a Daily News report this week that exposed unsafe and unhealthy conditions at the Vet.

They’re embarrassed by the People Paper’s stomach-turning description of roach-infested kitchens and nose-picking employees.

And they’re trying to clean up after city inspectors cited the stadium with enough health code violations to fill seven pages.

“Heads are rolling down here,” said one source, who described a heated meeting between the Phillies and the stadium vendor in the aftermath of the Daily News report.

Sources said the Phillies are putting the heat on the stadium concessionaire, Aramark Corp. The company took over the stadium concession contract this summer when it purchased the Vet’s longtime vendor, Ogden Entertainment.

On the record, an Aramark spokesman said in an e-mail statement, “We are engaged in an ongoing repair and cleanup effort at Veterans Stadium as a key part of our transition strategy for this new account. Some of these efforts are taking place in response to the recent Board of Health findings. Other actions were scheduled well in advance of the Board of Health’s report. ”

Other sources told the Daily News that Aramark – stunned by the breadth of grime it inherited – is pressing the city to step up its maintenance of the facility.

Under the stadium concession contract, it is Aramark’s job to clean the kitchens and food-service areas. It’s the city’s job to remove trash.

The Street administration vowed to do its part.

“It is our intention to have a facility that our fans and teams can use to have a pleasant experience,” said Joyce Wilkerson, Mayor Street’s chief of staff. “We don’t want to send the wrong message about the city. We look to have a facility that allows people to have a quality time. ”

It appeared yesterday an emergency cleanup of sorts has begun.

A brief tour of the empty stadium showed evidence of a mop-and-bucket brigade. The faint odor of disinfectant wafted through the 200-level Food Court.

Sources said the first to get bathed was the stadium’s infamous cotton-candy machine.

Located beneath light fixtures and ledges coated with grease, dirt and bird-droppings, the machine was operated – at least on one occasion – by a nose-picking vendor who tended to lick his fingers.

Now, it’s missing from its usual spot.

“They yanked it immediately,” a stadium sources said. “That hit them hard, that gross description of cotton candy. ”

Elsewhere, the cleanup was superficial at best.

The walls and many of the not-so-stainless steel concession windows were still covered with a sticky film of filth.

The eating facility was marked with obscene graffiti, gobs of gum and litter.

A cat – one of the many that nest at the Vet to shepherd the stadium’s rat colony – wandered aimlessly near an indoor batting cage.

Two wagons, heaped with bags of festering garbage, awaited removal.

Other problems are less noticeable but far more severe.

An assessment of the Vet completed last November by the design firm Ewing Cole Cherry Brott recommended more than $8 million worth of priority work at the stadium. Among the most severe problems:

A rusting steel structure supporting the temporary stands that are used at every Eagles games.

Wobbily, poorly supported aluminum railings in seating areas.

A variety of electrical code violations.

Boiling water leaking from pipes.

“The leaking water will flash to steam, presenting an immediate danger to anyone nearby,” the report noted. “. . .Stadium staff reports an ever-increasing failure rate. ”

The study recommended another $25 million in renovations in coming years, assuming the Vet continues to be the home for the Eagles and Phils.

Eagles executive vice president Joe Banner said little if any work has been done since the report was released.

“To the best of our knowledge, there have no capital repairs in the year 2000 except for perhaps some minor items,” Banner said.

According to a report prepared by the city, about $1 million in structural improvements are under way, including repairs to the temporary seating area. That total, however, pales in comparison to capital spending in the mid-’90s, which reached as high as $11 million a year.

Staff writer Dave Davies contributed to this report.

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IT’S 30 MINUTES till game time, and the cotton-candy man at the Vet is serving up his goodies.

He dips his hand into the swirling machine, plucks a puffy blue cloud of candy and deposits it into his mouth.

Then he licks his fingers clean, grabs a paper cone, dips it into the machine and comes out with another wad of candy – this one’s for your kids.

It gets worse.

Above his machine, the light fixtures and ledges and pipes are coated with filth. Not just dirt and grease, but a crusty film of dried bird-droppings from roosting pigeons.

An uncovered trash can full of perhaps 100 pounds of sugar – an easy target for a passing bird – sits beneath it all.

It gets worse.

The cotton candy man picks his nose.

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THE VET IS nearing the end of another long, uneventful baseball season – a season of small crowds and little excitement. And as the Eagles begin their 2000 season, the place looks tired. The concourses are dirty. The walls are stained with rust and grime. Litter collects in corners. The concession areas smell of rotting french fries and grease.

It is dark and grim.

As officials continue to fret over the construction of new facilities for the Eagles and Phils, the city-owned stadium that has hosted millions of cheering fans over the last three decades is dying a slow, ugly death.

Like the Phillies in the month of September, Veterans Stadium itself is playing out the string.

It is a lame duck. And if the stadium itself doesn’t know that, the people who work there do.

“There’s no leadership down here,” said one stadium vending subcontractor who, like several employees interviewed by the Daily News, requested anonymity to protect his job.

“The food concessions fight with security and security blames the cleaners,” he said. “No one takes any responsibility, and the place looks like crap. ”

The stadium’s 700 food-and-beverage workers don’t even know if they’ll have jobs next season. The Vet’s longtime concessionaire, Ogden Entertainment, was sold during the summer, and its contract expires at the end of the year. No one knows who will be serving food when the Phillies return in 2001.

“No one’s told me anything,” one subcontractor said. “There are no guarantees. I don’t know if I’ll be back. No one knows if they’ll be back. ”

The price of that uncertainty is neglect.

“The Vet is going to hell,” he said. “There are rats as big as cats running around, there’s trash and garbage all over the place. They can’t get the escalators to work because they’re jammed with trash.

“It’s disgusting. ”

Another stadium source said he no longer even bothers to complain about unsafe and unhealthy conditions because the city ignores the gripes.

“Is it perfect? No,” said stadium manager Greg Grillone, a city employee. “I think there’s always room for improvement.

“But we spend more for cleaning than ever before. . .We never get complaints from the Health Department. ”

In fact, the last city health inspection in late July turned up seven pages of violations. Among the worst: mice and roach infestation, improper food handling, hazardous chemical storage and greasy, dirty ventilation.

It wasn’t the first time inspectors had turned up health-code violations.

Hours before last year’s Army-Navy game, for example, inspectors found that food in the executive hospitality suite had been left uncovered, unprotected against contamination. In the stadium’s main kitchen, meatballs and chicken were held at dangerously low temperatures that could have sickened hundreds of fans.

City officials say the stadium was supposed to correct the violations.

However, a Daily News tour of the stadium in the last two weeks revealed both unsafe and unsanitary conditions:

* Leaking pipes and puddles of water near exposed wires.

* Broken concrete and slippery floors.

* Litter and garbage in food-serving areas.

* Obscene graffiti on walls and concession booths.

* Worn, dirty, smelly carpets.

Insiders with access to nonpublic areas describe hidden corners that haven’t been cleaned in years. Compressors and motors and plumbing fixtures in the kitchens are coated with grease that attracts vermin and roaches.

The stadium is also suffering structurally, these insiders say.

They report rusting metal supports beneath temporary seats, gaping holes in cement walkways and missing bolts in seats and railings.

At the Army-Navy game two years ago, nine cadets were injured when a bleacher railing they were leaning on broke away and they fell 15 feet.

City inspectors concluded the cadets were at fault.

The Department of Licenses and Inspections reports no recent violations at the stadium. (When the Daily News told L&I about the exposed wires, an inspector immediately checked the site and concluded the wires were communications cables that did not pose a threat. )

Even if the Vet is structurally safe, the conditions are unsightly and embarrassing.

Three years ago, then-coach Ray Rhodes said the Eagles failed to sign an unnamed free-agent player, partly because of the Vet’s condition. Rhodes told a newspaper reporter the player, upon entering the Vet, took one look and declared, “This is a dump. ”

Two years ago, the NFL Players Association reported the stadium is the worst in the league and called it “a shabby, inadequate place. ”

As recently as last week, you could still read the faintly painted letters “A-R-M-Y” on the right field turf, a vestige of the Army-Navy game played 8 months earlier.

And yesterday on national television, broadcasters for Fox-Sports pointedly criticized the turf during the Eagles-Giants game.

Focusing their TV cameras on the cutouts around the pitcher’s mound and the bases, they showed millions of viewers the large, uneven gaps in the artificial turf’s seams.

“It is the worst playing field in the NFL,” announcer Bill Maas proclaimed.

Both the Phillies and Eagles – who together pay about $5 million a year to lease the stadium – have complained to the city often about the mess.

But team officials declined to criticize the city for this report. The reason: they are in the midst of negotiations for a new stadium and don’t want to antagonize the city.

“It would be inappropriate for us to comment on stadium matters,” said Phillies president Dave Montgomery.

Asked what the team tells its fans about the mess, Montgomery replied, “We try to respond to any individual complaint. Our only way to do that is to turn it over to our landlord. ”

The landlord, though, is reluctant to spend much to fix its lame-duck stadium.

After an influx of capital improvements early in the Rendell administration, City Hall – anticipating new facilities – annually has cut stadium spending, according to city sources.

Major repairs to air-conditioning systems, plumbing and the bathrooms are beyond the capability of the stadium’s 50-man maintenance crew. So they go undone, city sources say.

“Of course the Eagles and Phillies are going to complain,” one city source familiar with Vet operations said. The stadium is “antiquated, and the city’s not spending on capital improvements. ”

Further, low-bid contracts for security and cleaning provide bottom-of-the-barrel service.

“Generally, you get what you pay for,” said the city source. “The problem is, there’s no incentive to beef up the contracts, given the future of the stadium. ”

NEAR THE cotton-candy man, a woman pouring sodas looks bored. The Phillies game has started, but business is slow.

She folds a napkin and wipes sweat from her neck and brow. Then she uses the same napkin to brush crumbs from the stainless-steel counter.

She’s a nose-picker, too.

“What are you going to do?” one subcontracting vendor asked. “You’ve got 4 percent unemployment. You’re not exactly getting the cream of the crop down here, as far as workers go.

“I think Ogden does a pretty good job, all things considered. ”

Ogden Entertainment, whose contract expires this winter, has run the food and beverage concession at the Vet for the past 15 years. It’s been a shaky tenure with notable lowlights, including:

* A well-publicized beer scam in which it cheated fans out of an estimated $500,000 by under-pouring suds in improperly marked cups.

* A sexual harassment lawsuit filed by one of its restaurant hostesses.

* An LCB citation for serving underage fans who subsequently brawled on national TV.

* The alleged rape of an 11-year-old fan by workers at one of its subcontractors.

* A string of slip-and-fall lawsuits stemming from its alleged failure to clean up messes. It also got sued for allegedly burning a cop with boiling chicken soup.

* A scathing rebuke from City Council over its lousy, overpriced food.

Insiders at Ogden and the stadium say the poor quality is largely due to low attendance at Phillies games. It’s costly to run a food operation designed to serve 65,000 fans when only 14,000 show up.

Since its high-water mark during the 1993 Phillies championship season, gross concession revenue has dropped by up to $10 million a year.

Some stadium sources blame Ogden. They say the company has been slow to improve its menu, and the prices are too high for the poor quality of food.

The company – and the stadium itself – also seems unprepared for the rare sellouts. Large crowds at Eagles games wait at concession windows for 30 minutes or more. Frequently, fights break out in the beer lines.

It gets so crowded during some Eagles games that officials must set up Port-a-Potties in the concourses. Despite Ogden’s bad rep, a contract extension appeared likely. In an industry where contracts usually are long-term, finding a new concessionaire for a stadium on life-support would be all but impossible.

Then, the city caught what appeared at first to be a lucky break: This summer, Ogden Entertainment was purchased by the giant Philadelphia-based Aramark Corp.

New management might mean better service, improved quality. Maybe cleaner kitchens.

With the concession contract set to expire after the Eagles season concludes this winter, the city quickly opened talks with Aramark. In recent days, however, the negotiations reportedly have bogged down.

Uncertain how new stadium construction will affect the Vet, the city wants only a one-year deal with the company, according to sources familiar with the talks.

Aramark, worried that it will be forced to spend thousands to clean up after Ogden, wants a multi-year deal to recoup its investment.

Now, it seems the lucky break wasn’t so lucky after all: Aramark can walk, the city can’t.

Fifteen years ago, a half-dozen companies vied for the food concession at the city’s huge, gleaming stadium. City Hall boasted that its contract with Ogden was the best in the industry. The city would keep up to 58 cents on every $1 spent on beer, hotdogs and Crackerjack. In the past 10 years alone, Vet Stadium food and beverage concessions have earned the city $40 million.

This time, the city is desperate.

The deal won’t be so lucrative.

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THERE IS a bittersweet feeling in the near-empty stands at the end of every baseball season. Long-suffering Phillies fans curse still another last-place finish, yet cherish the simple pleasure of watching America’s pasttime.

For true fans, watching the season end is a sacred experience, like a funeral for a friend. But instead of “amen,” we get to say, “Wait till next year! ”

With its future uncertain, though, Veterans Stadium enjoys no such hope. Even the city’s vow to spend $80 million in improvements if there is no new stadium deal by November seems a laughable waste of money.

Yet, if the city and its sports franchises miraculously cut a deal today, it still would be three years till the new stadiums are built.

That’s three more years of football and baseball at the Vet – of grimy walls and trash-covered floors, of rats and roaches, of the cotton-candy man and the soda lady.

Of neglect.

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The beer barons at the Vet have thrown in the towel.

After months of Daily News reports of price gouging and suds skimming, Veterans Stadium concessionaire Ogden Entertainment will announce today that it is trimming beer prices by 25 cents.

Better yet: it’s crushing its soggy, old paper cups and replacing them with larger, sturdier, plastic ones.

And, for the first time ever, the stadium will serve real Philadelphia cheesesteaks and pretzels.

Score one for all the long-suffering Joe Sixpacks who fill the stands for Phillies games.

Though the beer still rocks the pocket at a wallet-assaulting $4.75, the price reduction is one the most stunning turnarounds in Philadelphia sports history.

Ever since the Daily News revealed last April that the stadium was cheating ballpark beer-drinkers out of two ounces of brew from every cup, the concession company steadfastly maintained no wrongdoing.

A Joe Sixpack investigation showed that, despite advertising signs that promised 18-ounce beers, the Vet’s cups contained, at most, just 16 ounces of drinkable brew.

A City Council probe concurred that the scam likely cost fans up to $500,000. A Council report issued in February accused Ogden of arrogantly treating its fans as a “captive audience.”

Additionally, an ongoing class-action lawsuit charges Ogden with fraudulent, unfair business practices.

Through it all, Ogden denied it sold short cups of beer.

But in a surprise announcement this week, the multinational food conglomerate acknowledged that the Daily News reports “made us change our focus and reconsider our approach.”

A company press release said the rollback is a “direct result of Ogden’s annual review of pricing for all Vet concessions. . .Ogden identified opportunities to reduce the cost of draft beer through increased operating efficiencies.”

“Obviously we focused on beer [because] it was in the newspaper,” said Ogden spokesman Hugh Braithwaite.

Neither the lawsuit nor City Council’s probe nor fan pressure nor the fact that Ogden’s 15-year contract is up for renewal in 2000 played any part in the price reduction, said Ogden general manager Brian Hastings.

City Councilman Jim Kenney, head of the Licenses and Inspection Committee that looked into Vet concessions, wasn’t buying it yesterday. When alerted to Ogden’s price cuts, he said:

“I think it’s a direct result of the attention and the work that was done by the Daily News, both on the short-pour issue and the overall quality of concessions. That’s what the newspaper business is supposed to be about. You put light on it, the city scrutinized it and the company had to react to it.”

Vahan Gureghian, the Center City lawyer who brought the class-action lawsuit against Ogden, said the company was “posturing itself to make themselves look more fair to the public.”

He added: “I can’t imagine that, in America today, you would find a caterer who would, absent the institution of a lawsuit, actually lower its prices. . .

“Having been around Philadelphia all these years, I know there’s no bigger complaint than the cost of food and beverage at the Vet. Far and away, the public feels like it’s been ripped off.

“This lawsuit will move forward.”

The price drop means Phillies beer – formerly the most expensive in the National League – is about average for the majors. At $4.75, we’ll be paying about 26 cents an ounce, down from 33 cents. The company will not advertise the size of the cups, but Hastings said they’re 21 ounces – three ounces bigger than last year’s large cups. That means we’ll get at least 18 ounces of liquid and a healthy head of foam.

In a nod toward good taste, the beer will be served in plastic cups. Say goodbye to those annoying flecks of wax that get caught in your teeth.

Finally, the stadium has converted the barren, cinderblock-and-plastic Winners Lounge on the 200 Level into a brass-and-wood pub, to be operated by local microbrewer Red Bell. Given the success of Red Bell’s pubs at the First Union Center and the airport, the joint likely will be standing room only. Dropping the prices on beer is just the start.

Faced with a Daily News examination of the ballpark’s limp and sometimes green wieners, its frozen doughy pretzels and other funky grub, Ogden is spicing up its food concessions, too.

First, it declared a price freeze on all concessions.

Second, in an apparent bow to pressure from Kenney and others, the company will broaden its menu to include Philadelphia favorites. Among them:

* South Jersey’s Gaetano’s Steaks will vend actual Philadelphia cheesesteaks – a huge improvement over the soggy mass of steamer-table gunk that Ogden once slopped up.

* The Northeast’s Chickie and Pete’s Cafe will hawk wings and hot sandwiches.

* Philadelphia Baking Co. will serve actual, hand-rolled, never-frozen soft pretzels. “The fans of the Philadelphia Phillies should be pleased,” Hastings said. “Joe Sixpack’s readers should be pleased.” Kenney added: “If we’ve done nothing else, we’ve made it a little easier for the fan to go to Phillies games. Now, we have to work on the pitching staff.”

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 Veterans Stadium: Home of plastic seats, plastic grass and, for the first time ever, plastic beer.

Beer bottled not in glass but in plastic made its ballpark debut at yesterday’s home opener.

The synthetic suds – 16-ounce containers of Miller Lite – go for $5. That’s 25 cents more and three or more ounces fewer than the stadium’s draft brew.

Though beer-drinking purists may shudder at the aesthetic assault of ballpark plastic, the new bottles do allow fans to carry them to their seat without waiting for a vendor to slop the contents into a cup.

Miller Brewing, which has been test-marketing plastic bottles for several months, claims drinkers should be unable to detect any difference in the plasticized brew. Joe Sixpack would note that this being light beer, it’s unlikely drinkers will detect any taste, period.

But neither aesthetics nor taste are the issue here.

At a stadium known for the occasional violently hurled seat-to-field missiles, arming inebriated fans with potential projectiles may be regarded as a South Philly-style dare. Filled with beer, these rock-hard bottles would leave a sizable dent upon re-entry.

Vendors, however, are under orders to remove the cap first. A pitched pint, presumably, would lose much of its contents before finding its target.

Ogden general manager Brian Hastings said the concessionaire was keeping its eye on the possible threat of plastic beer. “The first sign of trouble, we’ll review our policy,” he said.

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The beer was cold, the Phillies played tough and the fans even staged a first-class fistfight in the cheap seats.

A perfect day at the ballpark – except for some growing discontent over . . . the pretzels!

OK, this is not on the order of cheating fans out of a full cup of beer. But it turns out that the Vet’s new, authentic Philadelphia soft pretzels aren’t really Philly after all.

The twisters – introduced with considerable fanfare last week as part of the concessionaire’s so-called Local Flavors program – are made by a New Jersey company in Montgomery County.

These foreigners aren’t the same brick-oven delights generations of Philadelphians have chewed since their invention 75 years ago.

Among other things, they’re rounder.

At first, stadium concessionaire Ogden Entertainment claimed the pretzels were made by a company called Philadelphia Baking Co. That company, however, does not make pretzels. It bakes bread and has no connection with the Vet.

The new pretzels – available in two locations on the 200 and 500 Level Food Courts – are made by J&J Snack Foods of Pennsauken, N.J.

That’s the same company that mass-produces those foul-tasting, $3 frozen Super Pretzels that have blitzed ballpark tongues and wallets in recent years.

Local pretzel makers and one City Council member are up in arms.

“I can’t understand why a Philadelphia soft pretzel can’t be made in Philadelphia,” said Councilman Jim Kenney.

It was Kenney, upset over Daily News reports of short-poured beers and stiff prices, who helped persuade Ogden to broaden its selection of food and drop beer prices.

“I’m very happy that Ogden has made this move towards a more fan-friendly and affordable selection of ballpark food,” he said. “But I think they missed the boat on the pretzels.”

Joe Sidorick, president of Philadelphia Soft Pretzels Inc. on N. 3rd Street, said he would have been happy to supply the stadium with his brand.

“I’ve been a season ticketholder for 25 years, and this just adds salt to the wound,” Sidorick said when he learned a suburban company was producing pretzels for the city-owned stadium.

“The Philadelphia Phillies and Philadelphia pretzels – it just doesn’t make sense to go to a South Jersey company for a machine-made pretzel,” he said.

Ogden general manager Brian Hastings said the company had spoken with South Philadelphia’s Federal Pretzel Co. about supplying the Vet. But he said it opted to go with J&J instead when the Jersey company vowed it could bake “a quality product.”

Though its Super Pretzels are made by machines, the ballpark’s Original Philadelphia Soft Pretzel is handmade, according to Robert Radano, a J&J exec.

“They’re hand-twisted and baked fresh,” Radano said.

He said they’re produced at J&J’s plant in Hatfield and brought to the stadium daily, where they’re warmed in small ovens.

The one Joe Sixpack sampled yesterday was fresh and sorta OK. It was rounder than the standard street-corner pretzel and not quite so chewy.

At three for $2, though, it’s one of the best bargains at the ballpark.

But it’s not really a Philadelphia soft pretzel.

The ones I grew up on are squeeshed together in rows of 10. Their brown brick-oven, almost-burnt crusts are so hard, you break a sweat trying to rip ’em apart before you spread the mustard.

Radano said protesting his pretzel’s non-Philadelphia origin is splitting hairs:

“We are a Philadelphia-area company. We’ve been here for 27 years. “We supply pretzels to a lot of the schools. We’re a member of the Chamber of Commerce. We were selected by the mayor to make an elephant pretzel for the Republican Convention.”

A GOP elephant pretzel? In Philadelphia?

Case closed.

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The beer may be cheaper at the Vet this season, but tickets aren’t.

Despite its recent history of tepid, sub-.500 performances and a reduced payroll, the ’99 Phillies have jacked up ticket prices by more than 20 percent. As a result, it will cost an average of about $30 more this year to take a family of four to the ballpark.

The Phillies defend the price hike, saying it’s the team’s first across-the-board increase in three years.

Moreover, the club says it believes Major League Baseball is a relative bargain compared to Philadelphia’s other professional sports. Tickets for the Flyers, Eagles and 76ers cost, on average, three to five times more than Phillies ducats.

“We agonized over raising prices,” Phillies ticket boss Richard Deats said yesterday. “Our aim is to keep it affordable. ”

Still, ever skeptical Phillies fans may be left wondering why they are digging deeper this year for the perennial losers.

After all, the team – still mired in a seemingly terminal “rebuilding” phase – has few stars and little chance of making the playoffs.

It is raking in millions from its local broadcast rights and increased ballpark advertising, including new ads on the outfield fences.

And its payroll is down by about $3 million this year. At $26 million in player salaries, the Phillies are among the stingiest teams in the National League.

So, why are they charging us more for a day at the ballpark?

Because we’ll pay it.

“Baseball charges what the market will bear,” said Gerald Scully, an economics professor at the University of Texas at Dallas and author of “The Business of Baseball. ”

“Or, more technically, it sets a ticket price that will maximize its revenue,” he added.

In other words, why charge $15 for a 300 Level seat down the first base line, when most fans willingly pay $17?

Indeed, the price increase hasn’t scared off anyone, if ’99 ticket sales are an indication.

The club already has sold about 1 million tickets, and the team hasn’t even stepped onto the Vet’s fake turf. That’s about 70,000 more than last year at this date.

Deats attributes much of the increased interest to an attractive schedule. The hot weekends in July feature the Braves, Orioles, and Sammy Sosa and the Cubs. Roger Clemens and the world champion Yankees will be making an appearance in June and slugger Mark McGwire should fill the plastic seats when the Cardinals visit in August.

The Phillies aren’t the only club capitalizing on those big names. Twenty-six of the 30 Major League teams have jacked up ticket prices this year.

“What’s going on is that baseball is trying to take advantage that its popularity is growing again,” said Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College and author of “Baseball and Billions. ”

“They’ve made a call on the market, and they’re going to test it. ”

Said Deats: “It’s not like we doubled our prices. On average, the increase is about $2.20 a ticket. We feel we still give good value for your dollar.”

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A six-month City Council probe of last season’s suds-skimming scam at the Vet has found what every Philadelphia sports fan already knows:

The city-owned stadium is gouging its visitors with lousy food and expensive prices.

In a scathing report that describes the stadium vendor as arrogant and deceptive, Councilman Jim Kenney concludes that ballpark beer drinkers were ripped off more than $500,000 by the scam last season.

Kenney’s Licenses and Inspection Committee launched the investigation last summer following a series of Daily News reports about the stadium’s notoriously bad hot dogs and overpriced beer.

Among other findings, Joe Sixpack revealed that Vet beers – the most expensive in the National League – contained two ounces less than advertised.

The City Council report, to be released today, charges: “The notion that Philadelphia sports fans are a ‘captive audience’ and can therefore be charged almost any price for tickets and concessions is the height of arrogance and extremely short-sighted.”

But it’s not all Ogden’s fault. The report says the city deserves part of the blame.

“The reason we have poor quality and high prices is primarily the city’s insistence on getting 58 percent on the gross revenues, and 70 percent on the alcohol,” Kenney told Joe Sixpack yesterday.

“That’s simply gouging the fan and the taxpayer, and it sets up a scenario where you get poor food at a high price.”

The report, titled “Philadlephia Sports Fans . . . You Deserve a Break!,” calls for the city to cut its share of concession revenues so that prices at the stands can be slashed.

It further recommends that, when Ogden’s 15-year contract expires in 2000, it be replaced with a “marketplace design” that features authentic local products. Instead of suffering the palate and wallet assault of the Vet’s frozen, doughy $3 pretzels, for example, ballpark diners might munch on real, fresh-baked, affordable soft pretzels.

Spokesmen for Ogden did not return telephone calls for comment about the report.

During a City Council hearing last summer, Ogden officials defended their concessions by waving a national survey that showed its prices were “20 percent below the national average.”

The Council report belittles that claim, however, noting that the survey’s findings were based partly on the lowball price Ogden submitted for its puny “Phanatic” dog – a child’s $1.25 hot dog that is half the size of standard weiners and sold in just two locations at the Vet. The vast majority of Ogden’s mutts go for $2.75 and $3.50.

“What’s more troubling than the attempt to defraud Philadelphia sports fans,” the report cries, “is the Ogden attitude that suggests it’s ‘OK’ to not only rip off fans by shortchanging them 2 ounces of beer, but that it’s ‘OK’ to sell less-than-quality food at outrageous prices – then, when caught, defend this practice by holding up a national survey where inaccurate information was submitted in order to get a higher rating than deserved.”

Though he accused Ogden of “misleading” Council, Kenney stopped short of calling for termination of its vending contract. “I would like to give everybody the benefit of the doubt and start over with new standards,” he said.

The report calls for the mayor’s office and the Recreation Department to evaluate Ogden’s performance, and for the City Controller to audit the use of beer surcharges that were intended for added stadium security.

As for the practice of skimming suds, the report suggests that the city enforce a provision that ensures the number of ounces in each cup – and that those cup sizes be advertised at each vending stand.

Ogden removed placards that listed those cup sizes the day Joe Sixpack revealed the scam to Daily News readers. The vendor replaced the signs with new ones that advertised only “large” and “small” beers.

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