The Butler BlueSox won’t field a team next year and the team’s future is uncertain after the BlueSox and the city could not come to terms on a new contract to use Kelly Automotive Park.

The city parks, recreation grounds and facilities authority announced at a meeting Monday that the team, which has been playing at the field for 10 years, was not able to remain in Butler and has suspended operations.

Team co-owner Larry Sassone painted a different picture saying the lease offered by the authority was unacceptable.

“It’s a sad day,” authority solicitor Tom Breth said. “I know the ownership group did everything they could to keep the team here.”

The authority and the team tried to keep the team in Butler, but are disappointed they were not successful, he said.

“They were a value to the community, a value to this facility,” Breth said.

The authority and team will meet in the next couple weeks to resolve some outstanding issues, he said.

He said he believes an agreement could have been reached on a new contract, but the team was not able to continue operations.

Sassone said the team was accepted into the Great Lakes Summer Collegiate League, but it wasn’t able to join because of the lease offer from the authority.

“We were in the Great Lakes League until this lease proposal came out. We were accepted. All we had to do was set up a 501C3,” Sassone said.

He said the lease offered by the authority would have eliminated the $12,000 a year the team had been paying to rent the stadium, but allows the authority to keep all concessions revenue. The team received 45 percent of the concessions revenue under the previous contract, Sassone said.

“We got zero from the concessions,” Sassone said. The team used to receive $16,000 to $17,000 a year from concession sales, he said.

The authority sent the team a new contract proposal Aug. 23. In addition to the rent and concessions provisions, the proposal would have allowed the team to keep all revenue from ticket sales, souvenir sales, team sponsorships and advertisements. The authority would keep revenue from signage, non-team souvenir sales, naming rights and parking.

The proposal also says the authority would waive claims to payments it said the team hasn’t made if it pays about $15,000 in outstanding sales tax obligations owed from when the team operated the concessions in 2015, 2016 and 2017.

The team replied in writing the next day saying the ownership group reached an internal decision to suspend all future operations and won’t play at the stadium in 2019.

“It’s a sad state of affairs. It was an unacceptable lease proposal,” Sassone said. He claims that the authority breached the previous contract by not paying the team money from concession sales, but the team hasn’t paid the authority the $1 tax assessed on each ticket and revenue from leasing the signs on the outfield fence. He said he believes the dispute will be settled through litigation.

“We carried this stadium for 10 years,” Sassone said.

The team was looking to join the Great Lakes League because of the travel costs associated with remaining in the Prospect League, which the team has been in for its entire 10-year history.

Most of the Prospect League teams that were located close to Butler have left the league, and the team would have to travel farther west to play next summer. The Great Lakes League has teams in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Ontario, Canada,

Joining the Great Lakes League wouldn’t have saved the team any money because playing away games would have required a lot of travel and overnight stays, but the team wants only to break even financially, Sassone said.

Annual expenses in the Prospect League included $20,000 for bus transportation, $15,000 for hotel stays and thousands more for T-shirts, advertising and programs, he said.