Butler is set to be home to a baseball team for at least into the next decade.

The city Parks, Recreation Grounds and Facilities Authority on Wednesday approved a 10-year lease with the Butler BlueSox.

If the majority ownership of the club approves the proposal, it will guarantee the club will continue to play its home games at Kelly Automotive Park through the 2024 season.

“This is good for the authority, the BlueSox, and the city of Butler,” said authority chairman Ed Codi.

The agreement approved by the authority is a slightly modified version of the proposal made by the majority ownership group.

The authority contacted William “Wink” Robinson, who is out of state, during an executive session of the meeting to clarify a few details.

Robinson is one of five owners in Perfect Game LLC, and is the team representative in the Prospect League board of directors.

Owners Roger Snodgrass and Gordon Marburger were at the authority meeting. Both expressed good faith that the majority group would approve the modified agreement.

“I’m tremendously happy this got done so quickly,” Snodgrass said. “It’s a fair deal. And the important thing is we’ll be here for the next 10 years.”

The 10-year lease will have the club pay the authority $350 per game for the first two years. That will increase to $400 by the end of the deal.

The BlueSox have been paying about $300 per game this year. The team is scheduled to play 30 games at the park this summer.

The agreement also marks a change in concessions. The authority currently gets 60 percent of concession sales during BlueSox games, with the club taking 40 percent. That figure will drop to 55 percent for the authority with the new agreement.

The BlueSox majority ownership group also will be able to collect a commission on selling advertising at the park, specifically through outfield banners.

The club will get a 45 percent commission on any banners it sells, with the authority receiving 55 percent.

The authority will keep 100 percent of the revenue from banners it sells.

Codi said he was thrilled to get the agreement done.

“We’re as happy as we could possibly be,” he said. “Now we can focus on our marketing.”

The authority is looking to market the park for other events outside of baseball.

Last month it fired its marketing firm Quest Fore of Pittsburgh, effective the end of this year. Instead, the authority will likely rely on the Alliance for Nonprofit Resources to market the club.

The nonprofit group is a sister organization to the Nonprofit Development Corporation of Butler.

The alliance manages the finances for the authority, while the nonprofit corporation manages the field. Both agencies are part of the Center for Community Resources. All three agencies are led by the same personnel.

The authority board wants to increase its marketing to help pay off its more than $243,000 of debt.

While the board’s debt is the same as last month, it has caught up with its mortgage payments to Dollar Bank, which leads a group of five banks holding the mortgage on the ballpark. The authority was more than $27,000 behind on those payments last month. It now owes $9,000 for July to the bank.

While the mortgage was stabilized, the authority added additional debt to the Nonprofit Development Corporation, which manages the ballpark. It also has a $9,000 invoice from Quest Fore for its share in the naming rights agreement with Kelly Automotive Park.

The meeting was at 6 p.m. Wednesday as opposed to the regular 1 p.m. meetings on the second Friday of each month.

The late meeting was held at the request of Mayor Tom Donaldson, which was made earlier this year. Donaldson asked all city authorities to hold their meetings at night to make them more open to the working public.

At the meeting, board member Jeff Smith, who was appointed by city council in April, made a motion to have each of the meetings held in the evenings, citing a good turnout at the meeting.

“The public has a right to know this stuff,” Smith said.

Other board members cited other obligations and family as reasons to keep the majority of meetings during the day, while having quarterly meetings in the evening through the year.

No one seconded Smith’s motion.