The Galveston County Daily News

FRIENDSWOOD — Friendswood City Council members, in a split vote Monday, agreed to terminate a contract to buy 60 acres of Alvin land for ballparks.

Four city council members — Mike Barker, Jim Hill, Bill Holbert and Andy Rivera — voted to cancel the contract without paying any of the penalties associated with terminating the contract inked last year. According to the contract, the city is supposed to pay $180,000 plus the cost of the improvements landowner David Wight made to the property. The city has estimated those penalties could top $1 million.

By refusing to pay the penalties laid out in the contract, the city could be sued by Wight, Mayor David Smith said.

Smith voted against canceling the contract, saying council members should discuss the potentially litigious issue behind closed doors before voting in public.

Two council members — Leslie Reid and Jim Barr — were absent.

Barker, a longtime acquaintance of Wight’s, put the item on the agenda.

The city always was trying to do the right thing by acquiring land to build ballparks to alleviate the overcrowding at the city’s existing sports fields, Barker said.

“We thought it was proper and right, and we thought it was in the best interest of most of the citizens of Friendswood,” Barker said. “This thing has become quite the political football and, as a result of the ruling we had out of Austin, I think we need to move on.”

The city’s lawyers said the purchase was legal, and Friendswood contracted to buy the land for $2.6 million in September 2008. Five residents fought the city’s plans to issue $11 million in certificates of obligation — debt taken on without voter approval — in part to buy the land. Judge Scott Jenkins of the 53rd District Court in Travis County ruled in July in favor of the residents.

The city’s action comes days after the city’s last-ditch attempt to salvage the deal by asking Alvin if it could annex the land off FM 528. By annexing the land, Friendswood could avoid legal questions about whether Jenkins prohibited the city from buying land outside its corporate limits. Alvin declined.

Friendswood will continue to look for land for ballparks, Rivera said.