As mayor Kevin Faulconer's task force works on a stadium financing plan to keep the Chargers from leaving town, the San Diego City Council is fighting a court battle to hang on to $271 million in reimbursements for city obligations used to pay for downtown's Petco Park.

If they fail, as some legal observers expect they might, taxpayers here could be forced to make up the considerable ballpark debt, even as the city faces the prospect of coming up with yet more millions for a new professional football stadium.

The saga dates back to the 1998 origins of the downtown ballpark, when Republican then-mayor Susan Golding along with Union-Tribune publisher Helen Copley, Padres owner John Moores, and his sidekick Larry Lucchino, assured voters that the new Padres venue would come virtually tax-free for the average Joe.

"The financial components of the deal are these," then-U-T reporter Gerry Braun explained in a November 1998 story a week before the public voted on Proposition C, an advisory measure on the project.

"The city and its redevelopment arm, the Centre City Development Corp., will contribute $275 million to the project, largely through the issuance of bonds. The bonds will be paid off with hotel-room taxes and new property taxes created by the project." The latter cash was to be routed through the city-controlled redevelopment agency.

Because so-called general obligation bonds wouldn't be used to finance the deal, there was no requirement for two-thirds voter approval, and the measure, sold as largely a free lunch by its backers, passed with 59.5 percent of the vote.

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With Chargers deal hanging fire, city council privately votes to battle ballpark claw-back