OCEANSIDE - The City Council is scheduled tonight to consider setting aside $100,000 for consultants who can provide legal and economic analysis on the possibility of the San Diego Chargers building a football stadium in Oceanside.

"It would be foolish not to have specialists look at the pros and cons of any stadium proposal," Mayor Jim Wood said Tuesday. "You have to pay for that specialized advice and that is what consultants are for."

The council voted unanimously in January to enter into discussions with the NFL team about building a stadium on a 70-plus-acre, city-owned golf course near Oceanside Boulevard and Interstate 5.

The Chargers want to leave aging Qualcomm Stadium in Mission Valley within the next decade for a new state-of-the-art facility that could generate more money. The team has identified Chula Vista, National City and Oceanside as potential new homes.

Mark Fabiani, the Chargers' lead negotiator on the stadium issue, said Tuesday the team was pleased to hear that Oceanside planned to hire consultants.

"We hope the city hires the best people it can," Fabiani said. "Any arrangement has to be credible, ironclad and bulletproof, and the only way that happens is if there are good people on both sides."

City officials said Tuesday they plan to hire Barrett Sports Group, LLC, which is based in Manhattan Beach, and Paul Jacobs, an attorney from Denver, to help them negotiate with the team.

Jacobs said he and Dan Barrett have agreed to help Oceanside and they have worked together on past stadium deals, including two in San Diego.

Jacobs and Barrett have both worked on more than a dozen stadium deals for cities throughout the country, including San Diego's negotiations with the Chargers to end an unpopular ticket guarantee and the development of Petco Park for the San Diego Padres.

"Stadium development and lease negotiations are a very narrow speciality, and if you have done it before you know what the issues are," Jacobs said. "I hope to be helpful and would like to see this project get done."

Fabiani said the consultants are "very talented people who drive a tough bargain."

Oceanside officials said the consultants' experience will help the city.

"The Chargers are a very well-funded professional organization and it's important we have professionals negotiating for us," Councilman Rocky Chavez said Tuesday. "There will be considerable discussion and this could be a billion-dollar investment in the community --- $100,000 is not a lot compared to $1 billion."

Chavez and Wood said that while they both support hiring consultants, they have questions about how to pay for the assistance.

City staffers have proposed paying for the consultants with a portion of money it recently received from the state. Oceanside and other local cities pay a fee every time they book someone into a county jail, and the state government reimburses them for these costs.

City Manager Peter Weiss said Oceanside didn't expect to receive a reimbursement because the state has not any money to cities in years past for the fees. He said the city would put this money into a reserve fund if it wasn't set aside for the consultants.

Oceanside received about $700,000 from the state for the booking fees, and the City Council has approved spending about $520,000 on various supplies or projects such as a records system for the Police Department and a study of available community programs and services in northeast Oceanside.

Weiss said the city would not spend more than $50,000 each on Barrett and Jacobs. He said Oceanside would bring the consultants in when "real negotiations begin with the team."

Weiss and elected leaders said that while the city will pick up the tab for its negotiators, they said they want the team to pay for any traffic or environmental studies of the site.

Fabiani said the Chargers "are prepared to pay their fair share." He said the team is paying $200,000 for consultants in Chula Vista to study possible stadium sites and would pay for studies in Oceanside when necessary. But Fabiani and Oceanside officials said that if the team paid for the city's negotiators it would be a conflict of interest.

Team and city officials have met three times to discuss the team's building a stadium at the Center City Golf Course. The discussions have centered on how to get 60,000 fans to games at the site without interrupting nearby neighborhoods.

Oceanside residents who have opposed the team's coming to town have said a stadium will bring traffic congestion to local streets. Team and city officials have said they would do a deal only if it worked for both parties, and they have stressed that any proposal will go before voters for approval.

- Contact staff writer David Sterrett at (760) 901-4067 or dsterrett@nctimes.com.