"The Cleveland Browns want the city to give the team seven years of football stadium repair money -- $5.8 million -- right now.

The team contends the work is necessary to maintain a 12-year-old stadium battered by a sometimes harsh northern climate, and it has asked for an exception to a 30-year lease that calls for the city to set aside $850,000 a year for major repairs.

Under the complicated proposal, the Browns would get this year's $850,000 plus $5 million from the next six years of repair money drawn from the tax revenue collected countywide on alcohol and tobacco sales and administered by the city. In exchange, the city would not have to make its annual contributions from the tax money to a stadium repair fund for the next six years. "