San Francisco 49ers superfan, Dorothy Rosa, photographed outside of Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., Friday, Dec. 16, 2016. Rosa, 85, a Santa Clara resident who has been a 49ers fan for 30 years, is very disappointed with how things are going with the team lately -- both on the field and in City Hall. (Patrick Tehan/Bay Area News Group)

From left: Dorothy Rosa, Joe Montana, Peggy Parkin and Del Fontana. (Photo courtesy of Dorothy Rosa)

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SANTA CLARA — Two years ago, San Francisco 49ers CEO Jed York and Santa Clara Mayor Jamie Matthews ceremonially cut the red tape at Levi’s Stadium amid cheers, a confetti shower and a future full of hope after two winning seasons.

These days, city and 49ers officials exchange testy letters. Youth soccer families accuse York of reneging on promised new fields. A new mayor, bolstered by the re-election of her City Council allies, claims the team is cheating Santa Clara and threatens to seize control of Levi’s. And on the gridiron, the 49ers are mired in such historic futility that seats sit empty as planes fly banners blasting York’s stewardship of the franchise.

For Silicon Valley’s 49ers Faithful, the team’s Levi’s face plant has been stunning. Dorothy Rosa, an 85-year-old retired bookkeeper and Niners fan, attended the Levi’s grand opening and recalled it as “magical.” She struggles to grasp how things went so wrong so fast.

“I never in a million years expected what is happening now,” Rosa said. “I absolutely feel let down. We get a beautiful gift, and when you open it up, there’s nothing but paper inside… I am so disappointed with the way things have gone on the field and at City Hall.”

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Jed York and ‘Hold me accountable’: How about some refunds for 49ers PSL holders? Feuding between pro sports teams and their host cities and fans is hardly uncommon — just look up the road at Oakland and its squabbles with the Athletics and Raiders. But typically, that fight comes when the team wants a new home, not right after it gets one.

“Relatively few disputes happen in the first five years,” said Roger Noll, a Stanford sports economist. “It usually bites at the 15-year mark when the stadium loses its sheen and it’s no longer on the forefront because other new stadiums come along.”

The troubles are all the more puzzling because Levi’s Stadium has been a financial success. Santa Clara received a $5.5 million boost to its general fund from non-NFL events in the first two years of operation and hotel tax collections went up 18 percent.

“Levi’s Stadium’s economic impact on the valley goes far beyond the football and concert seasons,” said Matthew Mahood, president and CEO of the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce. “The ripple effect it has on supporting industries, from services and security to food and lodging is unmistakable.”

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The team’s rift with City Hall had its roots in the fate of a soccer park in the shadow of the $1.3 billion stadium. With a stadium financing plan in hand, York in January 2012 wrote a letter to the Santa Clara Youth Soccer League, which plays on the fields next to the stadium and feared stadium traffic would disrupt their games.

“To demonstrate our commitment to our community’s young soccer players and their families we are proposing that the 49ers underwrite several regulation-sized additional soccer fields in Santa Clara,” York wrote.

York went on to say that the 49ers were working with the Santa Clara Unified School District to find “three new soccer fields” at school campuses for the youth players to use when the stadium has games.

A lot of residents — including current Mayor Lisa Gillmor, a soccer mom and former supporter of Levi’s Stadium — read York’s letter as a pledge to pay for new soccer fields elsewhere in the city.

“They were going to build and maintain these fields for the kids so that nobody would be displaced,” Gillmor said. “They completely reneged on this offer. That was the beginning of the downfall of the trust of the 49ers in Santa Clara.”

Team leaders said it was a misunderstanding, and that York’s proposal was merely to upgrade existing school fields, an idea killed by unrelated litigation between the school district and the city.

“They felt as though the letter said one thing, our team felt as though the letter said another,” said 49ers President Al Guido. “That was the start of our problems.”

Things went downhill from there. When Levi’s hosted its first NFL season and the team wanted to use the soccer park’s 140 parking stalls on game days, the city rejected York’s offer to “pre-pay” $15 million in rent to lease the land and $3 million to upgrade school fields.

“We just didn’t trust them at that point,” Gillmor said. “There is no such thing as a free lunch.”

Matthews — the mayor who had been among the biggest champions of the Levi’s project — quit unexpectedly the day after the stadium successfully hosted Super Bowl 50 back in February. The council appointed Gillmor to replace him, spurring a political shift amplified last month when several team-friendly candidates lost bids to unseat Gillmor’s allies.

Over the past year, a dispute has erupted over the team’s rent for Levi’s Stadium, which sits on city-owned land. The team, which was paying $24.5 million a year, asked to pay $20.25 million, a one-time “rent reset” allowed under its 40-year lease and recommended by city consultants. Gillmor publicly rallied against it — Guido said the team was “blindsided” by that — and the matter is in arbitration.

Gillmor has since claimed public money was spent on the stadium in violation of the voter-approved measure that authorized the stadium’s construction in 2010. She says city employees contend they worked on stadium events without reimbursement.

Gillmor has ordered a $200,000 audit of stadium finances. After accusing the team of refusing to cooperate with document requests, she threatened to take over the stadium, prompting hundreds of panicked workers to flood a council meeting fearing they’d lose their jobs.

The 49ers argue they cannot publicly release financial details for non-NFL events or security plans, but say they have invited auditors to review the documents.

George Foster, a Stanford Graduate School of Business professor who specializes in negotiation dynamics in sports media and entertainment, said that’s not unreasonable — no other sports venue releases that information. If other performers knew what concessions Beyonce received, for example, then “every single artist that comes into Levi’s will have that as a standing demand.”

There are 37 more years on the 49ers’ Santa Clara stadium lease, but no signs of a thaw between the team and City Hall.

“I think it’s going to take the willingness of the mayor to sit down and talk through these things,” Guido said. “She’s made no choice to try to meet with us or hear our side.”

Gillmor shoots back that the team needs to “rebuild trust in the community — which is lacking.” That’s something longtime fan Rosa can relate to.

“I had a lot of faith in Jed,” Rosa said, “and the way it’s going — my faith is gone.”