With just a few days until the Miami City Commission is to vote on the Marlins ballpark agreements, things got ugly today.

After Miami City Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones released on Friday a list of demands to protect her district before she’d support the ballpark, Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Alvarez held a press conference Monday afternoon decrying the politics that have consumed the ballpark issue since Feb. 13. That’s when the Miami City Commission deadlocked 2-2 in votes on the stadium, after Commissioner Marc Sarnoff demanded more for the city from the deal. The votes nearly killed the deal, but the meeting was continued until this month.

“Sincere and earnest work and meticulous and deliberate negotiations have been hijacked,” Alvarez wrote in a memo to county commissioners. “The best of intentions have morphed into unreasonable demands that have nothing to do with baseball. Political grandstanding, the dissemination of half-truths and intellectually dishonest assumptions are rampant.”

He continued: “It is wrong to exploit the public’s keen interest in baseball in this way. The politicking on the stadium, frankly, has become a distraction.”

Sounds a little like grandstanding about grandstanding, no?

Alvarez, who has been supportive of the ballpark, called for County Manager George Burgess to suspend ballpark discussions and the county commission to delay its March 9 meeting to vote on the ballpark issue until the city commission has voted on the ballpark agreements and all related issues. That includes a waiver of the competitive bidding requirements to allow the stadium contractor to also do the adjacent street and sewer work. The city commission is to consider the ballpark on Friday, but not the bid waiver.

In response, County Commission Chairman Dennis Moss, too, called for a delay of the county’s meeting. He’ll consider the delay at Tuesday’s county commission meeting.

Meanwhile, Spence-Jones’ office sent out a release saying she’d be hosting a community forum on the ballpark issue Monday night along with a group called Clergy for Change at 93rd Street Community Baptist Church. The Marlins had no comment Monday afternoon, but Marlins President David Samson was scheduled to attend the community forum.

Sarnoff? He met with the media in front of city hall just hours after Alvarez’s press conference. According to the AP’s account, Sarnoff said he thought a ballpark deal could be had, but that it needs to be reconsidered based on economic conditions.

“I think that we need to go back to the drawing board and take a look at this agreement in March 2009 eyes as opposed to February 2008 eyes,” Sarnoff said. “This is a different world economy than existed over a year ago.”

Over the weekend, Bill Madden speculated in a column in the New York Daily News that both the Marlins and Oakland A’s could be candidates for contraction with their ballparks off the table (A’s) and on the ropes (Marlins). In his column, Madden addresses Sarnoff’s demands for the city and county to receive naming rights and the profits if the Marlins are sold. He even invoked a former Marlins owner, who also couldn’t get a ballpark financed, when he wrote: “…and more and more it appears former Florida owner John Henry was right when he said there is nothing more impossible than south Florida politics.”

As of Monday afternoon, the Miami City Commission is still scheduled to meet Friday. That could change. The political thicket could get pricklier.