The Rhythm and Roots Festival will return to Ninigret Park, in Charlestown, on Labor Day weekend, festival organizers announced Monday.

The festival, which brings roughly 10,000 people to Ninigret Park over three days annually, was in danger of having to move because organizers and the town couldn’t agree on a formula under which the festival would pay the town for the use of the park.

All the festivals that use Ninigret Park are charged a flat fee of $2,500 a day by the town. Last year, members of the town’s Parks and Recreation Commission and Town Council proposed that the structure be changed so that the festival, as well as the Big Apple Circus, the Charlestown Seafood Festival and the Ocean State Reggae Festival, pay a percentage of their gross ticket receipts and open their books to be audited by the town.

Festival co-organizer Chuck Wentworth said at the time that that would be a deal-breaker.

“It just doesn’t work for me in terms of ticket prices and other things I have to deal with,” he said in July. “That and the fact of being audited by members of the Town Council. … You really don’t have a right to look at our books. And if there is a rate increase, we’d like to see something in return.”

Monday’s statement says that the Rhythm and Roots Festival, along with the other event organizers, have agreed to a $500 fee increase for 2009 (except for the reggae festival, which is only a two-day festival and will pay an extra $332), and will begin negotiating with the town on a three-year contract.

Festival producers had begun to explore other sites to hold the annual festival, which annually has drawn approximately 10,000 patrons to Charlestown each Labor Day weekend for the past 10 years.

Wentworth credited the results of November’s election, in which five new members were elected to the Town Council, with a change in atmosphere that resulted in the deal. “It’s a complete new slate of people in there,” Wentworth said. He added that “giving some assistance” to festival producers was “a big part of their agenda” while running for office.

“They realize it’s a tough year for everybody, so they didn’t want to put any unnecessary burden on us.”

Dan Alves, chairman of the Parks and Recreation Commission, said yesterday that he couldn’t say how important the new composition of the council was, but said negotiations went smoothly: “This council more or less met with us and gave us some guidelines they would like to see met. … I think [the organizers] all knew this was done in good faith, and that the council was behind us, and that made the difference.”

The producers of the festivals will meet with the Parks and Recreation Department and Town Council this summer to negotiate a three-year contract “so that we can get what we feel the park is actually worth,” Alves said.

For now, though, everything is in place, and both sides are happy.

“Definitely. We never wanted to leave,” Wentworth said.

“It certainly is great to have them back,” Alves said. “We wouldn’t want to lose any one of them. They are what Charlestown is in the summertime, and we want them there.”

rmassimo@projo.com