City scrambles to save custodian, librarian jobs

The 11-2 vote came after a day of intense lobbying by councilors and labor leaders to save jobs, ducking into offices and whispering in small groups, hammering out the final details with city budget officials and Mayor Thomas M. Menino. But the spending plan will still require 250 layoffs and shutter four branch libraries by next spring.

When the moment for the roll call finally came, hundreds of union members in Boston for a convention surrounded City Hall. The sea of protesters made such a ruckus that their chants — “Stop the cuts!’’ — echoed in the fifth-floor council chamber.

Since the mayor first presented a budget in April, pressure and horse-trading helped avert 81 layoffs, but not all the cuts could be avoided.

“Challenges force us to make very, very difficult decisions,’’ said Councilor Mark Ciommo, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.

The layoffs will include 26 school custodians, down originally from 83. The city’s 113-year-old printing plant also closed its doors yesterday, a move that will eliminate roughly 11 jobs. The library will still face 64 layoffs, down from 74. The bulk of those positions belong to library assistants and other workers whose leader, Jennifer Springer, sat down with Menino yesterday afternoon.

“What I got was a commitment from the mayor to sit down and see what can be done to save even more jobs at the Boston Public Library,’’ said Springer, a coordinator for American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Council 93.

But the budget woes at the library took another hit yesterday when Governor Deval Patrick signed a punitive amendment to the state budget that would strip the Boston Public Library of its remaining $2.4 million in state funding, if administrators go ahead with branch closures. State lawmakers have already slashed $6.5 million from the Boston Public Library in the last two years, a major reason the system faces a shortfall.

State lawmakers representing Boston pushed the amendment through the Legislature in an effort to strong-arm Menino into keeping all branches open. The measure did not, however, provide any additional money to pay the bills. “It’s the right thing to do,’’ Patrick said.

The governor sought to soften the blow by proposing prorating the cut, so if the city kept the branches open until spring, it would lose only a portion of the money. That did not seem to appease the Menino administration.

“We are going to continue with our plan,’’ said Dot Joyce, a spokeswoman for the mayor. “Fewer resources will obviously mean a reduction in services.’’

The budget the mayor presented in April significantly underestimated the number of layoffs that would be required, largely in the schools, because of attrition and other fluctuations in the payroll. The original budget would have really meant roughly 331 layoffs, not the 250 the city estimated in April. That means the budget which takes effect today will still require 250 pink slips.

In the City Council yesterday, one strident voice of descent came from Councilor Charles C. Yancey, who said the mayor boosted his office by one full-time employee by making a new $145,000-a-year job for his former chief of staff, Judith A. Kurland, whose title is now chief of programming and partnerships. The mayor’s office said yesterday that the appropriation for its office did not increase, and that Kurland’s job was created when two other positions were eliminated.

But Yancey lamented the symbolism of adding a job in the mayor’s office at a time when the budget will pull staff out of eight community centers, including one in a violence-plagued Dorchester neighborhood.

“If we are talking about shared sacrifice, why are we abandoning people around the Marshall Community Center,’’ Yancey asked his colleagues.

Michael Levenson of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Andrew Ryan can be reached at aryan@globe.com.