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Instead, the council, by a 5-3 vote, opted to pay for the new library -- now estimated to cost $130 million -- with hotel room tax money as originally proposed about a year ago.

The $312 million the city expects to get over 25 years as its share of a multibillion-dollar settlement of a national tobacco lawsuit would be used as backup if the tax revenue is insufficient.

Golding, who has championed a new downtown library since she was first elected mayor in 1992, grinned after the vote and said she would have been happy no matter what plan the council approved as long it was yes for the library.

"We can get on with it and be the first council in 30 years to make this decision," Golding said.

The next step is for the council to pick a site.

Golding had set a March 1 deadline for the Library Commission to make a recommendation and bring it to the council for a vote. But she said yesterday that it will probably be mid-March before the council is able to consider the matter.

Supporting the hotel tax library plan with Golding were council members Byron Wear, Harry Mathis, Christine Kehoe and Judy McCarty. Wear, Mathis and Kehoe backed Golding's preferred plan using tobacco settlement money, but McCarty would not.

McCarty said the city in pushing for voter approval of a November initiative to build a new downtown ballpark for the Padres had promised that the city would use hotel tax money to pay for a new library as well.

Some of the hotel tax money -- known formally as the transient occupancy tax -- has been earmarked to underwrite the city's share of the costs of the ballpark and associated redevelopment.

Voting against any library financing plan were council members Barbara Warden, Juan Vargas and Valerie Stallings.

Stallings said the library was too expensive.

Vargas wanted all the tobacco money to go toward anti-smoking measures.

Warden said it was wrong to approve a library financing plan until the city learns if it is facing a potential budget shortfall for next year, until details are in place for ballpark construction and until voters decide in a March 2 special election whether to build and expand branch libraries under Proposition L.

Proposition L would raise the sales tax countywide by a quarter-cent for five years.

Golding so far has opposed the ballot measure but has said she could support it if the council approved a financing plan for a new main library. She declined to say yesterday if she would now endorse it. She said she would announce her decision today after speaking with McCarty -- an ardent supporter of Proposition L.

McCarty said she worried that the debate over the main library may have so confused voters that some might vote against Proposition L out of frustration.

"Voters need to know a vote for Proposition L is not a vote for the downtown library," McCarty said.

Golding said that by adopting a firm financing plan for the downtown library yesterday the council has eliminated much of that confusion.

The mayor lost a critical vote on using tobacco money to outright pay for the library with the absence of Councilman George Stevens.

Stevens was unable to attend yesterday's session because his wife was ill, according to his staff. Staff members declined to release details of her illness.

Golding said Stevens told her yesterday that he would have voted to use the tobacco money to pay for the library.

Anti-tobacco groups, which wanted none of the settlement money used on a new library, expressed muted pleasure with the outcome.

"There is some optimism on our part that we can sit down and negotiate better uses of these tobacco funds," said Janie Davis, president of the American Lung Association of San Diego and Imperial Counties.

The anti-tobacco groups asked the council to spend all the tobacco money on a variety of anti-smoking measures and before- and after-school programs, as well as to buy and expand parks and open space. They urged the city to form an advisory group to work out the details.

The council action yesterday "does give us an opportunity to sit with the policy-makers," Davis said.

Under the plan approved yesterday, the City Council would decide each year how to spend tobacco settlement money after determining if any is needed to cover annual library bond payments should hotel tax money fall short.

Annual tobacco money payments could start as soon as June and average between $10 million and $13 million over the next 25 years, the city estimates. The amount of the payments could decline after 25 years if cigarette sales drop.

Of the $130 million in construction costs for the library, Golding said the city would have to pay $100 million. She said $15 million would come from the Centre City Development Corp. -- the city's downtown redevelopment agency -- with $15 million raised privately.

The mayor has estimated that annual payments on bonds sold to build the library would be about $9.7 million.

The hotel room tax, which would be the primary source of library money, raised $84 million the last fiscal year.

About $2.2 million of that money went to a fund for the new main library. The rest went to the city's general fund, the convention center expansion, the San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau, maintenance of tourist-related facilities and more police officers.

Also benefiting were Balboa Park and Mission Bay Park, arts programs and museums, a reserve fund for a trolley extension and a reserve fund for the San Diego Chargers football team ticket guarantee. In all, about 200 civic organizations receive money from this tax each year.

The 10.5 percent tax on hotel rooms has become a major cash cow. Since it was first instituted in San Diego in 1964, the revenue has risen steadily. So far this year, it's up by slightly more than 8 percent, City Manager Michael Uberuaga said. He said the income is sufficient to cover all pending and planned city projects.

More than 40 people testified for and against using the tobacco money for the library in nearly three hours of public discussion and council debate.

Several business leaders said a new library was needed to help them recruit skilled workers and help the city attract new firms.  "I'm embarrassed by the deplorable condition of the main library," said Craig Irving, chairman of the San Diego Downtown

Business Partnership representing downtown businesses.

But Kensington resident Charles Powers said the tobacco money should be used to help him and other smokers quit.

"That's our money, take care of us," Powers said. "There are thousands and thousands of smokers in San Diego County who need help to quit smoking so they don't die."