Crowded into the Minneapolis mayor’s office, dozens of Minnesota Vikings fans surrounded Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak to sing “Skol, Vikings!” and offer him beer from an animal horn.

After two hours of debating public funding for professional sports, the city council voted 7-6 to support dedicating a series of local taxes to a new Vikings stadium at the site of the Metrodome.

The decision all but ensures construction of a $975 million stadium in downtown Minneapolis starting next spring, and it ends more than a year of negotiations with lawmakers over the most high-profile public expenditure in recent city history.

“I feel obviously incredibly happy to have this over,” said Rybak, who addressed a roomful of reporters and overjoyed Vikings fans after the vote. “This has been a bruising fight.”

Rybak, once a critic of public funding for professional sports stadiums, told the council before the vote that no issue can be taken in isolation.

The stadium legislation, he said, will provide needed tax relief for Minneapolis homeowners and long-sought funding to renovate the city’s Target Center while keeping the Vikings from relocating.

Those three guarantees made a difficult decision more than palatable, he said.

As Rybak walked into his office followed by a stream of news cameras, fans and critics, Laura Ross shouted, “The people want a vote!” from the hallway.

Ross, an unemployed litigation paralegal from Minneapolis, said she could hardly stomach the city’s priorities. A provision in the city charter bars public funding for professional sport facilities beyond $10 million without a public referendum, but state lawmakers this year effectively overruled that requirement with language in the stadium legislation.

“I am so mad,” she said. “How many millions of dollars are we spending, even over what the charter of the city of Minneapolis provides? … It makes us beholden to corporate interests. Zygi Wilf could have built this stadium himself.”

The stadium debate, a political lightning rod, drew council member Sandy Colvin Roy to tears before the vote.

“I had the word ‘courage’ said to me by supporters of this stadium legislation, and opponents of this stadium legislation,” she told the crowded council chamber. ” ‘Why don’t you get some courage?’ or ‘Thank you for your courage.’

“Whichever way you go, thousands of people will be mad at you.”

Colvin Roy said she would vote in favor of the stadium financing plan because it removes the burden of paying for upkeep and renovations to Target Center from property owners. That burden will instead be covered by four sales taxes and shared with the city’s tourists and visitors.

To pay for the city’s portion of the Vikings stadium, the plan extends the life on four existing sales taxes by decades:

— A 0.5 percent citywide general sales tax.

— A lodging tax on hotels of 50 rooms or more.

— A downtown restaurant tax.

— A downtown liquor tax.

Revenue from those sales taxes also will be used to pay off Minneapolis Convention Center debts within the next 10 years. Any excess money can be used for economic development projects, including renovations to the Target Center.

“This plan offers Minneapolis some financial stability. It’s not sexy,” Colvin Roy said. “I know it has not been a very easy task. It’s been a very difficult task.”

After struggling over how to structure the city’s pension system last year, “the next unfunded liability out there was what to do about the Target Center,” she said. “This plan gives us a sustained, locked-in source of revenue that (we) can control.”

Council member Cam Gordon said the plan mortgaged the city’s future, giving future city councils little to no leeway on how to spend sales tax money over the next 30 years.

“We don’t have to start paying (for the stadium) until 2021, after we’ve paid off the convention center debt,” Gordon said. “In 2021, there’s going to be $19 million that we won’t be able to use to create jobs. In 2022, it’s going to be over $22 million that we won’t be able to use for economic development.”

Said council member Elizabeth Glidden: “I’ve called it putting a 30-year straitjacket on Minneapolis sales taxes.”

Council member Lisa Goodman compared the investment in the Vikings stadium to the council’s decision years ago to put $40 million toward the eternally struggling Block E development in downtown Minneapolis. “How’d that go?” she said.

Friday’s vote was seen as the stadium’s last hurdle. The Legislature approved public funding for a new stadium, and Gov. Mark Dayton signed the bill into law May 14.

The 65,000-seat stadium will be built on the site of the Metrodome in time for the 2016 season. With the team chipping in $477 million, Minnesota will use taxes from new electronic charitable gambling games to add $348 million.

The extended Minneapolis taxes will pay an additional $150 million toward construction. The taxes also will contribute toward stadium operating and capital improve- ment, beginning at $6 million a year and escalating over time.

Frederick Melo can be reached at 651-228-2172. Follow him at twitter.com/FrederickMelo.