A year and a half of debate over filtering pornography out of San Jose public library computers came to a head late Tuesday when the City Council rejected spending money on the technology.

After a lively debate that lasted hours, the council voted 7-3 to approve a proposal by the vice mayor and two councilmen that would remind computer users of existing policies to be courteous to others. Mayor Chuck Reed and council members Pete Constant, who led the push for the filters, and Pierluigi Oliverio were opposed, favoring filters in children’s areas.

“There are a lot of different ways to protect our children,” said Councilman Sam Liccardo who sponsored the approved proposal along with Vice Mayor Judy Chirco and Councilman Ash Kalra. The proposal argued the city should first find more money to expand library hours, school crossing guards and sex-crime detectives. Liccardo compared filtering to “fighting a global naval strategy by deploying all our ships to Lake Tahoe.”

At Tuesday’s meeting, dozens of residents lined up to speak, with advocates arguing filters will protect kids from easy access to porn in the libraries. Debbie Mendez said that on a visit to her local branch library last summer, a man seated next to her and her son and daughter was viewing pornography, and the librarian said there was not much she could do about it.

“I was blown away,” Mendez said.

Critics argued filtering technology still is too costly and too crude to avoid blocking legitimate research, as it was when the council rejected filters as ineffective in 1997. They claim the problem is being exaggerated.

“The fear is not based on fact,” said Tina Morrill. “We can use this money to keep our library hours longer.”

Constant, who suggested porn filters in October 2007 after news surfaced that men were viewing sexually explicit images on city library computers, proposed along with Reed that the city adopt a policy similar to Santa Clara County libraries.

Under Constant’s proposal, library computer users would have been told when they log in to be mindful that children may be present and to act responsibly. The city would have installed technology to filter Internet content on computers in children’s areas at city branch libraries. Pending additional funding, the technology would have been installed on other computers in branch libraries, with users having the option to disengage it. The city also would have discussed computer policy with San Jose State University for the jointly run Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. main library downtown.

The head librarian said it would cost $90,000 to install filters in children’s areas, although filtering advocates offered to raise $40,000 toward startup costs and Constant said ongoing annual cost would be about $5,000.

Contact John Woolfolk at jwoolfolk@mercurynews.com or (408) 975-9346.