Taxpayers cannot escape paying for the Washington pro football team’s summer training camp, a reluctant Richmond City Council has decided.

By a 6-3 margin, City Council members gave the green light Monday to the administration’s plan to refinance $8.6 million to cover the remaining debt on the Leigh Street training camp complex that also includes medical offices of the Bon Secours Health System.

The plan allows City Hall to borrow $8.5 million to pay off a short-term loan that comes due Sept. 1, along with an additional $100,000 to cover the cost of issuing 15-year bonds.

The cost to taxpayers: $750,000 a year, or $11.25 million in principal and interest, according to the request from Mayor Levar M. Stoney’s administration.

That’s a big difference from a deal that was sold to City Council in 2012 when then-Mayor Dwight C. Jones promoted the idea for a training camp, which opened in 2013. At that time, the council was told there was no risk to borrow $10 million from funds for school maintenance and the jail because the training camp would be paid off in five years.

But the revenue from the camp, located behind the Science Museum of Virginia, and other elements has fallen far short of the advance projections. While Bon Secours paid for naming rights at the camp, the Richmond Economic Development Authority spent much of the money developing a park and completing the building’s second floor that has remained largely vacant.

Council members appeared poised to postpone a vote for 60 days in order to have more time to review the new borrowing plan.

But the prospect for delay ended when Lenora Reid, the city’s chief financial officer, disclosed a problem not mentioned previously when she and other officials discussed the plan for the bond issue with a City Council committee during three meetings since December.

If the council failed to approve the bond sale, Ms. Reid said that Mayor Stoney would have to recognize the debt and include its repayment in the city’s 2018-19 budget plan he is to present to City Council next Tuesday, March 6.

“We don’t have $8.6 million of operating funds” to devote to covering the debt, Ms. Reid said Monday night, meaning a postponement would require the city’s budget staff to make unplanned spending adjustments.

While the city could have paid off the debt from savings to avoid $2.6 million in interest, Ms. Reid did not suggest that approach and no one on the council offered that idea.

“This is a rock and a hard place,” City Council President Chris A. Hilbert, 3rd District, said. “This is a distasteful decision. We’re going to have to make the best of our ugly options.”

Mr. Hilbert also noted that a provision of the City Charter would bar the council from removing or reducing the debt if it were included in the mayor’s proposed budget.

Council member Kristen N. Larson, 4th District, who initially wanted to delay a decision, ended up voting to approve the borrowing plan.

“I will not neglect my fiscal responsibility,” she said. “We have already committed to this debt.”

That didn’t faze Councilman Parker C. Agelasto, 5th District, who has been the leading voice on the council for dismantling the deal now in place between the NFL team and the city’s development arm, the EDA, which owns and manages the building.

Mr. Agelasto advocated for delay, noting that the council never had an opportunity to review or vote on the original deal signed by the team, Mayor Jones and the EDA.

The deal, which expires in December 2020, gives the Washington team a veto over sponsorships that were to provide revenue and requires the EDA to pay the team $500,000 a year in cash or city services in exchange for the team locating the camp in the city. The EDA has provided $2.4 million to the team in cash and services since 2013.

“The deal was rushed. The solution should not be rushed as well,” Mr. Agelasto said. “We need to take control over this problem project. We cannot just take over the bad debt. We have to take over the whole deal to get this resolved.”

Still, Mr. Agelasto mustered only the votes of council members Kim B. Gray, 2nd District, and Reva M. Trammell, 8th District, on the final vote.

Most agreed with council Vice President Cynthia I. Newbille, 7th District, that “this $8.6 million is a current liability” that needed to be dealt with.

Mr. Agelasto has introduced a resolution that seeks to put the council on record in calling on Mayor Stoney and the EDA to negotiate better terms with the team by the July 1 deadline or allow the team to leave when the current agreement expires in 2020.

In recent months, Mayor Stoney promised to gain better terms, but has yet to begin talks. The council will not be involved in these negotiations.

Other council members who voted to approve the city’s refinancing plan included Andreas Addison, 1st District; Ellen F. Robertson, 6th District; and Michael J. Jones, 9th District.

Despite the vote, the council is asking City Auditor Lou Lassiter to audit the training camp. Mr. Hilbert, Mr. Agelasto, and Ms. Gray have signed a request from Ms. Larson to make that happen.