The City Council on Wednesday voted 12-1 in support of Mayor Thomas Menino’s $2.4 billion fiscal 2012 budget. City Councillor Charles Yancey, a frequent Menino administration critic, was the lone vote against the budget, which increased 2.9 percent over the fiscal 2011 spending plan.

Councillors expressed frustration with lack of federal funding and the weak economy’s effect on the budget, forcing city officials to cut back on programs and eliminate 14 full-time custodial positions in the school department. “We have tightened our own belt,” said City Councillor Maureen Feeney.

The budget includes funding for 9,000 summer jobs for youth, down from 10,000 jobs last year, but up from 7,400 jobs that were included in the original budget proposal Menino submitted earlier this year. City Councillor Felix Arroyo blamed Republicans in control of Congress for the decrease and urged the forty supporters who gathered in the council chamber to lobby their state lawmakers, who are still weighing how much to spend.

“We are suffering from an obscene amount of federal and state cuts,” Arroyo said, giving credit to Menino for pushing for more youth jobs funding. “We’re overwhelmed.”

State aid to the city has declined for four consecutive years, with Boston expected to take a $24.4 million hit in fiscal 2012, as the cost of providing health benefits to city employees and retirees has ballooned to $320 million.

“In 2011, in this fiscal climate, there is really no such thing as a good budget,” City Councillor Ayanna Pressley said.

“But this budget is as good as a bad budget can be,” Pressley said.

Pressley also thanked her colleagues for their support as her mother, “the fourteenth member of this council” who is in a hospital in “a fight for her life.”

The budget closes nine schools and merges eight schools into four in a bid to eliminate a quarter of the 5,600 vacant seats in the school system and a $60 million budget gap. Dorchester schools slated for closure include Fifield Elementary School, East Zone Early Learning Center and Middle School Academy. The Lee Academy Pilot School is merging with the elementary school it shares a building with, while Clap Elementary, originally on the closure list, is reopening in the fall as an “innovation school” with greater flexibility in staff and curriculum granted to parents and teachers.

City Councillor Tito Jackson, voting on his first budget, praised it for the $65 million in the capital plan for the Ferdinand Building in Dudley Square and upgrades to the Strand Theater. The Mason Pool, originally scheduled to close, will stay open, Jackson said, Monday through Saturday, “which we’ve never had before.”

Jackson added that he had concerns about the school closures. “But when it comes down to it, I think in my eyes, I know in my eyes that this a budget that I will be supporting and will continue to work with the administration to get more resources that are sorely needed in District 7,” Jackson said.

Citing the shooting of a four-year-old in the Franklin Field area on Monday night, Yancey pressed for a “significant” increase in street workers and youth workers to work with young people before they can commit a crime. “I think we have to move in a different direction” and invest in more youth workers and community centers, Yancey said.

Taking aim at Menino, Yancey said, “He’s taking the city in the wrong direction.”