After four hours of tense debate and a series of failed amendments, the Boston City Council overwhelmingly approved a mayoral home rule petition that seeks to shift more of the city’s tax burden onto businesses to provide relief to homeowners.

Despite the hours-long push to make substantial changes to the mayor’s home rule petition, the Council ultimately passed it, 12-1, with virtually no changes, other than a slight amendment recommended ahead of Wednesday’s meeting.

“We spent four hours arguing this out … and we’re almost back where we started,” Councilor Liz Breadon said in exasperation prior to the final vote.

The Council approval advances a third effort by the mayor’s office to push through the controversial legislation, which died twice last year amid intense opposition on Beacon Hill.

The lone change made by the Council centered on the city’s back-up plan to ask for the authority to issue rebates to homeowners, should the Legislature not approve the requested retroactive change in property tax rates by March 1. The Council voted to set rates last December.

The amended language would give the Council oversight of any rebates issued by the city, including by setting and voting on the amounts. The Wu administration has said rebates, which are new to this proposal, would be paid through budgetary surplus funds and that homeowners who received this year’s residential exemption would be eligible.

The amendment also prohibits the issuance of rebate payments, should the requested appropriation negatively impact budgetary funds the city has to draw from “to help manage current or future risks,” as stated in a committee report filed by Councilor Gabriela Coletta Zapata on Monday.

Coletta Zapata had recommended the amended language as part of her committee report, and battled throughout the day’s meeting with the three councilors who put forward their own amendments.

The councilors who put forward amendments, Ed Flynn, Julia Mejia and Erin Murphy, expressed exasperation that their proposed changes weren’t given serious consideration.

Flynn’s two amendments that sought to provide tax exemptions for “essential” city employees and residents aged 55 and older who have owned their home for at least 20 years, for example, resulted in a testy exchange between him and Coletta Zapata, after she declared both changes would potentially be illegal.

Coletta Zapata argued that the first exemption could be seen as favoring one type of property owners over others while the city is not allowed to classify different types of property on the second.

“I think the merits of it are good,” Coletta Zapata said. “It’s just that we have the potential of opening ourselves up to a number of legal challenges.”

Flynn said Coletta Zapata’s input effectively killed any chance of his amendment passing, while Mejia said her comments made her “question whether my amendment was going to die” as well.

“I just believe that after my presentation, after Councilor Coletta’s presentation, that the well has been poisoned,” Flynn said. “Everyone thinks that this is an illegal amendment that can’t pass muster at the State House before we can even bring it to the floor.”

Coletta Zapata said her remarks were meant to “inform” her colleagues’ decision.

Flynn and other councilors shared after a 20-minute recess that the Council’s attorney could not determine the legality of the amendments.

Both ultimately failed in separate votes.

Coletta Zapata later tangled with Mejia and Murphy as well when their amendments were put forward. Mejia sought an increase in the small business exemption proposed in the mayor’s home rule petition, from $30,000 to $50,000. Murphy proposed an increase in the residential exemption, from 35% to 40%.

Both amendments failed.

After four hours of debate and four failed amendments, the Council finally took up the mayor’s legislation.

Councilor Ed Flynn, who was the lone “no” vote for a prior version that passed the Council last fall, was again the only councilor to vote against the plan.

He said the city should look to cut spending, pointing to a $4.6 billion budget that grew by 8% this fiscal year, instead of “raising everyone’s property taxes.”

“We can’t keep spending non-stop on every single program,” Flynn said. “At some point, the money runs out.”

Other criticism has revolved around how the proposal would further burden a struggling commercial sector dealing with changing post-pandemic work patterns that have led to empty office space and falling property values.

That dynamic, the mayor has said, is pushing more of the city’s tax burden onto residents, by way of a budgetary structure that derives more than 70% of its revenue from property taxes.

Some councilors have also drawn attention of late to the city’s varying assessment process — where home values rose more in working-class neighborhoods than wealthier areas this year — as a factor leading to hefty property tax hikes.

Several councilors spoke to what they saw as urgency to advance the twice-failed controversial legislation, however, in light of property tax hikes that homeowners reported being “shocked” by last month.

The average single-family homeowner saw a 21% increase in their third-quarter tax bills in January, and some senior homeowners reported increases north of 40%.

“We’ve been debating this for over a year now,” Councilor Benjamin Weber said. “I think everyone knows how serious this is, and how our constituents, our residents need help, and if we don’t get this up soon, we’ll be denying them the help they should have gotten in January.”

If approved at the state level — where the petition has been twice passed by the House of Representatives but died both times in the Senate — residential tax rates would be lowered from $11.58 to $11.03 per $1,000 of value, and commercial tax rates would be increased from $25.96 to $26.92 per $1,000 of value.

The change in tax rates would be based on a 181.5% shift in the city’s tax burden from the residential to commercial sector. Current rates are based on the state’s 175% limit. The max shift would decrease to 180% and 178% in the final two years.

“I’m grateful to the City Council for standing with residents and once again advancing much-needed tax relief for homeowners and renters in every neighborhood,” Mayor Wu said in a statement. “I continue to urge state legislators to move forward our balanced, compromise tax proposal that protects our residents and helps families afford to stay in their homes.”