Providence Firefighter Wayne Oliveira shouts through a bullhorn Monday in the picket line set up by firefighters and police protesting outside the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

The Providence Journal / Steve Szydlowski

PROVIDENCE — Monday’s closing day of the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ annual meeting had all the sound and fury that one might have expected from the end of a major event that had gone everywhere but according to plan.

It saw the largest and noisiest turnout of picketing firefighters and police officers during the four-day long conference, as nearly 300 union members from throughout the state defied the city order that had restricted them to an area across the street from the Rhode Island Convention Center, and instead marched peacefully around the building’s entrance.

It saw American mayors, stung by a last-minute cancelation by nearly 100 federal officials, coolly accept an offer by the White House for a conciliatory meeting in Washington.

It also saw mayors, their families, and staff — many of whom had never been to Providence –– enjoying their last bit of the Capital City despite intermittent rain.

The conference closed Monday evening far from the police details and Jersey barriers that had been set up in recent days, with a Latino-flavored barbecue and a fireworks display in Roger Williams Park on the city’s South Side.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors, making its first appearance here in its 77-year existence, left in the wake of its meeting lingering questions about Mayor David N. Cicilline’s City Hall, organized labor in Rhode Island and the future of relations between the White House and urban communities.

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, the newly installed president of the nonpartisan organization, said mayors are still willing to discuss implementation of President Obama’s economic stimulus plan with federal officials even after the administration pulled out of the conference at the last minute, in view of the threatened union demonstrations.

But they will not be able to make the June 29 meeting proposed by Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, Valerie Jarrett, and they will be looking for something close to what had been hoped for in Providence, he said.

“We want a good solid agenda that will allow us to get into the real substance of the recovery act,” Nickels said.

Nickels said that the mayors will not “linger over” the perceived slight by the White House, but that they will take every opportunity in the future to convey clearly “what worked and what did not” in the implementation of stimulus plan thus far.

The Obama administration, he said, wrongly relied on old formulas to distribute the first round of stimulus dollars for public infrastructure and transportation.

As a result, federal dollars did not go to where they could have resulted in the greatest amount of economic activity and job creation, a point driven home by many mayors throughout the convention, Nickels said.

“There needs to be investment where there is the biggest bang for the buck,” he said.

Federal officials –– from Vice President Joseph Biden to members of Obama’s Cabinet to rank-and-file bureaucrats –– abruptly canceled plans to attend the convention after the Obama administration was made aware of planned union protests just days before the meeting’s start, on Friday.

Mayors took the decision by Mr. Obama, who has been generally regarded as a champion of urban areas, as a slight to their organization, which includes more than 1,000 mayors of cities with populations exceeding 30,000.

This annual meeting had been built around the idea of nearly unfettered access to federal officials for nearly every major department handling funds from the $787-billion stimulus package.

City firefighters, in a decade-long dispute with the city, saw the Obama administration’s decision to respect their picket line as a political coup.

“It is a victory for organized labor that has national implications for sure,” Paul A. Doughty, president of Local 799 of the International Association of Fire Fighters, has said. “It shows that we finally have an administration in the White House that recognizes the value of the working class. It’s something that is obviously lacking in this city.”

Firefighters were joined on the picket line by city police officers, who have been without a contract since 2007 and are against Cicilline’s proposed unilateral changes to city pensions.

Friday brought the most diverse number of demonstrators, with Right to the City (protesting stimulus spending), the union representing Providence Head Start employees and a group opposed to the city’s handing of protesters during the mayors conference also coming out.

The city set up designated areas for protesting and asked groups to pre-register, to the consternation of the Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, the City Council and community groups.

Firefighters and police officers, until Monday, respected the city’s site restriction. “We’re just exercising our constitutional right to protest,” said Doughty after the union moved out of the designated area along the rear of the Providence Journal building.

So, in the end, what did all the buzz around the conference and the picketing mean?

Union officials, for their part, say they achieved what they had set out to do, even as they anticipate the picket won’t translate into a speedy resolution of their grievances with the city.

“Oh, there will probably be a cooling-off period. I’m sure [Cicilline]’s pretty mad,” said Doughty. “This was never about the contract, but about saying that this mayor has a labor-management policy that does not make sense. I think we’ve elevated that conversation in people’s minds.”

Cicilline called the protest a “black eye” for the firefighters union. He said that despite the negative publicity, the mayors’ meeting still provided the “shot in the arm” that was badly needed by city businesses, which had been looking forward to an infusion of nearly $2 million in tourism dollars.

The spectacle of WaterFire Providence, as well as the Rhode Island School of Design Museum and other city landmarks, convinced many mayors that Providence was a city worth returning to. And the conference itself was useful, too, they said.

“Other mayors got to see the progress that I’ve been able to see over the past few years living just a hop, skip and a jump from Providence,” said Boston Mayor Thomas Menino. “And we shared a lot of good ideas. Sometimes, it’s just nice to recharge the batteries.”

pmarcelo@projo.com