PROVIDENCE — The Providence Public Library and the city have agreed to a four-year contract that maintains all nine library branches for the next year, but looks likely to lead to branch closures, or at least relocations, next year or in 2010.

The deal avoids layoffs among unionized staff, provides for the reopening of the Washington Park branch in its former home, and ensures that no branches are closed or relocated before July 1, 2009.

For more than 100 years, Providence made a flat monetary contribution to the PPL in exchange for operating the Central Library downtown and nine branches. With the library’s financial situation worsening, however, the city and the library signed a one-year contract last summer that gave them time to work out a longer operating agreement.

This four-year deal, approved by the library’s trustees yesterday, is somewhat transitional. It gives the library six months to figure out what to do with the branches, and states that any branch closings or relocations must be in place by July 1, 2009. The city, however, can push that back a year if it wants to pay for the library’s projected operating deficit in 2009-2010.

The library has repeatedly stated that the branch system is unsustainable as it is set up. The library says that, even with the city increasing its annual contribution from $3.3 million to $3.4 million, it faces a $1.38-million deficit in its $9.7-million budget for this year.

To close that gap in the short term, the library is falling back on its sizable endowment, estimated at $35 million a year ago, but certainly smaller than that now with drops in the stock market. The library will pull an extra $1.3 million from its endowment to plug that hole.

But library officials say that can’t happen again, and the contract is predicated on the idea that major structural changes in the branch system are needed.

“The contract explicitly recognizes that the current system of the library, as it exists, is unsustainable for the future,” said Dan Prentiss, the library’s legal counsel, explaining the terms of the contract to the board of trustees yesterday. “At least for the short and immediate term, the sustainable system is going to be one that has fewer branches, as they currently exist, than there are now.”

The contract needs the ratification of the City Council to take effect. The library would then do a self-assessment — with input from the city — to figure out how it could shore up its finances in the long term. That might involve closing branches, or it might entail reconfiguring them, or relocating them to schools or other sites to reduce overhead. Those decisions must be announced by Dec. 31.

Trustee Rob Taylor said that no one is advocating a total dismantling of the system.

“We don’t want a crashing change to the system if we can avoid it.”

But change, he said, is needed.

“We hope the community will understand the difficulties that the library is facing,” Taylor said. As it has put its energies and funds toward working out a deal with the city, “We haven’t been buying up books, we haven’t been maintaining our buildings, and we can’t keep doing this forever,” he said.

Some have raised concerns already, however.

Mark McKenney, the governor’s representative on the Board of Trustees, laid out some fears that members of the Library Partnership Advisory Committee, an oversight board, have expressed.

He said that some on the committee have worried that this is a way for the city to give “political cover” for the library to close some of its branches.

“I think it’s a mistake for us to predetermine that a sustainable system is one with fewer branches,” McKenney said.

The committee also wants expanded fundraising efforts, and supports reopening the Washington Park branch in the old firehouse it occupied before water damage forced its relocation in 2005.

Karen MacAninch of United Service and Allied Workers of Rhode Island, which represents the library’s 90 unionized employees, said she feared that this may lead to the library announcing in six months that it would shelve six of its smallest branches and only retain its core facilities: the Central Library, and the Mount Pleasant, Rochambeau and Knight branches.

“I’m kind of afraid that they know what that means: that it’s already a done deal, that it’s going to be three branches.”

In response to these concerns, Lisa Churchville, chairwoman of the Board of Trustees, stated firmly that the library is not necessarily going to close branches — but it must figure out how to cut its branch-related costs.

“All we’re doing today is agreeing that we’re going to hunker down on this,” Churchville said. “There are very difficult decisions to be made.”

She also said that Washington Park should reopen in its old location soon after the agreement if it is ratified by the City Council, and that fundraising for the branches will begin in earnest soon.

The trustees approved the agreement unanimously. It is expected to go to the City Council in the next few weeks.

dbarbari@projo.com