The final-final vote for the budget is tomorrow, to enact appropriations. Much work goes on behind the scenes with our budget office. Each time a change is made it is an arduous effort to balance the books and calculate the impact on the budget.

If there is a compensation cut in a private sector, it is simply a reduction off the top of base pay — that is easy to calculate. However, when we have unique requests from labor unions that require municipal code changes or legal interpretations of the city charter, it gets complicated.