As we said earlier this week would be the case, the 2016 budget proposed by Mayor Sam Teresi is ugly.

As proposed, Teresi and the City Council must find either $878,736 in additional revenues or cut spending to balance the budget and not exceed the state’s constitutional tax limit. Those cuts are necessary despite the budget’s existing elimination of $2,500 for the Jamestown Senior Center and 71 percent cut of funding to the James Prendergast Library, as well as a small decrease in employee salaries. The budget includes no raises that aren’t included in an existing contract and savings from programs change street lighting, parking ramp lighting, fleet management and debt service refinancing. And, the city has undertaken dozens of restructuring initiatives that save roughly $5.95 million every year.

There are only two ways city officials will find the $878,736 they need to balance this budget: a bailout from the state that gives the city enough revenue to balance its budget or even further transformational change to the way the city provides services that we have long known are coming but about which we haven’t had serious discussions. Teresi has proposed two such measures and already included savings in his budget – using some money the city has requested from the state Financial Restructuring Board to save roughly $600,000 to offer an incentive and alternative supplemental health care plan to Medicare-enrolled retirees who are on the city’s health insurance plan and $25,000 starting in the second quarter of 2017 if a proposed city-county police staffing contract can be approved by the council and the County Legislature.

Getting more money from the state is not a decision controlled locally and is at best a two-year solution to the city’s problems. New York doesn’t need to write large checks to Jamestown every year as part of the state budget.

The city is tasked, then, with finding ways to save large amounts of money every year. A staffing contract with Chautauqua County for police services accomplishes that, though it will take several years for major savings to be achieved. Council members will, of course, justify each and every position in the budget that isn’t mandated by a contract. Non-mandated jobs shouldn’t be the only topics of discussion over the next month or so.

We hear, year after year, about minimum manning agreements that were bargained for years ago or imposed through arbitration agreements. It’s long past the time to begin having frank discussions about how to remove the contractual impediment blocking the city from solvency. Such talks will be painful – city employees perform necessary services and do their jobs quite well – but the city simply can’t afford to provide services the way it did in the 1970s.

Is it time to discuss privatizing the BPU? One of the reasons for the constitutional tax limit dilemma is the way the BPU is structured in the city charter. A city-owned utility has served Jamestown well over the years, but it may be time to investigate spinning the utility off on its own.

Are there departments the city should radically restructure or services the city shouldn’t provide at all?

All of these sorts of questions should be raised and discussed publicly.

The budget proposed by Mayor Sam Teresi is ugly. The process to balance this budget will only get uglier.