Cities Cut While Hoping for Government Aid

For now, however, Gordon said city officials are bracing for possible cuts in everything from after-school programs to sanitation.

With the slumping economy overwhelming state and city budgets, Atlanta, Detroit, Philadelphia and Phoenix have all asked for aid from the federal government.

"I think every day we wait, the crisis gets worse and worse," Gordon said, "especially when cities are able to put people to work today."

If federal officials decide to provide more aid to local governments, there are different opinions about the best way to do it.

Mark Zandi, the chief economist and co-founder of Moody's Economy.com, said that the most efficient way for the government to deliver help would be by distributing aid to the states first -- governors, like California's Arnold Schwarzenegger and New York's David Patterson have already called for federal support -- and relying on them to use existing formulas and mechanisms to provide funds to cities and towns.

It would be more effective, he said, than providing funding directly to municipalities.

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"The states have got that infrastructure set up," he said. "To ask the fed[eral] government to do it would be extraordinarily costly and too complex. It just wouldn't get done."

But Pat Hagan, the national audit partner for state and local government at Deloitte and Touche LLP, said that providing help to municipalities through existing federal programs -- such as low-income housing and social services programs -- could also prove successful.

"That's probably an easier route" than creating a new program, he said.

Philadelphia Budget Director Stephen Agostini said that, for now, the city is preparing its budget with the assumption that the assistance won't come through. To help close a $108 million budget gap for the current fiscal year -- which ends this June -- Philadelphia is preparing to close 11 libraries and seven fire companies. It also lay off some 200 city worker and will not fill 200 vacant police officer positions.

"We have to have a balanced budget," Agostini said.

Other cities are making similar cuts. Here is a breakdown of recent and proposed cuts in eight cities, courtesy of the U.S. Conference of Mayors: