And, after hitting the equal button on their calculator, city of Gainesville administrators have a two million dollar deficit.

Gainesville City Manager Russ Blackburn has released his recommended budget for fiscal years 2009 and 2010.

Blackburn has two recommendations of how the city can fill the two million dollar gap. The first was drafted assuming that commissioners do not implement the fire assessment fee, and includes the reduction of several services and the elimination of 16 positions. The second recommendation does include the 25 percent fire assessment fee, but that would still leave the city over $450,000 in the hole, so cuts would still be made.

Both plans include the city switching to a four-day work week for the city administration, and commissioners and city leaders getting a lump sum pay increase instead of a percentage raise.

"That equates to about a one-and-a-half to two percent increase for those folks, and their increases originally were budgeted at about four-and-a-half percent," said Gainesville Administrative Services Director Becky Rountree.

Commissioners will vote on the fire assessment fee on July 16th, and are scheduled to adopt the tentative budget and millage rate on July 21st.

Rountree says each department head gave Blackburn a list of proposed cuts within their departments, and that he trimmed it from there.

But of course, city commissioners will have the final say as to what actually gets cut. The fiscal year begins October 1st.