Posted yesterday afternoon and moved up.

Earlier today, a powerhouse of business interests made the pitch that the City of Seattle shouldn’t dare raise taxes—it would hurt businesses, hurt jobs, hurt the city—so the city should instead slash from the budget.

So what’s that all-cuts budget look like?

Last week, the city’s acting finance director Beth Goldberg sent out a spreadsheet to all city department heads that outlines how the city can bridge its estimated $56 million budget shortfall next year. It set targets for cuts with a couple scenarios. Mayor Mike McGinn, she says, wanted “look at the full range of options." Department heads now must respond by showing how they would reach a range targets—naming the specific programs or staff they would remove.

In the first scenario, to fill the $56 million gap, public safety and human services would cut only one percent, requiring most other departments to face a staggering 14.5 percent cut. “It sounds small but these are large budgets,” says Goldberg. The less we take from public safety and human services—which make up 39 percent of the general fund, and are considered the primary services we have to fund—the more drastically we have to cut from other departments.

In practice: That’s slashing $2.5 million from police (slightly more than required to hire 20 cops next year), $1.6 million from fire, and $2.7 million from human services. But then the lower-priority departments face a cut: $5.8 million from the transportation department, $13.2 million from the parks department, $7.4 million from libraries, $4 million from the municipal court, and $1.6 million from the Department of Neighborhoods. All the other departments—including the mayor’s office, the city council, the city attorney’s office, and many more—would also take hits in the range of hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars.

“They are ugly. They are big numbers,” says Goldberg. “We are looking at a bunch of really bad choices.”

More after the jump.

In another other scenario, public safety and human services swallow a whopping 4.75 percent cut. Police take a $11.8 million cut (enough to pay roughly 100 officers) and fire takes a $7.6 million cut.

In either case, Seattle probably can’t afford its plan to increase the police force by 20 new police officers without making even larger cutbacks to existing programs). The $2.4 million hit to the SPD—even in the gentler of the two targets for police—would wipe out the $2.2 million required to pay for the new cops.

One of the big proponents of hiring the new officers for community policing, meanwhile, is the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce—which is behind today’s push for an all-cuts budget. Another staunch advocate to increase police hiring (which seems like a great idea, if we have the money) is the city council. The question is where do we get those millions of dollars—from the parks department that’s already taking a $13 million hit? When asked, the chamber’s lobbyist George Allen and City Council Member Tim Burgess wouldn't cite where the money could come from (Burgess simply said the mayor and council are in a “tough spot” and the budget “will come to us on September 27” at a press conference last month).

Last year the council balanced the budget by cutting programs but also by tapping about $30 million that can’t be used again. “Those don’t bring down costs [next year],” Goldberg says, “so those basically kick the problem forwards.”

All of this is to say that the notion that Seattle can increase police hiring—and preserve libraries and parks, etc.—without raising revenue is unrealistic. If the King County Council approves a sales tax measure this month and voters pass it in August, however, that could help Seattle with an $12 million. Even then, we will probably need to increase revenues. “What those will look like I can’t tell you,” Goldebrg says.