RADFORD -- City council got its first look at what next year's budget might look like in a Monday evening meeting -- and it doesn't look pretty at all.

Nothing was settled during the meeting, but lots of things were discussed: raising taxes, cutting services, raising electricity rates, cutting overtime, raising user fees, cutting jobs. There was even talk about talking about what it would mean if Radford stopped being a city.

"We, as a community, need to have that conversation," Councilman Bob Nicholson said.

But most of the conversation was about cuts and increases, just as City Manager Tony Cox recommended.

"If I were you," Cox told council, "I would be looking seriously at where can we increase revenue, where can we reduce spending in the coming year."

With the economy officially in recession and the expectation that state aid to localities will shrink, Radford is about to begin paying off the debt that is building a new elementary school. Council is also considering millions of dollars in capital projects: improvements on Second Avenue that have been talked about since 1969; replacing a 118-year-old police station that was decapitated by a fire more than half a century ago; building a new water tower.

Councilman Bruce Brown, a dean at Wytheville Community College, said the exercise state agencies went through in the last round of cuts -- working out budgets to accommodate cuts of 5 percent, 10 percent and 15 percent -- might be good for the city.

"As painful as it was," Brown said, "it turned up some things we wouldn't do otherwise. ... There might be an opportunity to reinvent what we do."

Most comments weren't that hopeful.

While Cox and Nicholson reminded council that the social service agencies the people turn to in hard times will be turning to council for help, Mayor Tom Starnes said the city won't have much help to give.

"I think the word needs to go out," Starnes said. "Don't come to the local government to make up the difference."

Council may make a difference in how city employees get paid overtime. Now, if employees work more than 40 hours in a week -- even if some of those hours are vacation time or sick leave -- those people get overtime pay for everything more than 40 hours. That may stop change with the coming budget so that only hours worked will count toward overtime.

"It's a morale buster is what it is," Nicholson said.

The people who get the most overtime are the people who deal with emergencies, he said. And it's the promise of time-and-a-half pay that brings them out when they're on vacation.

Council talked about requiring employees to pay more of the cost of their insurance and of cutting back on programs ranging from tourism to the city's public information officer. Tuition assistance and a new program that covers the cost of some mental health counseling might dropped. Resource officers in schools my be cut. Council talked about cutting back on snow removal and leaf collection.

Most of what they talked about, Cox told council, could save tens of thousands of dollars, when they need to cut hundreds of thousands.

"I think almost anything we do significantly changing the budget will involve people," he said.

Starnes agreed.

"I think ultimately you've got to get into personnel," he said.

Council began the night saying they hoped to give employees a 2 percent raise. Before they went home, council members we hoping they wouldn't have to lay employees off.

Cox didn't offer comforting words about the budget process that began with Monday's meeting.

"It's going to be painful," he said. "And I think on of the things I want you to take away from this table is that the work is going to get harder from here."