It's kinda like on the "the Wire" when the outgoing Mayor decided to get revenge on the guy who beat him in the Mayoral Race by not telling anyone that the educational system was majorly in debt. So maybe Gavin didn't tell anyone beforehand so he can stick it to the guy who replaced him. Oh wait, Gavin won. So maybe Gavin didn't announce it for fear if he told everyone before the election he might have lost to Grasshopper.

The reason for the debt is that we allegedly hired too many new people, mainly cops and nurses plus gave them all whopping raises. Then there's the fact that a large part of the revenue came from property transfer taxes and with the housing marketing in a mess, there goes that money.

So Gavin has announced that he wants hiring freezes and wants each department head whose funds come from the city's general fund to come up with a proposal to trim some fat by 13%. Letting go of people is not an option in that all those people who were hired were kind of necessary, or at least it looks really, really bad if you let go a bunch of nurses and cops.

The good news: we've faced deficits before and we beat them before and we can beat them again. The bad news: what with all those ballot initiatives locking in money to certain city services, there's not a lot of fat out there to trim.