North Tonawanda city council members again found themselves debating the city’s 2010 budget Tuesday, two months after it was adopted.

At the tail end of an otherwise routine work session, debate among council members, City Accountant David Jakubaszek and Mayor’s Assistant Jeffrey Mis sounded a lot like it did leading up to the council’s rubber-stamp of the controversial plan in September — except the urgency was at an all-time high.

The plan — which is a feat of creative revenue projections on sales tax, cheap power, retirements and cuts to overtime, repair budgets and other items — was crafted against tough odds many months ago and takes effect in just seven weeks.

In the meantime, the myriad of deadlines and potential shortfalls have officials sweating as they hope to stave off possible late-term rate or tax hikes that would surely outrage taxpayers.

Considerations like how many high-paid city employees will accept a retirement incentive that’s now on the table, whether ongoing negotiations with the New York Power Authority will reduce water and sewer energy costs in time to keep rates in check and whether millions of dollars in state aid is threatened by Albany’s fiscal meltdown are combining to reiterate a nagging question: Will the budget end up in the red?

First, the good news from Jakubaszek’s report indicates eight employees have expressed strong interest in a retirement incentive, though nothing final will be known until Nov. 21.

Then there’s the agreement finalized last week with Calgon, a Pennsylvania firm that will lease equipment from the wastewater plant that will bring in a combined $300,000 in lease fees and savings.

More importantly Tuesday, however, was: Will water rates need to be raised while NYPA talks continue?

“We are meeting tentatively within the next two weeks to get down to better figures than they offered before,” Mis said.

Jakubaszek stressed the rate, in any event, must be decided by Feb. 1.

Council members Dennis Pasiak, Catherine Schwandt and Nancy Donovan seemed resolved to explore options other than raising rates after mayor-elect Rob Ortt said he thinks “there has to be a plan B.”

Donovan suggested an immediate hiring freeze.

Pasiak said a combination of using the roughly $1 million in the general fund or laying off city employees should be explored instead, calling it unfair to raise rates after the budget was adopted.

“I think our credibility as a governing body is really at stake if we raise the water rate,” he said.

But council members were also newly stiff to consider enacting an increase in the water base rate for apartment buildings that they passed by default weeks ago: a provision that would increase the base quarterly water rate for apartments from $6 to $12 to reach parity with that of single-family homes and resulting in one rate citywide. It would also raise a much needed $170,000 across the water and sewer funds.

By the numbers, while the council tries to find alternatives, if NYPA talks don’t materialize at all, Jakubaszek said the water aspect of the budget could wind up $420,000 in the red.

The council is duty-bound to avoid that scenario. Jakubaszek, therefore, acting as the city’s numbers man, was bound to ask them to consider rate hikes as a fall-back option

But there is always the chance it won’t come to that because negotiations for cheap power to offset lack of revenues could still be realized.

And of course, there’s always the $1 million in the general fund. That’s not the route Jakubaszek recommends, as a rule. The fund is already down from a high of $4 million toward the end of last year but had been down to around $200,000 several years ago.

Either way, Ortt stressed now is the time to compile a B plan.

“In my opinion we don’t have the luxury of depending on NYPA,” Jakubaszek said.

Contact reporter Neale Gulley at 693-1000, ext. 114.