Editorial:

Political lobbying, anxious department executives, giddy City Hall activists, late-night number crunching — it can only mean one thing: Budget season is here.

Every year, the process of adopting a new city budget turns into an exercise of political will as tough decisions are made among five sets of priorities on the City Council dais.

But this is no typical year. We’re still absorbing a city election in which three of the sitting council members pledged to not touch public safety departments. We’re in a recession. And City Hall has already gone through two rounds of cuts.

Now we prepare for a third, ensuring this round will be at least as contentious as it was last time. For Glendale’s sake, we strongly urge the City Council to ditch the political pandering and temper the process this year with an acknowledgment that not everyone can have their cake and eat it too.

It is disingenuous for the public on one hand to say the city needs to cut back, and yet demand responsive code enforcement and police amid falling revenues.

At the same time, for the majority of the council to dig their heels in on public safety means they’ll have to cut deeper in other less celebrated, yet equally important, departments.

Let’s keep our heads level in the coming weeks, even as the same crop of City Hall activists hurl their same dull rocks at the budget. The last thing we need is to exacerbate tough decisions with unqualified attacks, or political hyperbole.