Pittsburgh's economic recovery coordinators want Mayor Tom Murphy and City Council to implement a number of "drastic" spending cuts through the rest of the year.

Public Financial Management and Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott issued a letter Friday calling for a citywide hiring and spending freeze, among other measures, to stem the cash shortfall facing the city later this year. They estimated the shortfall to be $40 million.

The coordinators -- named under the state's Act 47 distressed city statute -- also asked council to keep alive talks on merging city and county 911 dispatch services and on privatizing management of its vehicle fleet and asphalt production. Council has put off votes on those initiatives, largely because of labor concerns.

"We realize that these steps are drastic. However, the city faces an urgent crisis, calling for drastic action," Jim Roberts of Eckert Seamans and Dean Kaplan of PFM wrote.

The coordinators asked Murphy and council to provide a status report on the cost-cutting efforts by late February and biweekly follow-up reports for the remainder of the Act 47 oversight period.

A state-appointed, five-member fiscal oversight board will be working concurrently with the Act 47 coordinators to write cost-saving and, possibly, tax-increasing plans for the city over the next two to three months. The fourth member of the board was named yesterday -- bond underwriter and certified public accountant Jim Smith. The final member is to be named today.

But even if new taxes are recommended, they may not be implemented in time to fill the city's $40 million void this year, the coordinators said. That is why they asked for the hiring and spending freezes, and other cost-cutting efforts, to be implemented immediately.

While it's too early to know what long-term budget changes the coordinators will recommend, Roberts and Kaplan wrote that "even if new revenues were to be part of our recovery plan proposal, there are numerous scenarios under which the city would not receive significant additional revenue in 2004."

The team's immediate cost-cutting plans include freezing discretionary spending, including travel costs and purchases of supplies and equipment; freezing all hiring, including temporary and seasonal employees; requiring advance overtime approval; writing citywide "crisis" spending plans for the rest of the year; and halting spending on non-emergency capital projects.

Mayoral spokesman Craig Kwiecinski promised the administration was "going to fully comply and cooperate" with the coordinators' requests and said the city already had started cutting back on overtime, hiring and other costs last year.

Executive Secretary Tom Cox told city directors to suspend nonessential spending on travel, furniture and the like in March 2003. Still, City Council members -- who do not answer to Cox -- spent $18,000 on travel, cell phones and mileage in the first six months of that year and $30,000 on those expenses in 2002.

Murphy announced layoffs of some 700 workers in August and left more than 100 vacant position unfilled. Since then, some police were rehired as other officers retired.

It was unclear exactly what city services would be affected by the other spending controls the coordinators requested. Seasonal workers could include those at city pools, who won't be returning to work in any case since the city is planning to keep its pools closed for the summer. Summer laborers at city parks could also be cut.

While the administration says the city already has cut back discretionary spending, it has clearly continued anyway.

Just yesterday, council approved almost $5,000 in "professional services" payments to part-time staffers in council's own offices. It also approved a $1,000 payment to the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh for a mayoral Youth Council reception and $594 for food service at a mayoral meeting, though Kwiecinski said both were reimbursed by state grants.

It was also unclear which capital infrastructure projects would be affected. While the coordinators asked Friday that the city fund only essential, non-emergency projects, City Council agreed yesterday to issue $500,000 to East Liberty's Kingsley Association for administrative, operating, maintenance and construction costs for a Lincoln-Lemington community center.

Neither Kaplan nor Roberts could be reached for comment yesterday.

The spending cut requests, and uncertainty about them, are "a sign of things to come," council's former budget chairman, Sala Udin, said.

"We're going to get more letters like this and we're going to see [the] PFM and Eckert-Seamans group, as well as the oversight committee, engaging in or inserting themselves in city activities and in council activities in ways that we have not seen before," he said.

In related news, City Council President Gene Ricciardi plans to introduce a measure next week requesting that city agencies institute wage freezes and forward any salary money saved from March through December 2004 to the city's general fund.

Council froze salaries for all nonunion city personnel in 2004.Some city agencies, including the Pittsburgh Parking Authority, raised salaries for personnel. Ricciardi serves on the parking agency's board.