Pittsburgh City Council unanimously approved an $18 million budget for the G-20 Summit today, giving city officials the green light to sign pacts with other governments that will send police to back up the locals on security and crowd control.

The $18 million budget is $2 million higher than the one Mayor Luke Ravenstahl originally offered up, and is a pared-down version of the $25 million spending blueprint that Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato floated yesterday.

With the threat of losing out-of-town police support for the summit hanging over their heads, council had halted its usual Tuesday meeting in mid-stream to hold closed-door talks with the mayor.

Members came out of those talks in agreement, then promptly voted to release money for the summit, accept aid from the federal and state governments and contract with other cities, states and municipalities.

"Before today, it was very unclear about the budgets," said Councilman Patrick Dowd. "Here, for the city, from our perspective, we have a very clear budget -- just a little bit more than $18 million in reimbursable expenses."

That follows dueling news conferences yesterday at which Mr. Onorato outlined a $25 million tab for the Sept. 24-25 summit of world leaders, while Mr. Ravenstahl urged that the governments focus on a smaller, public-safety-first spending plan. Early this morning, Mr. Ravenstahl made a rare trip to council's suite to make his case to his former colleagues there.

"I was delighted to see that he came over to the halls and talked with us," said Mr. Dowd.

It was not immediately clear whether the city and county had reached accord.

"I define the budget a little bit differently, I guess, than the county executive does," the mayor said after the first of two rounds of meetings with council.

The mayor said the city will get $2.65 million in state money and the county will get $1.75 million, and they will split a $2.5 million Department of Homeland Security grant. He added that the county hasn't signed off on the budget city council passed, even though it includes $3.5 million in county costs.

Council Finance Chair William Peduto said that members were warned by Public Safety Director Michael Huss that delays in finalizing G-20 funding were starting to hurt the city's effort to hire 3,100 out-of-town police to supplement the existing force. "They've already lost two cities who've said that they will not send officers now," he said, declining to name the cities.