The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of OnMilwaukee.com, its advertisers or editorial staff.

This city is hurting, and the wounds will get bigger and deeper next year.

Blame a terrible combination of circumstance.

The price of gasoline is going up. More people won't be able to afford to drive to work, and that means more people won't be working.

The price of natural gas is going up, too, and more people will have to decide among only bad choices. The doctor visit or the gas bill? Food or the gas bill?

City taxes and fees are going up, too, but the services that more people will need more of will be less available.

Federal funding is down, while state shared revenue, a major funding source for the city, continues its decade-long shrinking act. Meanwhile, the state enacted a property tax levy limit.

Milwaukee is stuck.

"You only have two choices," says Ald. Michael Murphy, chairman of the Common Council's Finance and Personnel Committee. "One is to increase our tax base. The other is to cut services."

The tax base is growing, but not fast enough. That leaves city officials making their own decisions among bad choices. Mayor Tom Barrett's proposed budget is ugly in a hundred ways, but there's just not enough money available to pretty it up much.

Some of the ugly in the proposed budget:

• Streets would be worse. Seasonal workers who help asphalt crews and do other repair work would have their schedules significantly reduced.

• Litter would be worse, and it's already a major problem in some neighborhoods. The budget, because of federal funding cuts, does away with the Clean and Green program, a concentrated effort to help people clean up their neighborhoods. This year the city collected 4,240 tires and 1,680 tons of refuse during Clean and Green. Where will those things end up in 2006?

• Unnecessary debt would increase. The city would borrow for infrastructure projects that would be better funded through cash. The borrowing would help hold down next year's tax levy, but interest on the debt would add to the add to the bottom-line cost for taxpayers.

• Nuisance properties would blight neighborhoods longer. That's because of cuts in the Department of Neighborhood Services. The budget also would reduce funding for the training that helps landlords prevent their properties from becoming nuisances in the first place.

Both Barrett and Murphy called for increases in shared revenue to help the city out of its jam.

"If we don't get relief from the state on shared revenue, just inflation relief, then we will have some serious cuts," Murphy says.

Barrett, in his budget speech, said suburban communities should join the push for more shared revenue for Milwaukee.

Without a funding increase, he said, "our ability to provide essential services for regional attractions will be compromised....our means to serve the state's largest concentration of poor and working poor households will suffer."

There is no big rush to help Milwaukee; heck, there's not even a lazy move to lend a hand.

And so the bleeding will continue. Cut after cut after cut.

Gretchen Schuldt, a former Milwaukee newspaper reporter, runs the Milwaukee Web site storyhill.net.

Sign up now for a free e-mail election service from WisPolitics.com. Click here.