The nine people on Pittsburgh City Council will take a vote today as critical as any in the city's recent history.

The economic recovery plan before them could stanch years of red ink flowing from city budgets and introduce tax reforms that could help the city grow in the future.

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In exchange, the plan exacts a heavy price in city service cuts and tax increases.

If council approves the recovery plan, taxes on every business and worker in the city will increase in one way or another, and the longstanding cord between the city's unions and its politicians could be sliced.

It is no wonder that going into the vote, council has only the bare 5-4 majority needed to approve the plan. A union-led effort to torpedo the plan continued yesterday, with City Council's phone lines jammed with callers, and union representatives passing out anti-Act 47 flyers citywide.

Still, all members of the council majority said they remained committed to the proposal.

"This is, I think, for good or bad, the biggest vote that members of Pittsburgh City Council have ever taken and is the most important vote we'll ever take," Council President Gene Ricciardi said yesterday. "We either continue the downward spiral we're on or get onto the road of recovery."

"I've never been a vote changer in the past," said council's budget chairman Alan Hertzberg, one of the five who preliminarily voted in favor of the plan Wednesday. "Besides that, we've got to be responsible here. There's no recourse."

If council votes the plan down, the city likely would be cut off from state funding. If it approves the plan, it is just one step, albeit a significant one, toward budget health.

For Pittsburgh's purposes, Act 47's greatest strength is control over personnel spending, which makes up most of the $33 million in spending cuts in the plan. Unions, led by Fire Fighters Local No. 1, likely will fight the changes in court.

With a mayor's race looming next year, workers also could pressure the next mayor in 2006 to not implement the changes, a tactic used by unions in Scranton. Though that city was declared distressed in 1992, union pressures held off many cuts until voters approved a 2002 referendum favoring them.

While the plan suggests $41 million in tax increases, most of the work to implement them will be done by the city's oversight board and the Legislature. If state officials do not act by later this year, the plan will trigger commuter and property taxes to fill the city's projected $72 million deficit next year.

If it is approved, Pittsburgh's Act 47 plan will face its next big test next week, when the city's oversight board, which is separate from the Act 47 process, plans to rule on Mayor Tom Murphy's latest five-year spending plan, which is basically the Act 47 plan under separate cover. While oversight board members generally favor the plan, board chairman William Lieberman said yesterday, they do not think it cuts enough spending, and may send it back to Murphy for some changes.

The oversight board is not expected to deliver its recommendations for saving city finances to the Legislature until August, meaning state action could be put off until after the November 2 general election.

Murphy has to submit his 2005 budget to the oversight board in October. He probably will not have any new tax revenues by then, which will mean introducing a budget leaning on huge tax increases (such as the 49 percent property tax increase he placed in his last five-year plan) or presenting an unbalanced budget, which alienated the board when he did that with his first five-year plan.

After paying $39 million in debt service Sept. 1, the Act 47 plan says, the city could run out of cash for a day or two that month, and could miss payroll payments at times through the rest of the year.

But that is two months away. For the meantime the challenges are all before City Council, which has avoided most of the main city government issues the last decade.

For example, it did not take a binding vote on a stadium construction plan in 1997 or 1998 or the Fifth-Forbes recovery plan in 2000. It rejected controversial bills with socio-cultural impact, such as the Citizens' Police Review Board in 1997 and the "Pittsburgh Works" job requirements in 1999, although both were later approved through ballot questions.

Murphy applied for distressed status under Act 47 in November, saying he could not balance the city's 2004 budget, which he left $42 million underfunded.

The state-appointed recovery team -- Downtown law firm Eckert Seamans and Public Financial Management of Philadelphia -- began working on their plan in January, a month after the state declared Pittsburgh officially distressed.

After five months of study and a $610,000 budget, 32 lawyers and government experts from the two firms issued their recovery plan in May, followed by a revised version June 11. They recommended a series of spending cuts and tax increases.

The spending cuts largely target the city work force. In all future labor contracts, workers would be required to take a two-year wage freeze, pay 15 percent of health care costs and cut overtime, among other cuts. Most significantly, the plan calls for cuts to seven of the city's 35 fire stations and 168 of its 816 firefighter jobs.

The plan forwards two tax packages. A "preferred plan" requiring state approval would increase the yearly occupation tax on city workers from its current $10 (unchanged since 1965) to $145 and charge all for-profit businesses a new payroll tax, while either decreasing or eliminating the city's current business privilege and mercantile taxes.

If the state does not approve that dual plan by later this year, the Act 47 team said the city will petition Common Pleas Court for a 0.27 percent wage tax on most commuters, a 0.37 percent city wage tax increase and a 5 percent increase in city property taxes. City residents now pay a 3 percent wage tax to the city and school district.

"I'm not going to the bargaining table in Harrisburg with nothing in my hand," Shields said. "My club, ultimately, will be a commuter tax."

But in Pittsburgh, the real club is on the unions. Under Act 47, every future labor contract will have to follow the plan's requirements, on everything from wages to fitness standards and drug tests.

Union members have complained vigorously. Their health care costs will go up dramatically, especially for those who pay little now. The police union says 93 senior officers likely will retire if the plan is approved, since benefits under the current contract will be far better than future contracts.

If council does not approve the plan, Murphy would essentially become the city's coordinator (instead of Eckert Seamans and PFM) and submit his own recovery plan to council within 14 days. Murphy's executive secretary Tom Cox told council last week that the mayor supports the Act 47 plan as is, and the administration is not prepared to submit a different report.

If no recovery plan is forwarded, the state will sanction the city by cutting off all state funding, except payments for ongoing capital projects and the city's pension fund.

Should council approve the plan and Murphy signs it, as expected, the coordinators would immediately start implementing the city spending cuts. While the "preferred" tax package would require legislative approval, nothing else would take state action.