YOUNGSTOWN - A meeting Tuesday between the city's unions and Mayor Jay Williams over concessions to stave off layoffs produced no concessions.

The administration says layoffs are necessary to offset the $900,000 in budget cuts that City Council approved Monday in the city's 2009 budget.

Williams said budget woes the last two years actually are part of a 15-year trend in which salaries and benefits of city workers outpaced revenue. He said that since he became mayor in 2005, the city has fewer workers and has left many positions unfilled, but it is not enough this year to deal with declining revenues.

''We have to take actions to prepare for the worst but hope for the best,'' Williams said.

Ed Colon, head of the Youngstown Police Association, which represents the city's patrolmen, said he wished the administration had provided him and the other unions information they were seeking on the city's finances. Another union leader also said he wished the administration had gone to them earlier.

Williams said invitations were sent to unions asking for meetings, but some of those were ignored. He pledged to keep the lines of communication open in the future.

Afterward, Colon said the meeting resembled the administration's actions last year, when they threatened layoffs but failed to carry out the threat.

''It's all up in the air right now,'' Colon said.

Finance Director David Bozanich told the union representatives that the city's projected income tax collection of $42 million for this year is a generous estimate and that projected balances for all city funds are down.

Bozanich said the city won't see any revenue from the proposed expansion at V&M Star Steel until at least 2010 and that V&M has cut its work force to 24 hours a week, down from 60 hours last year. He also said the city needs to deal with more potential bad news from Forum Health if it makes cuts at Northside Medical Center.

Williams said the city also has suffered in the last year because the business profit tax returns were low. In the past, he said the tax was able to help out when other revenues were down, but it could not for 2009 because it declined along with the other revenues.

The city operated on a temporary budget for 2009 until Monday. State law requires permanent budgets to be in place by April 1.

jgorman@tribtoday.com