When it comes in civil servants there used to be a fairly well known consensus that when the times get bad they are safe and sound when they are at work. But in the recent economy and the long-term downturns that have come to pass, even when many of their counterparts in the private sector are being laid off left and right in the pursuit of bigger profits, the civil servant has had a certain amount of protection.

That time however is over. Cities and states around the nation facing an ever shrinking budgets for an array of very good reasons: the money from the stimulus plan is beginning to wear off, states are providing less and less to the cities and counties below them on the food chain and On each level if government everyone is collecting less in the way of tax revenue.

For most cities these problems are painful, but not completely unmanageable. If however you were to take a look at a city that makes most of its money off of tourism, which has also shown significant decrease in recent years, a, it is easy for you to see how perfect storm of job cuts could be on the horizon for the workers in that city. A storm that few would survive, and that everyone is left forever changed by the event.

Today we are going to take a look at the curious case of North Las Vegas. This city is so deeply in debt that they are making cuts that can only be classified as bone deep. In order to get itself out of a $33 million pile of debt the city of North Las Vegas is making some very serious cuts to the most basic of community services. To that end they are planning to make what they have termed massive cuts to police and fire services in the city.

The management of the city is blaming these layoffs on the intransigence of union leaders that are representing the first responders. Union leaders recently rejected a salary freeze for number of years to cone. Bear in mind that this would be continuation of an already fairly long-standing freeze for the first responders in the city of North Las Vegas and you can see why the union leaders were not eager to agree to the job cuts. After years of going without a raise, with no end to the inflation in sight, the workers who are going to stay on after the job cuts may find themselves having to stretch their dollars further and further in order to make their paychecks cover there bills. Like all things however there is a breaking point at which the money will not be able to make things work.

For the time being the city has not given any indication whether or not they are going to be making any moves to re-hire the workers when they get things sussed out or if they really plan to wipe out all of the staff.