Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin on Monday warned that the city is in "severe financial stress" that demands immediate action and presented a 10-year plan calling for more concessions from city workers.

But the presidents of the city's two public-safety unions said they sense Swearengin is being overly dramatic for political reasons, and urged the public to get all the facts before choosing sides.

Fresno's budget season has come early this year, and it's already turning into a war.

At a morning City Hall news conference where she was joined by City Manager Mark Scott, Swearengin warned that "there is no Plan B" to the cost reductions, and Scott warned that even bankruptcy could not be ruled out if expenses don't come down.

"It is not in our employees' best interest for their employer to be so financially unstable," Swearengin said. "I hope they will see that."

The plan, which lays out the city's financial health, projects a skyrocketing long-term deficit if cost-cutting measures are not taken. The deficit would be $15.1 million in 2013 and rise to $65.8 million by 2017. The causes for the red ink include the national economic downturn, unsuccessful city investments and "unaffordable future commitments to labor groups and others."

Those less-than-stellar investments include Granite Park, the former Fresno Metropolitan Museum and an overly ambitious downtown baseball stadium. Each of them saddled the city with long-term debt.

Swearengin said the city must choose between laying off more employees and cutting more city services or adopting the 10-year plan to regain financial stability. She said more layoffs and service reductions aren't a wise option.

In an afternoon meeting with The Bee's editorial board, Swearengin and Scott moved the talk far away from the fiscal-emergency declarations and Chapter 9 bankruptcy threats that have made the city of Stockton a national example of financial incompetence.

At the same time, Swearengin and Scott drew a line in the sand for the city's 3,200 employees, implying that the Stockton scenario isn't far-fetched for Fresno for these reasons:

Three years of incessant layoffs, service reductions and penny-pinching haven't done the trick.

The city will struggle to close a $2.1 million general fund budget gap in the fiscal year ending June 30, let alone the huge gap projected over the next five years.

The revenue picture is flat -- sales-tax proceeds up a bit more than expected, property-tax proceeds down a bit more -- and Fresno is stuck in a farm-based economy traditionally slow to come out of recessions.

About four out of every five general-fund dollars go toward employee compensation -- salary, side benefits, health care, pension.

The city's budget is broken, one-year Band-Aids are no fix, core services have hit rock-bottom and the only solution is a fundamental restructuring of how Fresno compensates its municipal employees.

"The employees we have will have to cost us less," Swearengin said.

Almost all of those employees belong to unions, many with contracts. That means Swearengin and Scott will return to a plan they tried a year ago with modest success during a similar budget crisis -- closed-door talks seeking voluntary union concessions.

Swearengin's new policy is long, but there is a simplicity to it.

She wants more city control over pension and health care systems that, she said, currently have too much employee influence.

She wants new union contracts that aren't so generous with goodies such as accumulated leave balances.