It’s no secret that the city of Butler is flirting with the possibility of bankruptcy or state Act 47 fiscally distressed status in only a couple of years.

The city’s current financial situation is unsustainable for the long run. Tough decisions are facing city leaders — decisions that many different leaders for years have chosen to ignore, apparently hoping some heretofore unforeseen remedy for solving the city’s money problems might spring forth.

President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus program wasn’t the answer for cities like Butler, and the state apparently holds no answers, since it too is dealing with a financial albatross.

Meanwhile, in 2011, Butler complicated its financial situation by entering contract negotiations with the city’s police, firefighters and other municipal workers without first having an independent consultant put together a detailed financial blueprint of the city government — to lay on the bargaining table at the time of the first negotiations session.

Thus, it’s no surprise that the city has entered binding arbitration with the police after having no success in achieving a pact via negotiations. As a result of the failure of the firefighters to reach a contract accord, their union has requested binding arbitration.

The union representing streets and parks workers and the city’s administrative staff has adopted a wait-and-see attitude, but that stance can’t and won’t last indefinitely.

Binding arbitration has not been good for the city’s struggling coffers in the past, and taxpayers are justified in being concerned about what the upcoming arbitration rulings might produce.

In fact, those rulings could speed up the need for a decision to enter the state’s Distressed Municipalities Program, which would be a means by which the city could remain financially afloat but nonetheless is no panacea.

Twenty-six Pennsylvania municipalities have gotten under the umbrella of Act 47 to date, including 12 cities, and none have come out of it.

The central Pennsylvania city of Altoona is on the verge of becoming the 27th municipality and 13th city.

An important question is: Will Butler become the 28th municipality and 14th city?

An important point made by former Altoona City Councilman and Controller Travis Young at an April 3 hearing was that binding arbitration from years past was a heavy contributor to the financial problems necessitating Altoona’s distressed status now. As a result, the police department has been trimmed to 68 officers from 74; the Public Works Department has shrunk 20 percent, to 56 workers, over the last decade; and the firefighters fear significant staffing cuts.

Bryson Peterman, firefighters union president, according to a report in the Altoona Mirror, expressed fears that personnel cuts that might be required under distressed status would expose firefighters to more fires, greater hazards and more carcinogens.

Also according to the Mirror, Altoona police Chief Janice Freehling believes staffing cuts that have been implemented have contributed to an 11 percent increase in serious crime. At the same time, she said, the cuts have contributed to a 4 percent decrease in less serious crimes — because there were fewer officers to ferret out those crimes.

To residents of Butler, what’s happening in Altoona — and the statistics surrounding the Mountain City’s financial plight — might be of little interest and concern.

But they ought to be. Butler is on the border of a financial crisis similar to Altoona’s, in which Altoona’s 2012 budget with a $1.6 million deficit is projected to exhaust the city’s entire unreserved fund balance.

“The current pattern of structural deficits is unsustainable,” said Marita Kelly, a DCED policy specialist who led a department review of Altoona’s financial data.

Butler’s financial situation already carries with it that conclusion, and what added costs to the city that the three unresolved contracts will contain will only make matters worse.

Butler leaders dropped the ball by failing to properly prepare for the negotiations that preceded the arbitration stage. Even now, there’s no public speculation by the “new” city council as to what the city might have to do — specifically, what cuts might have to be implemented — if the arbitration rulings are too far beyond the city’s ability to pay.

It’s time to start talking openly about that.

Current leaders need to assure city residents by way of open discussion that they’re not as out of touch with the impending crisis as they now project themselves to be.