Here’s the lay of the land in Butler for 2017: a municipal property tax hike for residents, rising expenditures in the budget, and $50,000 that will need to be borrowed from the parking fund to help the city meet its 2017 payroll obligations.

The city is also increasing its tax anticipation note borrowing from $750,000 to $1 million.

These are not the hot topics, however. That would be Mayor Tom Donaldson’s recently-filed civil suit against council members Mike Walter, Kathy Kline and Corey Roche.

The kerfuffle has its roots in two promotions within the fire department that were approved in May after the firefighters union filed grievances on behalf of firefighters Jim Kaufman and Donald McCoy in 2015.

At the time, Donaldson voted against the agreement. The following week he refused to sign the settlement.

“We are probably going to be sued by someone over this,” Donaldson said in May.

The mayor turned that prognostication into a self-fulfilling prophecy last week, when he filed a civil suit against councilors Michael Walter, Kathy Kline and Corey Roche.

According to the civil complaint, Donaldson’s aim is to invalidate the promotions and return Kaufman and McCoy to their previous ranks and pay schedules. He also wants to be reimbursed for legal expenses, at the court’s discretion.

The mayor says civil service regulations for testing requirements are not superseded by actions the council took in May. However. McCoy and Kaufman were the only eligible candidates for the promotions, making any test requirements a moot point.

This is all terrifically ham-fisted and inconveniently distracting from the issue of the moment in Butler: the city’s financial health, in which both the fire and police departments figure large. The departments are responsible for 53 percent of the city’s expenses next year, and council has reached out to employee unions in search of payroll savings.

Will this civil suit — which is preoccupied with the convoluted interplay between collective bargaining agreements, civil service rules and regulations, and the settlement agreement with the union — serve those ends?

It more closely resembles a “my way or the highway” power play by Donaldson. It’s likely to sour relationships that are important to the city’s push to cut payroll costs. It’s likely to splinter relationships within council — already fractured over the city’s proposed non-discrimination ordinance — even further.

When the ship is slowly filling with water you grab a bucket and start bailing — you don’t start arguing the finer points of maritime law.

In any case, the least our mayor can do is keep the tone-deaf pronouncements — “it’s the rule of law, not the cost of the process, (that) matters,” he said in May — to himself.

The costs — both in dollars and in the human relationships government requires to operate effectively — would matter irrespective of the city’s financial standing. With taxes, expenses and borrowing all going up in Butler next year, those costs matter more than ever.

How much of the city’s hard and human currency is Mayor Donaldson willing to spend in his quest to get his own way?