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As part of the budget, more than $100 million for salary increases was placed into an account known as the “unappropriated balance,” which serves as something of a holding tank for expenses that are expected but not finalized.

Szabo said he will ask the council in the coming weeks to move the $53 million for firefighter raises out of the unappropriated balance and into the fire department budget.

While lobbying the City Council to release funding allocated for the raises from the city’s “unappropriated balance,” one interventionist testified that he had to take on a second job just to get by.

At one point during Thursday’s meeting, Soto-Martínez attempted to shift $34.7 million allocated for police hiring into the city’s “unappropriated balance.”

Hernandez later came back with what she called a compromise measure, asking her colleagues to shift a smaller amount of police hiring funds — $13 million — into the unappropriated balance.