Petersburg’s financial woes are even worse than previously disclosed.

Interim City Manager Dironna Moore Belton warned the Petersburg City Council and a crowd of taxpayers Tuesday night that she is just a few weeks away from having to shut down all city operations except for police, fire and ambulance services because the city is running out of cash.

Like many localities, Petersburg has long borrowed in the summer in anticipation of tax collections that would flow in later.

But after barely repaying last year’s $4.5 million loan and doing so only at the last minute, Ms. Belton is finding lenders are leery of advancing any more money to the city until Petersburg puts its finances in order.

The result: Petersburg soon will be short of the funds needed to cover the city payroll as well as debt obligations, Ms. Belton said.

The cashflow crunch could happen by mid- to late September, she said, forcing a shutdown.

According to David R. Eichenthal of the Richmond-based consulting firm PFM that Petersburg hired to help develop a rescue plan, the situation is just that serious.

If Petersburg “is unable to renegotiate short-term lending, it risks insolvency,” he stated. That means bankruptcy.

The bottom line: If the city cannot borrow again, “we have no chance,” Vice Mayor Samuel Parham said at Tuesday’s special meeting.

The City Council meeting was called to review the 19-point plan PFM developed that calls for raising taxes and cutting spending to get the city’s current budget in balance.

The council apparently never noticed when it approved the 2016-17 budget plan in June that there would only be $90 million in revenue to cover the proposed $102 million in spending — creating a $12 million deficit for a city that already has $18.8 million in unpaid bills.

The dire forecast from Ms. Belton resulted in the council voting 6-1 to approve the outlines of the PFM plan to reduce spending by $8.8 million and to generate $3.8 million in new revenue from increased taxes.

City Council is to meet Tuesday, Sept. 6, to hear from the public and then approve the plan that Ms. Belton calls a necessity if a loan is to be secured. Even after passage, Mr. Eichenthal noted it could take 60 days for the city to secure a loan, implying that a temporary shutdown is not out of the question.

Items in the plan include closing one of the city’s four fire stations, reducing the contribution to public schools by $4.1 million and extending the 10 percent cut in city employee pay for the full year, while reducing employee paid vacation days from 12 to 10 and requiring employees to contribute more to the cost of their health insurance.

In addition, the city’s five museums and visitor centers will close, a freeze will be imposed on the hiring of new police officers and other employees and city donations to nonprofits are to be eliminated.

At the same time, the plan calls on council to approve modest increases in personal property, meals and lodging taxes and to raise the tax on cigarettes from 10 cents a pack to a whopping 90 cents a pack.

The proposal is being advanced while the city is battling a host of other issues.

Last Friday, Ms. Belton temporarily saved trash and recycling collection in Petersburg by sending a $125,000 check to the regional Central Virginia Waste Management Authority, which handles that service.

However, the CVWMA has told Petersburg officials that the service would be canceled if it fails to make upcoming montly payments on time and fails to provide a plan by Friday, Aug. 26, to pay more than $700,000 still owed to CVWMA for service provided from February through July.

Meanwhile, a private company called First Vehicle Services last week ended its maintenance of Petersburg police cars, fire trucks and other emergency vehicles and began demanding $844,000 from the city that has gone unpaid.

According to Ms. Belton, the contract with First Vehicle was ended to save the city $1.5 million a year. But police and fire officials now worry that the city’s maintenance shop and its limited staff will be unable to handle the extra work.

Separately, the city is facing a federal probe after $390,000 in new fire equipment was repossessed last week, including breathing apparatus for firefighters. The equipment was supposed to be purchased through a $680,000 grant the Federal Emergency Management Agency provided to the city last year. But the equipment company insists that Petersburg never paid the bill. As yet, Ms. Belton has not said what happened to the grant and whether the money was improperly diverted to other uses.

Just as important, repairing the 2016-17 budget and bringing it into balance will not resolve the mound of unpaid bills Petersburg has amassed from previous budget years.

That includes $14 million owed to private businesses that have done work for the city and to regional agencies that house city prisoners and provide water and sewage treatment services.

Nor does it provide more than $4 million to repay loans the city made from its own agencies to fund operations in recent years.

As the PFM report puts it, “the city of Petersburg faces an immediate, severe and significant threat to its fiscal well-being. … Immediate action is needed to obtain timely short-term financing so the city can have adequate cash flow to pay vendors, employees and other obligations. …

“The magnitude of the city’s fiscal challenges demands that every revenue and spending option be considered.”