When city budgets get tough, arts and recreation programs are typically among the first to get cut.

Some Atlanta City Council members and others suspect a similar situation when Mayor Shirley Franklin sends her proposed 2008-09 budget to the council within the next 30 days.

With a possible $119 million shortfall in the budget that starts July 1, Franklin is considering 25 percent cuts to all departments except public safety.

If the City Council approves the across-the-board cuts, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis of the city's current budget shows that the Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs department will lose more money than any nonpublic safety department — $8.1 million.

And some folks who rely on the city for arts and recreation funding are hearing whispers that the cuts will be deeper than 25 percent.

City officials won't say. Franklin's spokeswoman, Beverly Isom, said Friday the city is still working on the budget and officials would not comment on the possible impact of any cuts.

Myrna Anderson-Fuller, who runs Hammonds House, a museum in Atlanta's West End that receives about $6,000 a year from the city, fears the cuts will end at least one exhibition and hurt other cultural programs in Atlanta.

Anderson-Fuller says arts programs are critical, pointing to a city study released Monday that found that arts programs employ about 23,000 people in Atlanta.

"The arts are generally the service to get cut because many people don't see the value," said Anderson-Fuller. "Most of them are already bare bones."

Councilwoman Felicia Moore worries that cuts to the city's arts and recreation programs may limit how many workers the city will have to run its swimming pools.

"If you don't have things for kids to do over the summer, then some of them look for other things to do and it becomes a public safety issue," she said.

Atlanta's Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs department cares for about 340 parks and gardens, 22 swimming pools and natatoriums and the fabled Oakland Cemetery. It is responsible for six golf courses, the Atlanta Civic Center and puts on major annual events such as the Atlanta Jazz Festival. The department has about 440 employees.

Other departments also will be affected. Except for the public safety departments, Atlanta now spends the most on Public Works $59.6 million in the current budget.

It could end up losing fewer dollars than Parks because the mayor plans to take the allocation for garbage collection and recycling, about $32.8 million, from the Public Works budget and make those services funded solely through collection fees.

The city is anticipating that $119 million less will be available for its next budget. The estimate comes as the Atlanta faces a possible $65 million deficit this fiscal year. Franklin said that shortfall was created by rising fuel and pension costs, along with staff errors such as overestimating how much of a surplus the city had.

Council members recall that the Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs department was hit hard earlier this decade when the city had annual budget deficits as high as $82 million. Between 2001 and 2003, the city cut its parks budget by 17 percent, from $25.3 million to $20.9 million.

Since then, the department has been praised and urged to do more. In January, KaBoom, a nonprofit group that helps build playgrounds, gave the city a $25,000 grant for its efforts to improve recreation spaces and programs.

In March 2007, a city task force urged Atlanta to create a fund for arts organizations, saying City Hall does not spend enough money on arts and culture programs.

The city allocates about $600,000 in grants each year to arts organizations. Metro Atlanta Arts & Culture Coalition CEO Flora Maria Garcia said the groups often leverage that money to get grants from private donors to stay afloat.

"It's the Good Housekeeping seal of approval because it signals to the private sector that these are arts organizations that are worthy of funding," Garcia said.

The "seal," however, may be more difficult to obtain this year.