Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin announced Friday that she will plug the city's budget shortfall by not filling 53 police officer vacancies, not hiring 27 Fire Department recruits and closing the city's oldest fire station.

City Council leaders said they would see whether they can avoid some of the cuts after further reviewing Franklin's plan.

The mayor is laying off 78 workers and eliminating 112 vacancies. In all, the cuts to the city's general fund budget total $21.6 million.

"I think these cuts . . . will have serious implications for the city for a long time to come," Franklin told reporters Friday.

The city's general fund budget is about $575 million. It does not include water and sewer employees, garbage collectors and airport workers. Those employees work for departments not included in the general fund and are exempt from the layoffs.

Franklin said she exceeded the $14.6 million in cuts recommended by the council because of the uncertainty over the economy and how much the city will collect from property taxes.

Among those disappointed by Friday's announcement was West End resident Kwabena Nkromo. He and other community leaders were involved in a preservation effort of Fire Station 7, which Fire Chief Kelvin J. Cochran said will close by Monday. The fire station opened in 1910, officials said.

"I am outraged by this," said Nkromo, chairman of Neighborhood Planning Unit T, which covers the fire station.

Cochran said response times to fire and medical emergencies should not suffer in the area because there are four fire stations within three miles of Fire Station 7, located at 535 Whitehall St.

However, the vice president of the city's firefighter union believes closing the fire station and the decision not to hire the recruits will affect response times throughout Atlanta.

"We're going to hurt," fire Capt. Stephen Hill said.

Franklin's cuts include eliminating 20 jobs in the city public defender's office and 13 positions in the solicitor's office, which prosecutes the city's misdemeanor cases. The mayor proposed major cuts to those departments earlier this year, but the council restored the funding. Councilman Howard Shook, chairman of the council's finance/executive committee, said his colleagues will look closely at those cuts and see whether there are ways to restore funding.

Atlanta police union leader Scott Kreher said Friday that not being able to hire officers will cause an increase in crime and hurt Police Department recruitment.

Kreher blamed Franklin and the council for the cuts. The mayor and the council blamed each other Friday.

Faced with a $140 million projected budget shortfall for the fiscal year that started July 1, Franklin closed most of that gap by laying off 441 city workers and eliminating 788 additional positions. She proposed a property tax increase of about $30 for the average city homeowner to help fill a remaining $12 million gap. The council voted instead in late June against the tax increase, suggesting more budget cuts and asking her to cut $14.6 million.

"I do not agree with the council's actions," she said.

Franklin said the city will now be unable to reach the city's goal of having 2,000 police officers by 2010, the year she leaves office. The Police Department has 1,768 sworn officers, department spokeswoman Sgt. Lisa Keyes said Friday.

City Council President Lisa Borders countered Friday that her colleagues have consistently added more money to the city budget in recent years for police.

"The mayor has been in office for nearly seven years and we haven't gotten to 2,000 officers," Borders said in uncharacteristically sharp comments Friday. "When you look at the attrition rate, the recruitment rate, the morale in the Police Department, I would submit that the leadership needs to look at those to get to that 2,000 number."