I'm almost 99% sure Adams is going to trumpet all the vacancies and reduced headcount as a savings triumph.

The problem is that if/when economic conditions improve (which are the stated reasons for the 7% cut), it will take a very, very long time for employee morale and ability to improve.

Another effect of these cuts (which explicitly rule out layoffs) is that you're losing the most valuable employees. Those folks with options and the ability to move elsewhere are going to do so. The ones that stay are going to be the folks who have to stay due to their circumstances (pension/healthcare/family, etc) or who can't.

That's fine for a lot of jobs that don't require too much training, but it kind of sounds like a death knell for skilled knowledge workers, like those in IT, engineers, programmers, etc. The city had difficulty recruiting those folks before, and it's going to worse after.