Dallas City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert is willing to face budget reality, even if the City Council is not.

Tolbert’s announcement Friday that she is taking steps to slow spending at City Hall amid falling revenues and growing costs is more than welcome. We just wish the council would show the same willingness to tighten up.

Tolbert sent a memo to her department directors Friday morning that detailed what we read as a $34 million budget gap that has opened this fiscal year.

We aren’t surprised. The price of paying cops and firefighters and adding to their pensions has only grown since voters adopted a referendum requiring the city to increase police hiring and pay.

And, indeed, that’s a big part of the budget gap that has opened — $16.4 million to be precise. Meanwhile, rising insurance costs and falling sales tax revenue have added to the total deficit.

If a gap that big opens in the middle of a fiscal year, it’s most likely going to get worse come time to pass the new budget.

Frankly, if this is the wake up the city needs to tighten its belt now, that’s a good thing.

Our expectation is that sales tax revenue will continue to fall, and that the Legislature will continue to extend property tax relief. Swollen municipal budgets like Dallas’ will have to be cut. (The city’s general fund budget has ballooned to $1.8 billion versus $1.2 billion a decade ago.)

The trims Tolbert put in place now are modest, from cutting overtime to a hiring slowdown for non-uniformed departments to cutbacks on travel. We would like to see this sort of urgency for savings become a part of everyday management at City Hall (not to mention other local governments).

But credit where credit is due. Tolbert has to take action to ensure the city’ s budget remains balanced.

Hopefully, the City Council will awaken to its own fiscal responsibility. So far, the signals haven’t been promising.

Presented earlier his month with a reasonable plan to close just four underused library branches and move toward a more efficient and responsive regional model, the council blinked.

And we know that many on council harbor dreams of expanded city programs.

That’s the wrong way to think. The council needs to be thinking about structural changes that will substantially lower costs across the board.

Absent that, we will see pressure to raise the tax rate. That is not an acceptable solution.