As to the second, I did not realize they were at the mercy of the City Manager. However, I see their responsiblity differently. Were I the Chief, I would consider my primary responsibility to be to my employees, and I would buck the city manager as often as I thought I should. And, I would expect a good city manager to understand why I was doing so, have a reasonable explanation for why he was vetoing any of my requests, and make every attempt to solve the problems that vetoing created. As I've said, if increasing manpower is an impossibility based on current revenues, then I'd look for ways to decrease demand on those people.
I know for a fact both Chief's are between "a rock and a hard place". In a perfect world a reasonable city manager would never let this happen. When that city manager and mayor together start acting unreasonable.

Decreasing the demand is an easy pill for me to swallow. I've said that along time ago. Many officers are doing jobs that civilian's used to do. Those positions were cut year after year..that's frustrating also. Watching officers that could be answering calls do civilian jobs.

Then you have CALEA standards that have been implemented over the last couple of years. That also demanded more specialized units to be formed. That's another discussion.

Then we have units that were the counsel's pet projects like Nuisance Abatement. That required 3-5 officers and a secretary to form yet another specialized unit.

We could go on and on. But you get the point.