Near the end of a contentious National City Council meeting Tuesday, City Manager Doug Schulze made a startling announcement. The current National City budget, which councilmembers approved in June, authorizes spending $13 million more than the city expects to earn in revenue. Then, in 2025, city councilmembers began approving a series of raises for city employees that councilmembers said were long overdue. In other words, if the City Council had not awarded employees those raises, National City’s budget problems would look a lot different. “The city manager is gone,” Schulze said, describing what happens when a city declares insolvency.