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TUCSON - Tough decisions to balance next year's Tucson city budget and public access television will see some big changes.

Council members designated two and half hours of their meeting to the budget, deciding what needs to be scrapped or saved and what needs to be discussed more.

One item it voted to go into affect immediately was the consolidation of Access Tucson and channel 12.

The issue really revolved around Access Tucson. The council voted to move channel 12 into the Access Tucson building and just operate both at the same time.

Vice Mayor Rodney Glassman said it was a mistake. "We have serious crisis' involving today's budget which is why I voted against committing our dollars that should be going to core services then to non profits at this time."

But the rest of the council said it was necessary to keep access Tucson on the air.

Councilman Steve Kozachik said, "Right now they're getting a little over $300,000 a year and channel 12 is getting three times that. One of the goals of this motion is to equalize the funding for both of them."

But workers with the public access TV station said though it may in fact keep them on the air, it won't save their job.

Executive Director of Access Tucson Sam Behrend said, "What they did today was save city jobs at the expense of Access Tucson jobs. Our people are going to be laid off but the channel 12 people are going to come over and help us perform our functions."

They also fear the priorities between the two stations won't be equal.

Lisa Horner works at Access Tucson. She said, "It's a bad, bad moment for parody of public voice vs. government voice."

The merger goes into affect immediately, and the city plans to break the lease on the building where channel 12 is now.