As they unveil this year’s budget plan, officials in the mayor’s office largely aim to convince state lawmakers that the city cannot cover the added costs to complete the island’s cash-strapped rail project.

“There’s no extra money,” Gary Kurokawa, the city’s deputy budget director, said Tuesday. “Every year it’s a struggle for the city. It’s never a position that we have extra money.”

His comments came a day after the state Senate’s Ways and Means Committee voted 8-0 to strip a proposed tax extension from its rail measure and push the city to cover the project’s multi-billion-dollar shortfall instead.

That measure, Senate Bill 1183, now proposes an end to the state’s 10 percent fee on Oahu’s general excise tax surcharge, also known as “the skim.” The city would then have to come up with about a half a billion dollars in rail costs — plus avoid spending any more contingency money for unforeseen costs.

Ways and Means Chairwoman Jill Tokuda (D, Kailua-Kaneohe) told city leaders Monday that after reading the city’s fiscal year 2016 budget she’s convinced they could find a way to cover those rail expenses without another surcharge extension.

She pointed to the city’s own projected annual increases of more than $30 million in property tax revenues through 2021 — the natural gains from rising property values — as well as smaller projected increases in other taxes that the city collects, such as the fuel tax and the public utility franchise tax.

Tokuda further flagged money carried over from 2015 that comprised more than a quarter of the city’s nearly $3 billion budget in 2016. While most of that money is restricted to specific uses such as sewer, bus and affordable housing, Tokuda said the city should consider using its unrestricted “carryover” dollars to help fund rail construction.

Using those sources, plus an influx of about $300 million from the state’s ending its controversial rail-tax skim, the city should be able to string together a plan that covers the rest of rail construction to Ala Moana Center, Tokuda said Monday.

However, Kurokawa said Tuesday that all of the city’s growing revenues and unrestricted carryover dollars are already spoken for, and that the city will tap all those funds just to try to sustain city services.

Furthermore, the budget package released today will include some spending cuts because the city’s obligations to collective-bargaining agreements and debt payments are growing more burdensome, Kurokawa said. He declined to go into detail on those cuts Tuesday because the city hadn’t yet released its budget.

In a statement Wednesday, Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell said his administration’s budget proposal “reduces department spending and addresses the city’s increasing mandatory obligations.” It also did not specify where those cuts would occur.

Kurokawa said he plans to deliver the city’s new budget details to Tokuda and her aides today.

“The senator is right that we should look at everything, and we appreciate her making suggestions,” he said Monday. “We’re trying to give her some numbers to support our position that there is no extra money.”

At the Ways and Means hearing Monday, Tokuda chastised city leaders for projecting a more than $60 million jump in transit-related expenses in 2019 without listing any way to pay for that increase. She called the move “unbalanced” and “irresponsible.”

City budget officials included that projection merely for planning purposes, Kurokawa said Tuesday. It was based on an outdated rail financial plan that dates back to when the transit system was anticipated to start running in 2019, he added. Budget officials had to use those rail numbers because they were the only ones available, he said.

Nonetheless, Tokuda said the example shows that the city expects state lawmakers to help it solve the rail-funding challenges that it has known about for years.

“You’re blaming the Legislature saying it’s (our) fault,” Tokuda fumed to city leaders Monday. “I feel like you guys were setting us up.”