Oakland’s next mayor and City Council are confronting a potential financial crisis, with new budget projections showing a budget deficit of more than $200 million over the next two years.

The city’s finance department wrote in a report that early projections show Oakland’s general fund, which pays for police, fire, senior centers and other city departments, facing up to a $105.8 million deficit in the fiscal year 2023-24. In the fiscal year of 2024-25, the general fund could see a $102.5 million deficit. The projections are not final.

While tax collections and other sources of revenue are expected to climb during the period, spending growth is slated to be higher, resulting in a shortfall.

The report comes as residents complain they are in dire need of basic government services, like cleaning up the streets and responding to crime and homelessness. The city is also trying to hire to fill the nearly one-fifth of government jobs currently vacant.

Mayor-elect Sheng Thao promised a hiring blitz in the city to improve city services within the first six months of her term. Some of the highest vacancy rates are in key city functions: about 30% of jobs in the building department are open, while nearly a third of positions in the transportation department are unfilled. Fully half of the jobs in violence prevention also are empty.

Thao detailed bold plans to address homelessness and promised to invest more city funds in violence prevention. But many of those ideals may be stalled in the spring when Thao and the rest of the Council have to amend the budget to address the deficit. In 2021, Oakland passed a $3.85 billion, two-year budget — proposed by Mayor Libby Schaaf and passed…