MEMPHIS, Tenn. — It’s almost unprecedented, but the Memphis Fire Department has done it; it is asking for less money for next year’s budget.

It was welcome news to the Memphis City Council members who clapped when they heard the presentation.

It’s not what Memphis City Council members were expecting, especially in financially tough times for the city.

Memphis fire director Gina Sweat is asking for significantly less in her 2017 budget.

“For fiscal year 2017 I’m asking for $459,000 less than we budgeted last year,” she said.

Sweat presented a total budget of more than $172 million and said hiring more firefighters helped reduce the budget drastically because less money will be spent on overtime.

“In 2015 we were able to hire 200 firefighters, in 2016 we hired 58 that started in March, so a little over a year we’ve hired 258 firefighters,” she said.

Although hiring all those extra firefighters helped save a lot of money, administrators also looked at other ways to cut spending.

“What they told us today was that they brought all the staff together and they asked the question, let’s go line by line and see where we can have some efficiencies in our department,” said Councilwoman Patrice Robinson.

One thing the department won’t be doing to save money is the brownout program that temporarily put a truck out of service.

“I haven’t had brownouts for over a year, the budget I proposed today does not include brownouts,” she said.

The department said although it’s asking for less money, it still plans to monitor how it manages the personnel line.