Yes, sewer and water rates are going up next year. No arguments there.

But by how much? That discussion prompted a doozy of a spat during today's long, drawn-out Portland City Council meeting—pitting Mayor Sam Adams against Commissioner Dan Saltzman, in the first real snit in what's been a (mostly) quiet and congenial city budget season.

It started when Saltzman, commissioner of the Bureau of Environmental Services, defied the mayor's request to come up with a plan for a 5.5 percent increase, instead whacking what had been a 6.5 percent hike down only to 6 percent. (The mayor this month had pushed both BES and the Water Bureau to cut planned rate increases by a full percentage point.

It ended with a 3-2 defeat for the mayor—after Adams tried early Wednesday morning to get the city's financial planners to come up with their own plan for Saltzman's bureau. The council next week will formally consider Saltzman's 6 percent plan. The rushed nature of the shift proved too much for a divided council to overcome. Only Randy Leonard, whose bureau was willing to take more cuts to help Saltzman get to 5.5 percent, joined Adams in demanding a switch to the smaller increase.

"We should leave time for things to come up," Amanda Fritz said, noting that prominent policy critics of the city had commented in favor the 6 percent hike.

"With all due respect, I came prepared to support the 6 percent increase," Commissioner Nick Fish said.

As always, given the history between Adams and Saltzman, the dispute took on a life outsize to the dollar amounts at play. It also got rather personal.

First Saltzman called the cuts "more or less arbitrary recommendations."

Then Adams jumped back at Saltzman: "It has been difficult to get the information we requested from your bureau."

"Coming at the last minute and characterizing my office as not being cooperative, that lacks integrity," Saltzman replied.

Later in the back and forth, Adams said: "You and your bureau have contributed to us having to do this today."

And then, looking at the proposed new cuts—amounting to a couple of hundred thousand dollars: "I don't think it passes the straight-face test to say these items down here, which are part of tens of millions in line items can't be trimmed further... Let's vote."

Eventually they did. And Adams was rebuffed.

But not before Leonard got off one good comment. He remembered Vera Katz contemplating a plan to take over all the bureaus come budget time, a mayor's "prerogative," to crib one of Adams' words of the day. Now, he told, Adams, "you understand why."