An alternative to wage freezes

Like so many cities and towns around the country, the city where I work is facing enormous budget deficits for the coming year. The mayor is considering wage freezes. The schools are being asked to cut their budgets by 10-20%. That is pretty significant when you consider that there already is not enough money for basic school supplies like paper. The idea of wage freezes looks okay on paper but still doesn't guarantee that people won't be laid off.

Here is an alternate idea:
School headquarters is located in a really nice, really large building downtown. Many of the schools in the city will be closed as of the end of the school year due to low student enrollment and or poor performance indicators. Sell the big fancy building downtown which is in a prime location. The city will make a good chunk of money of the sale ,which can be used to balance the budget and hopefully generate a little extra money for the coming years. People who work in the downtown building can be relocated to one of the soon to be empty school buildings. If those buildings are good enough to send the children to, they ought to be good enough for the higher level management types of people to work in.