DETROIT, MI -- The city is anxiously awaiting a decision this week from the governor on appointing a emergency manager, a decision that could lead to even deeper cuts to city services in the pursuit of a balanced budget.

Residents have seen widespread pay cuts, outsourcing moves, park closures and fire station closures over the past year as Mayor Dave Bing and City Council fought to keep control of the city.

But a look at another historic major municipal turnaround indicates that the cuts Detroit could see under receivership could be even more painful.

Historian Jonathan Soffer, author of "Ed Koch: and the Rebuilding of New York," spoke to national morning radio program The Takeaway on Monday about lessons Detroit can learn New York's financial turnaround in the 1970s.

On the brink of bankruptcy in 1975, New York was taken over by an emergency financial control board, which led the city back to a balanced budget by 1981, Soffer said.

"The initial impact of the austerity that was imposed by the Emergency Financial Control Board in 1975 cost more than it actually saved in the amount they cut out of the budget," Soffer said.

"Cutting the fire department resulted in big parts of the city being burned down. Cutting probation meant that you had a higher rate of recidivism, by prisoners so you wound up having them in prison, which was more expensive than have them on probation and paying for probation officers."

Although the cuts were brutal and New York had several advantages that Detroit doesn’t currently have, including a more diverse economy and more representatives in Congress, Soffer said there were things about that turnaround that Michigan could use in Detroit.

"There’s a lesson for Detroit in what happened (in New York) in the 70s, because although the cuts were meat-ax cuts and they were terrible, there were elements that were somewhat better and that might help Detroit in that experience," Soffer said.

"One was that the Emergency Financial Control Board was not just bankers.It was actually a tripartite board of bankers, government representatives from the state government and city government and unions.

"And the unions were interested in this not only as workers, as public employees, but because to keep the city afloat, the state refinanced a lot of the city’s debt with... bonds. These bonds would not be bought on the open market, necessarily, so they had to persuade union pension funds to invest in these bonds. So the city’s workers, beyond just keeping their jobs also had a huge stake in keeping the city afloat financially."

Listen to the full interview here.