Five new members of Seattle’s City Council said during their campaigns that they would like to audit the city budget for waste and redundancies --before raising or adding new taxes.

But now, as a $230 million city budget deficit looms, the realities of a time-consuming and expensive audit process are leading those new councilmembers to back off the idea. That means they likely have to take a hard look at something they did not want to do: add new revenue through taxes.