Mayor Nenshi is not getting his way in budget deliberations at City Hall and it’s starting to show.

The Mayor blasted some councillors on Tuesday night for not giving enough thought to the budget in front of them right now, of treating taxpayers like an ATM machine and playing games.

Then he did it again on Wednesday morning.

That’s a clear break from what we were used to with Dave Bronconnier. Bronco would lose his share of budget battles and also win his share. But he would never come right out and talk of specific aldermen doing specific things.

To be clear, Bronco would talk about the grandstanding (cough, cough Ric McIvor, cough) but wouldn’t say aldermen were doing their constituents a disservice.

This is definitely not to say there were not contentious debates with respect to the budget when Bronco was sitting in the middle of the crowd, but the lion’s share of that was taken care of before council went in front of the cameras.

Nenshi seems to prefer to air his feelings to the media. Probably not the way to build some consensus when it comes time to go to work on the most important job of council.

We were kicking this whole issue around in the newsroom today (things can get heated in this place) and I’m of the opinion that since Nenshi is really not a politician, but is a very smart man, that he’s simply testing the waters with this verbal assault on the other true-politicians on council.

The other thought is, Nenshi has promised to do things differently than those who came before him on council and this is simply another example.

On both counts, he’d be well advised to keep his opinions to himself on the voting intentions or budgetary inclinations of the Aldermen. And probably maintaining the status quoa on working out the budget might not be such a bad thing afterall.