millions of dollars a year. In August 2010, Fitch Ratings downgraded the city's bond credit rating, citing the administration's use of reserve funds for general operating expenses and under-funding of its pension funds, and noted that the city faced rising fixed operating costs yet lacked plans for new revenue. Wall Street analysts noted that the Daley administration began drawing on the city's reserves as early as 2006, before the 2008–2012 global recession. "While there had been sound economic growth in years prior to 2008, there were still sizable fund balance drawdowns in both 2006 and 2007," Fitch wrote. The city's budgets continued to increase even after the recession began, to more than $6 billion a year, and, when under-funded city employee pension funds were included, the city's annual deficit exceeded $1 billion. In January 2011, Moody's Investors Service downgraded to a "negative" outlook some of the revenue bonds issued for the $15 billion O'Hare Modernization Program and related infrastructure projects, citing the city's plan to postpone repayment of interest and principal on some construction bonds. In his annual budget address in City Council Chambers on October 15, 2008, Daley proposed a 2009 budget totaling $5.97 billion, including not filling 1,350 vacancies on the 38,000 employee city payroll and $150 million in new revenue from a then-obscure parking meter lease deal to help erase a $469 million budget shortfall. The Daley administration employed an in-house staff of more than 50 public relations officers across City departments at a cost of $4.7 million, and millions more on seven private public relations firms. "It's worth it", Daley said. On the first day of City Council hearings on Daley's 2009 budget proposal, several aldermen questioned the administration's public relations spending. On November 4, 2008, Jacquelyn Heard, the mayor's press secretary, said the city would halt spending on 10 public relations contracts that could have paid as much as $5 million each. In his annual budget address on October 21, 2009, Daley projected a deficit for 2009 of more than $520 million. Daley proposed a 2010 budget totaling $6.14 billion, including spending $370 million from the $1.15 billion proceeds from the parking meter lease. In his annual budget address on October 13, 2010, Daley projected a deficit for 2010 of $655 million, the largest in city history. Daley proposed a 2011 budget totaling $6.15 billion, including spending all but $76 million of what remained of