One small thing here

Closing city buildings on Fridays doesn't actually mean a shorter work week for city workers. It just rearranges the same 35 hours they're working now in a less convenient way for both the workers and the public. Doesn't actually save money but does attract attention which is, of course, the point.

And yes there's a punchline

He (Nagin) said the budget "is too serious to play games with."

Update: It occurs to me that I could be completely wrong about this. They seem to be touting the utility savings derived from closing buildings for one day. Of course there are a lot of city buildings which still operate on the weekends so we're probably talking about marginal savings here. On the other hand, I have read about other cities with budget problems implementing this kind of thing so maybe there's something to it I'm not seeing.