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A council in a "truly perilous" financial state is set to hold emergency talks, but has vowed to protect vulnerable people.
Northamptonshire County Council is facing "unprecedented" cuts in order to save £70m by next March.
Its leader said services could be cut back to a "core offer" but a "robust" system would be retained to safeguard children and vulnerable adults.
The authority has imposed emergency spending controls twice in six months.
An extraordinary meeting will be held on Wednesday, with the aim of discussing cutbacks which would see services stripped back to the legal minimum.
Prof Tony Travers, a local government expert at the London School of Economics, said the council's position could force it to breach statutory duties.
'Completely unprecedented'
Council leader Matthew Golby warned the authority has to decide what it can "realistically provide".
He said they would "safeguard all children and young people" while ensuring a "robust safeguarding system to protect vulnerable adults".
The offer would also provide services like waste collection, carry out "sufficient maintenance" of public highways and plan for school places, Mr Golby added.
A council source told the BBC the scale of possible cuts was "huge...completely unprecedented".
A section 114 notice issued last week, severely curtailing spending, follows the issuing of the same notice in February.
Prior to this, there had only been two issued in the UK since 1988.
Brian Roberts, one of two government-appointed commissioners overseeing the council, said the latest notice "underlines the truly perilous state" of the authority's finances.
He added: "To put itself on a secure financial footing very difficult decisions will need to be taken. It is clear the time for these decisions is now."
Meanwhile, the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy has warned that other authorities are facing similar pressures.
Its chief executive, Rob Whiteman, said last month: "The National Audit Office's most recent financial sustainability report points out that 10% of upper-tier authorities are similarly vulnerable to financial failure.
"That could be more than 20 councils at risk along with the essential services for several million citizens."
Analysis - Sam Read, BBC political reporter
There have been many arguments about how Northamptonshire County Council got to this point.
Many say underfunding by central government has played a part, but a report earlier this year by a government-appointed inspector was clear that problems are down to years of mismanagement by senior officers and councillors.
It's left the authority in a situation no council has been in before.
Today it will agree new priorities for the future that in effect leave it just fulfilling its legal obligations. Many believe in reality it won't even manage that, with a report to today's meeting saying cuts to even priority areas "continue to be inevitable".
We should then get more clarity on specific cuts in the coming weeks.
But these are all stop-gap measures. The authority is expected to be replaced with a new, unitary council in 2020.