AUBURN – Councilors will wait another two weeks to vote on the city’s budget while staff tries to trim another $600,000.

Councilors tabled their first reading of the fiscal year 2004 budget until June 16, directing City Manager Pat Finnigan and her staff to bring any property tax increases down to 95 cents for each $1,000 of value.

Councilors settled at $1.08 coming into Monday’s public hearing on the budget. But that tax increase – which would amount to an additional $86 of property tax on an $80,000 home – proved to be unpopular to constituents who faced the council Monday.

“We’ve heard a lot of talk about growth in Lewiston-Auburn, and yet here we are, with our taxes going up again,” said Kelly St. Denis, of 1792 Pownal Road. “How much more can we take?”

St. Denis criticized the City Council for pondering a tax increase while the School Department budget stayed flat. The Auburn School Department’s budget is scheduled to go up by $232,000, all of it from money other than property taxes.

“The city doesn’t appear to be concerned that a number of employees have been cut out of the school budget,” St. Denis said. “These were teachers and administrators that all have direct impact on our children’s lives.”

School Committee members attending the meeting said that concerned them as well. Member Theodore Belitsos pointed out that councilors directed the School Committee not to increase their share of property taxes this year.

“You have a definite credibility problem now,” Belitsos said. “What happens next year when we begin working on the budgets and you ask us to maintain the line again? What should we do?”

Councilors were scheduled to vote on the tax increase on first reading and schedule the second reading for two weeks.

“Keep in mind that we are not done deliberating on this,” Mayor Normand W. Guay said. “The tax rate we are considering is not the tax rate we think we’ll end up with.”

Councilors agreed, postponing the first reading vote to June 16 and the second reading to June 23.

That left the matter of finding an acceptable tax increase. Councilor Marcel Bilodeau suggested tying the city’s tax increase to whatever property value increase the city receives. That’s estimated to be about $1.08 million. With lost investment revenues and cuts in state funding, Assistant City Manager Mark Adams said that would amount to a 95 cent tax increase, raising the city’s tax rate to $29.39 per thousand dollars of assessed value.

City Manager Finnigan is scheduled to suggest cuts to reach that tax rate at the June 9 workshop meeting.

staylor@sunjournal.com

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