AUBURN – Councilors need to trim $157,685 from their current spending plan to stay under a newly adopted spending cap.

Councilors adopted a cap on city spending Monday that’s tied to the national Consumer Price Index for the previous year. For the coming budget year, that’s 3.2 percent.

“This is what taxpayers have asked for, what we’ve wanted,” Ron Potvin of 82 Northern Ave. said

But councilors were not unanimous. Ward 1’s Dick Gleason said he supported the cap the first time it came before councilors, but he wouldn’t support it this time. Gleason said the cap was mostly symbolic. Future city councilors can vote to override the cap by a simple majority.

“I’d be a lot more willing to support it, if it actually had some teeth,” Gleason said. He said he wasn’t comfortable legislating future council actions, however.

Gleason convinced Councilor Ellen Peters to vote against the cap. The cap was approved 5-2.

“It may be symbolic, but I think it’s a pretty good reflection of what the public wants,” Councilor Bob Hayes said. “It is necessary, even if it is symbolic.”

Now councilors will need to work to stay under the cap. The current budget, presented to councilors earlier in the evening, calls for a 3.45 percent increase compared to last year – $2.18 million more than last year’s budget for municipal operations, schools and county taxes. Staying under the cap would mean cutting $157,685.

If councilors want to have no budget increase, they’ll have to find a way to trim that entire $2.18 million.

Councilors will continue their budget discussions at 5:30 p.m. tonight and again Thursday night. The budget is due for a first reading on June 4.