AUBURN – Androscoggin County may cost less to run in 2009. Yet, its proposed $7.6 million tax levy may feel far worse.

The reason: budget cuts at the state level.

“People talk about the coming doom and gloom,” Mechanic Falls Town Manager John Hawley said Wednesday. “It’s here. It’s now.”

His town’s $700,000 municipal budget will lose about $47,000 in state revenue sharing in the coming year, he said.

He’s not alone.

The lost aid will hit each of Androscoggin County’s 14 towns, Lewiston City Administrator James Bennett warned.

As a member of the County Budget Committee, Bennett helped unanimously pass a 2009 budget that cut the overall tax levy by just over 1 percent and slashed spending by more than 5 percent.

First, he begged for deeper cuts.

“I’m begging you because of the impact it’s going to have on the towns in the county, particularly in Lewiston,” he said.

In 25 years of working on town budgets across Maine, he has never had a tougher year, he said.

The state’s municipal revenue sharing reduction will likely cost Lewiston more than $400,000, he said. That and other lost revenue, such as the drop in excise taxes, could force him to raise Lewiston’s property taxes, he said.

However, the city’s tax bill from the county could drop.

The county proposal – which spreads the tax levy across the Androscoggin’s towns based on state-defined property values – calls for a 0.33 percent drop for Lewiston.

Auburn would see a steeper decline, due to its recent revaluation. The city’s share of the county bill is projected to fall by 8.37 percent this year, a decline of almost $165,000.

But some of the county’s smaller towns would get hit with increases. Hardest hit would be Leeds, Minot and Sabattus, which would all see increases of more than 5 percent.

Bennett asked county commissioners to consider taking $30,000 from a specially designated capital fund to offset some of the tax burden. The funds would be taken from a roughly $250,000 pool of money set aside for the creation of a new county dispatch center.

Commissioners declined.

The three-member board is scheduled to meet Thursday at 2:30 p.m. to finalize the budget.

At the start of Wednesday’s meeting, commissioners announced that they were reducing the proposal by $20,000 due to falling oil prices. The county is now paying $1.49 less per gallon for its fuel oil, commission Chairman Randall Greenwood said.