AUBURN — Councilors didn’t settle the budget at Monday’s meeting, but they did figure out how much they want to cut — $2.3 million off the initially proposed city and school budgets.

Now city and school staff have one more week — and councilors have one more meeting — to figure out how those cuts will get spread around. Councilors will host a special meeting on June 24 to adopt the final budget.

“We can pass something here along to the taxpayers I think they can accept,” Ward 5 Councilor Leroy Walker said.

Councilors have been working on their municipal budget since April. They approved a draft version of the budget and a capital plan at their June 3 meeting that would have increased taxes by $275 on a $150,000 home, knowing that they’d have to make deeper cuts. They wanted to wait until voters had weighed in on the school budget’s proposed 6.9 percent school spending increase.

Voters overwhelmingly turned that down at the polls last week. It would have increased the school budget to $38.4 million for the 2013-14 school year — a potential 11 percent property tax increase for the schools.

City Manager Clinton Deschene said school officials have mapped out $874,830 in cuts since the vote and more are being considered. School officials are scheduled to submit a new budget for council and voter approval in July, but councilors must adopt the budget for cityside services before the end of June.

Deschene presented 10 different scenarios for property taxes, ranging from matching the current tax rate of $19.59 per $1,000 of value to increasing it by $2.20.

All ten scenarios would involve cuts. A tax rate that didn’t change and charged taxpayers exactly what they paid this year would have required $4.5 million in cuts — roughly the entire Public Works budget.

Deschene said Auburn can expect to get $860,530 less from the state in the form of revenue sharing, and councilors had to decide how they would respond to that cut — by increasing taxes to cover the loss or cutting services. That piece alone would increase property taxes on a $150,000 home by an additional $64.

Councilor Tizz Crowley said she favored cutting services.

“Voters are getting what they’ve asked for, and we just need to move that discussion back to Augusta,” Crowley said. “If we’ve lost $860,000, we’ve lost it, and I’d appreciate not passing it along to the taxpayers but through a loss of services. It’s what Augusta did, and if people are not happy, I’d encourage them to contact the governor and their state legislators.”

Councilor finally settled on a $20.66 tax rate per $1,000 of value that would increase taxes on a $150,000 home by about $160.48.

Deschene said that tax rate still requires $2.3 million in cuts — $1.4 million more after the school department’s $874,830 is figured in.

Deschene said he’d work with department heads to figure how those cuts get spread around the city before the June 24 special meeting.

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