AUBURN — City Manager Clinton Deschene said he hopes residents will attend Monday night’s workshop meeting when councilors consider departmental budget requests.

Councilors are scheduled to review spending requests from the Police and Fire departments and from the 911 service. The meeting is scheduled to begin at 5:30 p.m. in Auburn Hall.

“As we go through budgets for the next two months, the meetings are designed to allow for about a half hour of public comment as we go through each major area,” Deschene said. “We want comment after the public safety departments and we’re hopeful people will want to come and talk.”

Councilors reviewed budget requests from the city departments under the public administration functions at the Feb. 24 meeting. Those departments include finance, city clerk, computers, assessing, human resources and health and social services.

Councilors are scheduled to review joint services, economic development, block grants and the Auburn Public Library budgets on March 17.

At the March 24 meeting, they are scheduled to review public works, engineering, parks, recreation, the city manager, mayor and City Council budgets, and proposed spending plans for the water and sewer districts, county tax requests, legal spending, workers’ compensation and the city’s special fund and enterprise fund.

Once those department reviews are done, Deschene will present his draft budget to the councilors. That should happen in April, with councilors adopting a final budget for the 2014-15 fiscal year in May.

“There will still be a public hearing much later, but this is the planning phases,” Deschene said. “If people want to come now, we’ve opened up our workshops for better public engagement.”

staylor@sunjournal.com

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