HALLOWELL — City Council members voted to hand control of budget cuts to City Manager Gary Lamb during its meeting Monday, expecting Lamb to work with staff to cut an additional $193,000 from the municipal budget to help lower taxes next year.

Gary Lamb Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal file

Councilors also finalized their approval of a package of $181,468 in cuts, discussed at a Finance Committee meeting last week. The two sets of cuts together would reduce the city’s $3.9 million municipal budget to just over $3.5 million — about a 9% reduction.

City officials began the process of cutting the budget more than four months ago, when residents submitted a petition asking the council to reverse its approval of the 2024-25 budget, which raised property taxes by about 20% on average. The City Council then reversed its vote and tried to cut the budget to return money to taxpayers during this fiscal year, only to learn two months later that the path they were taking was illegal.

City officials then shifted to the current approach: freezing several hundred thousand dollars in spending to roll over to next year’s budget as surplus funds, allowing the next City Council to lessen some of the burden on taxpayers.

Ward 1 Councilor and Finance Committee Chairperson Kate Dufour said it was time the City Council stop “micromanaging” the budget and allow staff to make the remaining spending freezes as they see fit.

“Again, I’ll stress the fact that we’re six months into a fiscal year, and making the cuts are going to become much, much more difficult and, I can’t come up with another word other than dangerous,” Dufour said. “I don’t mean the sky is falling, by any means, but I think the city manager and staff know exactly where those cuts need to come from. There’s no need for us to keep second-guessing it. Let’s just, please, get this done.”

Ward 5 Councilor Patrick Wynne, who has been opposed to the spending cuts since city officials learned they could not return funds to taxpayers in this fiscal year, was the lone vote against finalizing the $181,468 in cuts. Wynne and Ward 3 Councilor Benjamin Gagnon also voted against giving Lamb control over the new freeze, but neither made comments during the motion.

Mayor George Lapointe said he and the new Finance Committee chairperson — after Dufour leaves the City Council in January — will review the spending freeze Lamb decides on, and that there would be no need for additional action from the council on this year’s budget.