AUBURN — The only sure thing in City Manager Howard Kroll’s proposed budget is the cuts.

What councilors ultimately accept, how a tighter budget will work and how cuts will affect the city and services shared with Lewiston will all play out over the next few weeks.

“The decisions I’ve made are the best ones I think could have been made to preserve services,” Kroll said. “They were tough and I didn’t want to have to make them, but I’ll stick with them and make it the best that we can.”

Kroll announced sweeping changes last week that call for eliminating six positions, combining five departments into two and pulling back from some services shared with Lewiston.

“I wish we didn’t have to do this,” he said. “But I have to preserve services and if that means I have to take it from someplace else, that’s what I have to do.”

Kroll’s proposed cuts and departmental rearranging will get a public hearing Monday night. The City Council’s first public hearing on the budget is part of Monday’s regular meeting, which is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. at Auburn Hall.

Councilors will begin their deep dive into departmental budgets Tuesday night with Police Chief Phil Crowell explaining his proposed structure for a new Public Safety Department, comprising the police and fire departments.

Kroll said he had not seen a proposed organizational structure for the new department.

“We need an organizational chart, job descriptions,” Kroll said. “That will start on Tuesday.”

A review of a newly proposed department that would put the Planning and Code, Economic Development and Community Development departments under one heading will be scheduled in the coming weeks. Kroll said he’s recommending Economic Development Director Michael Chammings to lead that new department.

“We need council to authorize that,” he said. “Community development was under this kind of umbrella before, but we need their authorization to really create a department.”

The reorganization led to layoffs that Kroll confirmed when he unveiled his proposed budget last week. In an April 15 letter to city employees, Kroll said four employees had been laid off that day: Fire Department planner Sarah Hulbert, Public Services planner Jaclyn Beebe, electrician Mike Soucey and building maintenance technician Mike Reed.

Fire Chief Frank Roma confirmed that he also had been laid off. Reine Mynahan, the current director of Community Development, is expected to retire by the end of June. Kroll said her position would be rolled into the new Economic Development and Planning department.

All of this was necessary to get the budget to where most councilors said it needed to be, Kroll said.

“I won’t say all of them wanted those cuts,” Kroll said. “There are one or two who disagree, but the majority said that this is the way to go.”

Councilors can’t use the reserve money from fund balances to pay for services. The council learned in March that the fund balance is about $3.5 million short of where city policy says it should be and councilors have said they want to dedicate at least $825,000 a year for the next two years to build up that balance.

City ordinances also limit new property tax increases to the Consumer Price Index urban rate. For 2017, that’s 0.7 percent. Several councilors have said they have no interest in voting to override that.

Kroll said his proposed cuts to joint services have more to do with the budget than with shifting away from Lewiston. He’s proposing to provide no Auburn money to the Lewiston-Auburn Economic Growth Council and wants cuts to both the Lewiston Auburn Transit Committee’s Citylink bus system and Lewiston-Auburn 911.

Both the Citylink and L-A 911 cuts have to do with changing the way Auburn’s shares are figured. Kroll noted that the transit committee is staffed by employees of the Androscoggin Valley Council of Governments, which gets federal funding.

“The cities pay about $54,000 combined for three positions there,” Kroll said. “Don’t get me wrong: I think they are all good people, but I don’t think the city needs to be subsidizing their salary.”

He proposes cutting $27,000 from the LATC budget, reducing it from the current $209,244 to $182,244.

L-A 911 is funded equally by both cities, each paying $1.07 million under the current budget. Kroll proposes reducing Auburn’s share to reflect the number of emergency calls from Auburn the service handles. He’s proposing to fund $855,298 as Auburn’s share, 40 percent of L-A 911’s budget.

“We are saying that we want to pay for what our use actually is, based on call history,” Kroll said. “Historically, our call volume has been about 35, 40 percent and that’s what we should pay.”

Phyllis Gamache Jensen, director of L-A 911, said it might not be that simple. Her department handles more than emergency calls, and Auburn is responsible for about nearly 46 percent of those.

“Last year, 45.5 percent of our call volume was handled by Auburn responders,” she said. “That includes 911 calls and non-emergency calls that require a response every time an officer pulls over a car.”

Lewiston Fire Chief Paul Leclair, the chairman of L-A 911’s board, said the funding is determined by a negotiated agreement between the two cities. That agreement would have to be renegotiated, he said.

As for the growth council funding, Kroll said he wants to keep that money strictly in Auburn. Part would be used to fund the city’s Geographic Information System, but most would be available as loans for Auburn businesses.

“We want to use that money to partner with other organizations that will help us stretch our money further, if we can,” Kroll said.

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