CORINTH — The city will raise taxes a penny less than originally announced, although some on the City Council still begrudged the planned hike from 55.698 cents to 57.698 cents per $100 valuation.

Mayor Vic Burgess conceded during the City Council’s final budget workshop Thursday evening that any tax hike was difficult for some in the community to swallow. The increase will cost the average homeowner $36 per year.

“To add any doesn’t send a good message — with the economy the way it is,” Burgess said.

The city staff explained that 1 cent of the increase would go toward the additional costs of running the fire department. Corinth took over the Lake Cities Fire Department this year.

Hickory Creek, Shady Shores and Lake Dallas all signed five-year contracts with Corinth for fire protection services. The contracts are tied to cost-of-living increases, but several council members were concerned that a gap was already emerging between anticipated and actual costs of running the department.

Another penny will help pay back bonds in the city’s capital improvement program. Each penny of the property tax rate raises about $140,000 for the city, acting city manager Don Locke said.

Still looking for places to cut the budget council member Joe Harrison complained that it was difficult to connect the detailed financial reports the council reviewed each month with the numbers in the proposed budget.

“Where do we stand with surpluses?” Harrison asked.

He was reluctant to nitpick, he said, but he was also concerned that unspent money wasn’t contributing to the bottom line.

Finance director Kathy DuBose told the council that most of the unspent money comes in the form of salary savings from unfilled vacancies, and that money does end up in the general fund reserves.

However, the city has been tapping reserves for the past several years to meet the budget, to the tune of about $1 million per year, she said.

This year, the city will use about $353,000 of the reserves to balance the budget. That dip will likely bring the city’s reserves below recommended levels for the first time.

“You can’t keep doing that,” DuBose said.

Department heads all cut about 1 percent from their budgets before being submitted to the council, DuBose said. The staff also was able to find some other savings in the budget by renegotiating the health insurance plan. Two staff positions have been eliminated from next year’s budget: a senior planner, because development has slowed, and an information services technician.

In order to take the third penny of the tax hike off the table, the city staff proposed that the city delay building the Woods Community Center.

No one came to speak during the second round of public hearings on the budget and tax rate immediately following the workshop.

But resident Cathy Suhr, who came to tell the council about citizen police and fire academy work on behalf of Hurricane Gustav evacuees, also told the council that she and others in the community weren’t too concerned about the tax increase.

“We want to see growth and progress in our community,” Suhr said. “We’re dumbfounded it hasn’t been more over the years.”

PEGGY HEINKEL-WOLFE can be reached at 940-566-6881. Her e-mail address is pheinkel-wolfe@dentonrc.com.