City council is getting help from the state in hopes of reducing its spending.

Council on Tuesday night called in a representative from the state Department of Community and Economic Development to review possible strategies to cut costs in the city.

Councilman Kathy Kline invited Michael Foreman to the meeting, who answered questions from council on budget issues.

“We need to look for ways to save money,” Kline said. “We can’t keep doing the same things and expect things to change.”

Kline said the city each year has concerns about whether it will earn enough revenue to balance its budget.

She said she wants Foreman, who has worked with the city in the past on its finances, to help ease those concerns.

Foreman said the city needs to develop 1-, 3- and 5-year plans on where it expects to be financially. He said council also must focus on specific goals it wants to address.

“It will be a multiyear effort to address your problems,” he said. “This is a generational issue.”

Foreman met with the city a decade ago to develop different plans to stabilize its finances, although the city did not follow through on most of the recommendations, Kline said.

Kline asked Foreman if he could review those plans to see if the recommendations still are relevant today.

Mayor Tom Donaldson said he and Councilman Richard Schontz will meet with Foreman soon to review past plans and to determine how the city wants to move forward.

“This is probably the most important task for the city,” he said.

Fire fee proposal Kline said one way for the city to bring in revenue is to modify its mutual aid agreement for fire protection.The city wants to begin charging other municipalities whenever the city’s paid department responds to a call outside the city limits.Council discussed the proposal in January. Fire Chief Nick Ban told council that his crew responded to 89 calls outside the city in 2015, 83 of which were to Butler Township.The city had about 3,000 total calls in 2014, most of which were medical calls or false alarms.The city said it would like to take its total budget for the department and divide it by the total number of calls for the year to determine a per call cost.Ban told the city that would have been about $575 per call last year.At that rate, the city’s 89 outside calls would have added up to about $51,000.Council hopes to set up a meeting with Butler County to see how to best go about modifying the countywide agreement.The fire department also is looking into applying for federal grants designated to fire departments.Kline said the city hopes to use the grants to bring in additional firefighters. The grant would cover the salary and benefits of an undetermined number of firefighters for two years.However, the grant mandates the city keep the same number of firefighters it had before the award, meaning the city would have to maintain the 18 firefighters already employed.Schontz said the city hopes to maybe reduce that number by not replacing firefighters who retire. If it receives the grants, that would not be an option.Council determined the grants are still worth applying for and will later determine if it wants to accept them if awarded.“These are very competitive, nationwide grants,” Kline said. “So there’s no guarantee we’d even get it.”