Butler City Council is proposing changes to the 2018 budget that was approved in December.

When Butler City Council convened for the first time this year with a new mayor and one new council member, it reopened the budget with sights set on raising the street light tax by 1 mill back to the 3.25 mill rate of 2017. The move was done to make repairs to Main Street lights.

The budget approved last year lowered the streetlight rate to 2.25 mills, which lowered Butler’s overall millage to 42.25.

The proposed updated budget, which council introduced last week, sets the overall millage at 43.25 mills and includes changes in revenues and expenditures.

If the changes are approved at a special meeting set for Feb. 12, residents and property owners will end up paying the same amount of taxes as they paid last year.

Mayor Ben Smith said restoring the street light tax was proposed to address infrastructure deficiencies with street lights.

On the revenue side, real estate taxes are projected to generate $1.88 million compared to $1.92 million in the original budget.

Jeff Smith, the newly elected council member, said $1.88 million is a more accurate amount.

The proposed budget freezes wages for most non-union employees at 2017 levels, including the city clerk’s salary, which was lowered from $59,947 in the original budget to $57,920 in the proposed budget.

Withdrawing from the Butler Transit Authority resulted in reducing the financial administration budget from $572,592 to $547,674.

Many revisions were made to the police department budget, even though the total was reduced only slightly, from $2.359 million to $2.354 million.

The chief’s salary was reduced from $91,395 to $88,304 and the deputy chief’s pay was lowered from $78,700 to $74,975, but the total unionized patrolmen’s wages increased from $487,548 to $528,729.

The fire department budget increased from $1.97 million to $2.02 million, although the salary for the vacant chief’s position was reduced from $78,700 to $35,000.

Ben Smith said the lower amount was set as an estimated salary for part of the year because it would take months to hire a new chief even if the process started now.

The $78,000 amount was the last chief’s salary and council has discretion in setting a new chief’s salary, Smith said.

Council is discussing the chief’s position, but no decisions have been made, he said.

“We do want to move forward with the fire chief. I think there needs to be some sort of hierarchy there,” he said.

Overtime pay in the fire department’s budget increased from $150,000 to $200,000 in the proposed budget to more accurately reflect the department’s overtime costs.

“There’s no sense in budgeting less than what we know it’s going to be and we can work on making it less as we go forward. If we’re going to spend the money we might as well have it budgeted,” Ben Smith said.

He said he hopes part-time firefighters hired last year will reduce overtime and those part-time employees could be made full-time as they gradually replace current full-time firefighters when they retire.

Council believes overtime budgeted for the fire and police departments was lower than the actual amount of overtime worked and council wants to reduce overtime in both departments, he said.

The proposed budget revisions are based on full-year expenditure and revenue figures from last year, he said. The budget adopted last year was based on numbers through September or October and some project revenue figures were goals, he said.