If there's any dissatisfaction with the city's three-mill increase, none was voiced Tuesday during a public hearing on the city of Garden City's 2009 budget.

After less than a minute of opening and closing the public hearing for the 2009 budget because of a lack of public comment, Garden City Mayor David Crase and fellow commissioners started discussing the proposed budget, ultimately approving a three-mill increase for the city.

The mill levy is the tax rate that is applied to the assessed value of property. A mill is $1 per $1,000 dollars of assessed value. What a 3-mill increase means for an owner of a $100,000 home is property taxes of about $437 for 2009, compared to $402 for 2008.

"I'm not happy about it," Commissioner Reynaldo Mesa said of the increase. "But I can live with it."

He said he would have liked to have had public input during the hearing on the city's budget.

The total proposed 2009 budget for all of the city's taxing funds is about $20.87 million, compared to $19,991,656 in 2008. The general fund will be $15,639,504 in 2009 compared to $14,864,000 in 2008.

Crase said while he would have prefered not increasing the city's mill levy, this year's bump could help the outlook for next year's budget.

Commissioner Nancy Harness said she was OK with an increase if it meant not starting out the 2010 budget in as steep a hole.

On Tuesday, commissioners discussed the possibility of taking the increase down to 2.53 mills. But commissioners, aside from John Doll who was absent Tuesday, unanimously agreed they were in favor of the current proposed increase if it means being at a better level budget wise for 2010.

According to City Finance Director Melinda Hitz, the budget must be filed with the county clerk's office by Aug. 25. But as far as any additional action by the commission, the budget is done.

In order to keep the increase to three mills, city staff and the commission set out to identify $1,618,441 worth of cuts to budget requests they had received from city departments, representing about 11 mills.

If the commission had elected to fund the 2009 budget proposals in their entirety, the 2009 mill levy would have been 49.358 compared to this year's 34.956.

Staff was able to identify $935,284 in cuts to department requests, including reducing $150,000 in material costs for street repair; cutting an additional planner position at a cost of $22,000 for Planning and Community Development and a project engineer position for $57,000 for Engineering; reducing salaries in investigations for the police department by $32,000 because of a vacancy, and $48,000 in 2008 and $60,000 in 2009 for patrol salaries because of anticipated vacancies; and cutting $100,000 budgeted for a possible project involving the State Theatre.

About $700,000 that needed to be cut in order to reduce the mill levy came from the transfer from the electric utility fund and a portion of the general fund cash balance.

City Manager Matt Allen said a boost in sales tax revenue helped the city keep the increase to three mills. Without the additional sales tax revenue, it "would have been an ugly, ugly budget year," he said.

Mesa said there should be a discussion in the future regarding additional sales tax for the city to help relieve some of the pressure on property taxpayers.

Allen and Hitz said the levy increase accounts for several things, including the city's new pay plan that compensation consultant The Hay Group, Kansas City, Mo., recommended. Implementing the pay plan is set to cost $424,076.83 in 2009. Starting the plan on Sept. 1, 2008, would have cost $141,358.94 for this year. The commission opted to start the plan in November, which cut that amount by about 50 percent.

The increase also was needed in part to cover City Link, the city's public transit service, which extended its hours this month from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. to 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. The service from its start in 2007 through what's budgeted for 2009 represents a total cost of $507,051 to the city, which amounts to 3.57 mills. The estimated value of a mill for the city in 2009 is $141,945.30.

Two additional positions, a forester for the parks department and an additional animal keeper for Lee Richardson Zoo, also were kept in the budget.

In other business, the commission increased the city's monetary participation in the Sidewalk Rehabilitation Program from a cap of $735 to help residents repair sidewalks to $1,000. The city also is opening the program up to new sidewalk construction. The program previously had included only repair of existing sidewalk. The increased share is mostly because of rising concrete costs.