BELLINGHAM — Mayor Dan Pike’s administration is proposing City Council members take a tax increase and dip into various reserve funds to balance the 2010 budget.

The mayor’s administration will ask council members to take a state-allowed 1 percent property tax increase due to the tough economic times in which the city will have cut $28.3 million from its budget in 2009 and 2010. A public hearing on city revenues and a presentation on the mayor’s budget takes place at 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 19, at City Council chambers in City Hall, 210 Lottie St.

The $187.8 million budget proposal will be less than 2006 levels when the city adopted a budget of more than $193 million, according to previous budget documents.

Details of the 2010 budget won’t be made public until 1 p.m. Monday. The city has a shortfall of about $7.9 million for next year for the entire budget, which include the general fund, where residents see most of their services, like police, fire, parks maintenance, library services and more.

And residents have seen reduced services as library hours have been reduced, park programs are being restricted and employees have been laid off. Departments have cut $7.23 million from their budgets this year alone, not including capital projects.

Pike said Friday, Oct. 16, that he’s recommending taking the 1 percent property tax increase because the city is trying to maintain a “critical capacity” for the city in terms of goods and services the government provides and has heard from residents they’d like to maintain. The mayor said the increase will be about $6 for the average homeowner. The increase will bring in about $180,655 for the general, fire pension and Greenways III funds. The council is scheduled to vote on the tax increase on November 9, according to agenda documents.

The mayor in 2008 was successful in convincing City Council members to not take the 1 percent increase, arguing then that the recession was hitting the pocketbooks of residents. Now, though, Pike said the city must take the increase.

“Last year I said that not taking it didn’t mean that I wouldn’t take it in the future,” he said. “But I felt it was important to not take it last year to show that we could survive without it, which we could.”

Refusing the increase this year, Pike said, could mean a loss of more city services for a short-term gain.

Finance Director John Carter said the city will again delay capital improvement projects in 2010, and those cuts will be a “big chunk” of reductions, he said.

The general fund itself has a $1.85 million shortfall, and so the administration would like to tap reserves, Carter said.

Last year, the City Council approved a $216.1 million budget that the city would go on to drastically cut due to the recession.

Carter said his department was still working to determine what portion of next year’s budget is cuts from 2009 and how much will be cuts going into 2010.