New London — A few years back, Carol Doughtery and her husband considered selling their New London home and moving elsewhere. But Doughtery, who has lived in the city for all of her 69 years, instead decided to use her savings to remodel that home.

“I wonder if I made the right decision now,” Doughtery told the City Council and Board of Finance at Wednesday night’s public hearing on the city budget. “Taxes are going up and up and up; I don’t know that we can afford it anymore.”

Doughtery was one of about 20 residents, business owners and taxpayers who spoke at Wednesday’s hearing, almost all of whom expressed a resounding dissatisfaction with the city’s tax rate and the tax increase that would accompany the budgets that have been proposed by the mayor and by the City Council.

“I really don’t care how much you spend on the budget, that doesn’t matter. Just keep my taxes down, reasonable, so I can afford them and so I can afford to live,” Larry Hample said. “Don’t push me out so I can’t live anymore, but that’s what you’re doing, and you keep insisting on doing that.”

The City Council and Board of Finance — jointly known as the Appropriations Board — held Wednesday’s public hearing to receive feedback from taxpayers as each body contemplates the city budget.

The budget unanimously approved last week by the City Council includes $43,958,565 in spending on the general government side — a decrease of $36,966 over the current year’s budget, and $43,282,280 in spending on the Board of Education side — an increase of $2,026,574 over the current budget.

The city’s mill rate would rise from 38.00 to 40.28 — an increase of 6 percent. For a home assessed at the city’s average value of $126,309 that translates to a $287.98 annual tax increase.

In total, the amended budget as advanced by the council last week would increase the city’s overall spending by about $1.9 million or 2.24 percent over the current budget — spending, some of those who spoke said, that must be curtailed.

“The spending continues unabated,” Avner Gregory said. “We just keep throwing money every which way really like we’re either stoned or drunk.”

Zigmund Ozea spoke about the big plans he has to renovate and improve the house he recently bought on Cutler Street and related to them the big plans the city has for its own revival.

“I have a vision of my house and doing amazing things to it, and I support changing the city, doing a lot of the things the mayor would like to do,” Ozea said. “But just as I can’t fix my house tomorrow, we’re probably not going to fix the city tomorrow.

Ozea was one of a handful of speakers who urged the council and finance board to consider how a tax increase would change the way businesses look at the city.

“We need to do things to bring business in that pay taxes, and I don’t think that businesses are going to want to pay more taxes,” he said. “No business is looking right now and saying, ‘Gee, I think it’s going to be cost-effective for me to move to New London.’”

Like Doughtery, who said she has second-guessed her decision to stay in New London, other residents and business owners said the tax increases that have compounded over the last few years threaten to drive them out.

“The city only has so much, the residents only have so much, and you can only squeeze us so much,” Katherine Goulart said. “When it comes to pay more or leave, a lot of people are choosing to leave, and if we’re forced to pay another 7.5 percent or another 12.5 percent, a lot more people will leave.”

c.young@theday.com

Twitter: @ColinAYoung