New London — The Board of Finance on Monday lopped off $1.75 million from the proposed budget for fiscal year 2017-18, a move that has sent school and city leaders scrambling to identify potential cuts.

Three members of the Board of Finance — Peter Bergeron, Lonnie Braxton and Stephanie Brown — voted unanimously to cut $750,000 from the city’s side of the budget. Brown and Bergeron voted to cut the school budget by $1 million — all of the proposed increase initially agreed upon by the City Council. Braxton abstained from the school budget vote.

The City Council later on Monday passed the new budget figures in the second of three readings. The third must come before May 31. The total budget now stands at $89 million, $48.3 million on the city side and $40.7 million in education spending.

City Councilor Don Venditto said councilors were prepared to discuss options to cut the city’s proposed budget but “nowhere near $750,000.”

“So we obviously need to regroup … and discuss how where we are going to get there,” Venditto said.

An estimate on the new tax rate was not immediately available but the previously passed budget figure was a 10 percent increase in the city’s mill rate and led to an outcry from residents at a public hearing last week.

Mayor Michael Passero said the proposed cuts could be crippling to the city. He planned to meet with the finance director this week to figure out where to start.

“We’re going to have to make some difficult sacrifices that we hadn’t been prepared to make to city services,” Passero said. “Trying to cut $750,000 from an already lean budget is going to be difficult. We are punishing ourselves for the sins in Hartford. I think citizens have to sit back and look at the services we currently have, how happy they are with them, and how happy they are going to be living without them.”

Board of Education member Mirna Martinez said that the $1 million cut, taken in conjunction with the $500,000 the city eliminated for maintenance funding to the schools, amounts to something less than flat funding for the school district.

“We are an Alliance district which means we are a school district in great need,” Martinez said. “To be cut below flat funding is not supporting the development of what our schools really need. I can’t stress enough the blow this is to our school district and our children.”

The City Council cannot add to the proposed budget passed by the finance board. The appropriations committee, a joint panel of the city council and finance board, can.

g.smith@theday.com