Norwich — When the city approved its budget in mid-June, the City Council agreed to hold off on several possible layoffs and on hiring new city employees until Sept. 1, figuring the state would have a final budget with municipal grant amounts in place by then.

With no state budget in hand, the City Council will be asked Monday to delay any layoffs and hiring until Oct. 1, in the hopes once again that a state budget will be in place by then. The General Assembly could be called for a special session to deal with the budget impasse the week of Sept. 11.

The City Council enacted its final $123.8 million combined city and school budget on June 12, with several city position cuts, including eliminating the public works recycling coordinator's position, two police officer positions, a Human Services case manager position, an office clerk, a Public Works foreman and laborer position, the latter two currently vacant.

At the same time, the council voted to delay action on those cuts until Sept. 1, along with delaying the hiring of a new part-time recreation director — the city has been without a recreation director since fall of 2013 — a police officer and a blight/ housing enforcement officer.

City Manager John Salomone said delaying the position cuts would not affect the tight operating budget approved by the council in June. The savings from the delay in hiring offsets the cost of keeping intact the positions targeted for cuts.

The lack of a state budget is even more worrisome for school administrators planning to start the new school year Aug. 30. In short, school officials have no word from the state on funding that covers dozens of classroom and specialty teacher positions, support staff and instructional interventionists to help struggling students or English learners.

Superintendent Abby Dolliver said the only responsible path is to open school with the staffing needed to serve the nearly 4,000 students in the school system. She attended a superintendents' meeting with state education officials Tuesday, but came back to Norwich with no questions answered.

In the 2016-17 school year, Norwich received $4 million in a state Alliance District grant and another $1 million in a Priority School District grant. Those grants paid for staff ranging from classroom and specialty teachers, including nine kindergarten teachers, a nursing supervisor, guidance counselor, a technology director and after-school program staff and attendance monitors.

The grant-funded kindergarten teachers allowed Norwich to maintain full-time kindergarten, school Curriculum Director Thomas Baird said.

In Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's plan to restructure education aid, the Alliance and Priority grants would be eliminated, but the city would see a nearly equal increase in its general state education grant, the so-called education cost sharing, ECS, grant. If the state cuts the city's ECS substantially and does not reinstate the Alliance and Priority grants, the city school system could face a budget crisis, school officials said.

The City Council voted in June to limit the school budget to a 1 percent increase this year, cutting $1.5 million from the city manager's proposal. The school budget total is $76.1 million. The Board of Education refused to cut teaching positions, however, and instructed administrators to find savings elsewhere — including some tenuous cuts, such as $200,000 to school bus fuel and cuts to special education estimates.

“With the loss of $1.5 million from the general fund,” Dolliver said, “we have no flexibility.”

Administrators shifted six teachers from the Teachers' Memorial Sixth Grade Academy to lower grades to make class sizes more equitable across the system. Class sizes are expected to range from high teens to high 20s, but registrations still are coming in.

“We're pretty much not buying stuff,” Baird said. “Everything is frozen, except what we absolutely need.”

c.bessette@theday.com