Ledyard — The Town Council voted Wednesday night to form a committee to re-examine the town’s budget process in response to state cuts and mandates.

According to the resolution passed unanimously by the council, the Committee to Transform the Budget Process has been tasked with reviewing all services the town provides, as well as determining funding sources and whether the services are mandated and efficient.

Research also will include identifying building operations and contracts where staffing can be shared across different town departments.

The committee will make recommendations to the Town Council by Oct. 12.

Its first meeting will be at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, June 16, in the Council Chambers, where members will choose officers and develop a meeting schedule for the next four months.

After comments at the town meeting and public hearing on this year’s budget, Finance Committee Chairman Fred Allyn III addressed the idea altering the budget process at the May 25 Finance Committee meeting.

Allyn said he had been mulling a change in the way the budget functions for about a year after hearing a report about how Pontiac, Mich., handled a budget crisis.

Originally he thought about bringing zero-based budgeting to the town, but after researching it further, he said a hybrid form that includes zero-based budgeting could work better.

“People have said we build a budget from the ground up,” he said. “(We want) to identify a needs-based budget.”

He suggested some of the services that could be consolidated included mowing, which is split among different town departments, and using town resources to maintain vehicles operated by the Board of Education.

Allyn said savings could be split between the department it was realized in, funding for long-term capital and tax savings.

The nine-member committee is made up of five Republicans and four Democrats and will include the finance committee chairmen of the Town Council and Board of Education, Town Council Chairwoman Linda Davis, Councilor Bill Saums and Board of Education member Stephanie Calhoun and at-large community members Terry Jones, John Rodolico, Sharon Wadecki and Patrick Kelly.

The mayor and superintendent will serve or pick surrogates as ex-officio members.

The form in which the budget is presented to the public and the budget process also will be examined.

Suggestions could include a charter change of the date the town must approve the budget, Davis said, to give the town more time to account for changes in state aid, such as a $20 million line-item veto Gov. Dannel P. Malloy made last Thursday that several councilors expressed concern about.

“If we knew that we had more cuts than we were anticipating, we may have done something a little bit differently because of the way we have to vote earlier,” Davis said.

n.lynch@theday.com