Norwich — The City Council on Monday night unanimously approved a $138.6 million combined city and school budget with slight tax cuts, along with approval of a partial spending plan for the city’s $14 million second-year American Rescue Plan grants.

The budget discussion did not include the heated debates of recent years, with aldermen and city leaders attributing the smooth session to advanced planning meetings, especially joint meetings held with Board of Education members.

The approved budget includes a general city government spending plan of $49 million, a $1 million increase over this year, and a $2.7 million capital improvements budget. The approved school budget totals $86.8 million, just a $457,653 or 0.53% increase over this year’s total. The City Council-Board of Education Ad Hoc Committee recommended no additional changes be made to the school budget.

With the approvals, the citywide tax rate will be 41.83 mills, a 0.15-mill decrease from this year. The central city paid fire district tax will be 6.65 mills, a 0.01-mill drop from this year, and the tax rate for the five volunteer fire districts will be 0.35 mill, a 0.02-mill drop from this year.

On Tuesday, School Business Administrator Robert Sirpenski said school officials had unique options this year to absorb the spending cuts and avoid cutting staff or programs. “It was a tall order but working with the board of ed and the administration, we got it done,” he said.

Sirpenski said school administrators will present the budget cutting plan to the Board of Education on June 14. The proposal would cut about $500,000 in unemployment and health insurance costs, partly through plan adjustments negotiated with employee unions and savings realized through the difficulty in hiring people to fill vacancies. Another $100,000 would be cut in the temporary staff budget. Because of savings in this year’s budget, school officials were able to move about $400,000 in capital improvement projects and technology upgrades from next year to this year’s budget.

The proposal also calls for using federal COVID-19 recovery grant money to cover the two middle school resource officers, saving $250,000 in next year’s schools budget.

On the city side, one budget change discussed Monday was the creation of a paid deputy fire chief position, converting the current director of safety and training position in the city's paid fire department. The position added $22,741 to the budget, with the paid fire district budget covering most of the cost. But a portion of the duties, including overseeing training and emergency management services are citywide functions and thus covered in the general citywide budget.

The City Council also approved a nearly $10 million spending plan for a portion of the city’s $14.1 million second-year federal American Rescue Plan grant. The council removed several items from the proposed package, including several that would have funded city positions for 18 months, a plan for improvements to lower Broadway and a plan to add LED lighting to the Armstrong Tennis courts.

The council asked City Manager John Salomone to schedule a public workshop on the remaining items sometime before the July 18 City Council meeting.

c.bessette@theday.com