COEUR d'ALENE - Coeur d'Alene City Council members are proposing to reduce the city's total budget by $3.3 million for the next fiscal year.

The draft spending plan, reviewed by the council during a workshop Thursday, calls for no property tax increase and proposes the elimination of two highly paid administrative positions.

"The largest reason for the decrease is that the wastewater department doesn't have as many capital projects to do next year," said acting City Administrator Troy Tymesen.

New growth in the city has increased to $112 million worth of new taxable property, which will generate $715,000 of new property tax revenue, Tymesen said.

With that news, the City Council endorsed a budget of $74,561,945. That is $3,291,549 less than this year's budget.

The draft budget will be considered for adoption following a public hearing at the regular City Council meeting on Sept. 2. Tymesen said the city waits to hold its formal public hearing during the first week of September to make sure it has all the information necessary to finalize the budget.

"The big change that we are proposing this year is a bit of a reorganization," Tymesen added.

Tymesen said the city will eliminate the deputy administrator's position, which has gone unfilled since Jon Ingalls retired late last year.

The Parks Department and the Recreation Department will be combined under one director instead of two.

Once the consolidation is complete, Recreation Director Steve Anthony will lead the department, and the parks director position, which has gone unfilled since Doug Eastwood retired last year, will be eliminated.

The elimination of those two positions will save the city at least $269,163 in wages and benefits annually.

"That has allowed us to go into next year without a tax increase," Tymesen said.

A 2.1 percent cost of living increase for all employees will also be proposed in the budget, Tymesen said.

Other spending increases include the possibility of hiring three new police officers if a $375,000 Federal Community Oriented Policing Services grant is approved. The city is planning a boost for Jobs Plus for economic development, which will increase by $5,000 to $25,000, and the city is proposing $45,000 to support the ongoing effort for the 2030 visioning program.

During the city's budget workshop Thursday morning, department heads and elected officials spent a considerable amount of time discussing the possibility of going back to a fully insured policy.

Currently, the city is self-insured, but Tymesen said it just received a favorable quote from the Idaho Counties Risk Management Program, a risk management pool shared by a majority of governments in Idaho.

"This budget is proposing that we go in and get a fully insured plan through ICRMP," Tymesen said. "But we still need to have that discussion."

Previous quotes from ICRMP were much higher, and at that time, Tymesen said, it made much more sense for Coeur d'Alene to self-insure.

Tymesen said that staff is going to investigate one other option before the City Council makes a decision on the insurance.

Staff will look at whether it makes sense to partially insure the city through the Travelers Insurance Company and self-insure the rest.

"Insurance was probably the most interesting discussion we had (Thursday) morning," he said, adding the currently proposed $570,000-line item in the proposed budget is enough to fund either of the three options.

"If we go with ICRMP, I probably wouldn't even need that much," he said.