LOWVILLE — Lewis County's revised tentative budget would reduce the tax levy increase from 11.9 percent to 3.5 percent by cutting 52 positions and eliminating funding for contractual agencies.

"I think everybody in Lewis County has had to tighten their budgets," said Legislator Jerry H. King, R-West Leyden, chairman of the legislative Ways and Means Committee. "It's the responsibility of county government to do the same."

County Manager David H. Pendergast, who filed his revised budget Thursday, said he spent the morning meeting with department heads and union officials to discuss the proposed job cuts, which represent a 7 percent reduction in personnel costs.

"I'd like to remind everybody that it's a tentative budget," Mr. Pendergast said.

Legislators must now weigh the effect of the proposed deeper cuts on county services, he said.

No final decisions will be made by the Legislature until the annual budget hearing, which is set for 5 p.m. Nov. 25. The former second-floor courtroom in the old county courthouse may be ready for use as a legislative chamber by then, Mr. Pendergast said.

Copies of the tentative budget are available at the legislators' office in the basement of the old courthouse or at the first-floor treasurer's office.

The first-year county manager's initial offering cut spending by 2.37 percent, from $52.5 million this year to $51.3 million. However, the levy, or amount to be collected in property taxes, was still to increase from $11.6 million to $13 million.

Legislators earlier this month directed Mr. Pendergast to revise the proposed budget with a 3.5 percent cap on the levy increase and a 3 percent to 7 percent reduction in work force and related programs "to effect a permanent reduction in county expenses."

Spending in the revised plan would drop by $2,411,240, or 4.6 percent, to $50.09 million, while the levy would rise $405,557 to $11.99 million.

Thanks to a 14.4 percent increase in the county's full taxable value from $1.5 billion to $1.71 billion, owing both to new construction and to rising assessments, the new proposed budget would drop the full-value tax rate by 9.6 percent, from $7.74 to $7 per $1,000 of assessed value.

The levy would increase despite the extensive spending cuts because Mr. Pendergast also proposed that use of reserve funds to offset taxes be slashed from $2.36 million to $191,000. That includes $1.86 million used last year from the county fund balance — essentially the county's savings account — that wouldn't be used in the proposed budget.

Mr. Pendergast has suggested the $10 million fund balance not be tapped, in light of the financial uncertainty at the state and federal levels.

While the county manager's initial budget proposal dropped funding for most contractual agencies — like libraries, the Lewis County Agricultural Society, the county historian and the Lewis County Historical Society — to 60 percent of 2008 levels, his new proposal eliminates that funding altogether.

Proposed job cuts include the emergency medical services coordinator, assistant public defender, assistant district attorney, a permit holder and an intake specialist at Mental Health, a civil process server at the Sheriff's Department, an aging-services worker at Office for the Aging, four workers at the Community Recovery Center, a part-time cleaner and a conservation laborer in the reforestation department.

The Department of Social Services would see nine positions cut — seven social welfare examiners, one caseworker and one temporary community service worker — and nine substitute titles would be eliminated at Public Health.

The highway department would lose a light equipment operator, 12 full-time summer laborers and five summer laborer students, while three part-time laborer positions would be eliminated in the solid waste department.

While proposing job cuts is certainly "not fun," the impetus is not only to keep taxes down this year but also to reduce fixed costs for the 2010 budget, Mr. King said.

"I honestly feel if we don't do this, it's going to cost us a lot more the next year or the year after," he said.