THOMASVILLE — The proposed fiscal year 2010 budget number has gone down for the City of Cairo and participation was still dismal at Monday’s Cairo City Council’s budget hearing, officials said.

City Manager Chris Addleton said the budget number has decreased from $36,482,902, the number discussed at May’s budget workshop, to $36,089,170, a decrease from last year of approximately $600,000.

“We adjusted our electrical revenues and costs to make it a little more conservative, made adjustments to contributions to outside agencies and we had to cover increases in retirement contributions and health care insurance,” he said Tuesday.

Contributions adjusted included the Roddenbery Memorial Library, Ferst Foundation for Childhood Literacy, Holder Park, Keep Cairo Grady County Clean and Beautiful and the downtown facade grant program.

“That is a total loss of about $54,000 as compared to $374,500 from last year,” Addleton said. “Also, we are seeing a 90 percent increase, or $344,000, over the last year in retirement contribution, which was a shock and is due to the decline in the investment pool. Our health care insurance went up 39 percent from last year, approximately $300,000.”

The city manager said costs had to be cut “pretty much across the board” to accommodate these changes.

Only two people spoke at the hearing, both representatives from the Roddenbery Memorial Library. They asked the council to reconsider the amount being allotted to it.

“We went so we would have some comment made about the fact that the library needs more resources to work with,” director Alan Kaye said Tuesday. “We endured a pretty big cut from the city a week or so ago in a budget workshop and the cut has me worried that we’re not going to be able to make a minimal budget I’ve outlined.”

Kaye said this depends on what the other two governing bodies who help fund local dollars decide in their budgets, but he feels the library will probably be a little short and have to scramble to make the difference.

Joe Jennette, member of Friends of the Library, also attended, Kaye said, to show his support and express his feeling that cuts not be made to services that benefit community children.

“The city indicated that it intends to fund half of the minimal survival budget and half is what they are committed to, according to the funding agreement,” Kaye said. “It recommended that we work on the other two parties of that agreement and also suggested fund-raising and private donations.”

Addleton said the $237,500 in the proposed budget is 50 percent of the minimal amount. The other 50 percent will be split equally between the Grady County Board of Commissioners and the Grady County Board of Education.

“This is a 12.7 percent reduction from last year’s $272,000,” he said.

The CNS rate increase, four to six dollars depending on the level of service, and an increase in commercial garbage collection of one dollar from $9 per yard to $10, are still in the budget, Addleton said.

There are no salary or wage increases in the proposed budget.