POULSBO — The Poulsbo City Council reviewed its 2015 budget on Dec. 10, and with it comes a few hikes in local taxes.

“The budget we have today does have a rise in revenue,” Mayor Becky Erickson said at the meeting. “And that is a polite way of saying ‘raising taxes.’ ”

Over the past month, Erickson has told the council and the public that before the 2015 budget would be voted on, with its raises in fees, she wanted to make her case for it. She did just that at the council’s meeting.

Poulsbo’s 2015 budget totals $27,188,323. It includes changes in stormwater rates — raising from $10.72 to $16.43 — and water utility rates, which will go up by 13 percent. The Water utility connection fee is also expected to go up to $4,227 from $1,750.

The budget also incorporates a new 6 percent cable TV tax.

The city is also pursuing the formation of a transportation benefit district, which would in turn implement a $20 car tab fee for residents of Poulsbo.

The council has directed staff to draft the appropriate ordinances for the increases. The budget is expected to be voted on, and possibly approved, at the council’s Dec. 17 meeting. The rate increases may also be approved at that time.

The 2015 budget takes all the new revenues into account. To defend them, Erickson preempted the meeting with her explanation.

“We have systematically held the line with the cost to the best of our ability, but we are offering more services either by regulation or by desire than we ever have in the history of our community,” Erickson said. “More service are being provided to more citizens with less staff.”

“But we can’t go on that way,” she added. “So we are going to have to raise some fees.”

Erickson boiled the numbers down.

“Each person in 1999 paid about $1,600 (in property taxes),” she said. “In 2004, it was about $1,200. In 2013, it’s about $1,150.”

“Our general fund relative to our population is falling,” Erickson said, noting that property taxes are capped at 1 percent raises each year.

Poulsbo also has more services than it used to, both by obligation and by desire, Erickson said, such as the Growth Management Act, Clean Water Act, increased auditing, and more. Then there’s the parks. Poulsbo has added seven in the last decade and purchased a recreation center.

In the end, Poulsbo is bigger, swelling with services, and operating them at a bare minimum of employees and funding, according to Erickson.