POULSBO — The Poulsbo City Council will discuss, modify and possibly approve the 2015 budget when it meets again in December.

Perhaps the most significant part of the budget, according to Mayor Becky Erickson, is the council’s pursuit of additional revenue for utilities and roads. The council may form a Transportation Benefit District in order to implement a $20 vehicle license fee. It is also considering raising stormwater and water utility rates, and imposing a cable TV tax.

“What we have now is a basic shell of where we are going financially for the next year, including new programs and any adjustments to the prior year’s operating expenses, and estimations of future revenues we need in order to make it all balance,” Erickson said Nov. 19.

“We will go through a tweaking process the next council meeting in order to really define it. We will pass it hopefully in the first week in December.”

The council meets next on Dec. 3, 7 p.m., at City Hall. The meetings are open to the public.

In short:

— The fee to connect to the water utility would be raised $1,750, bringing it to $4,227.

— A 13 percent, or $1.63, increase in base water rates is proposed, bringing that rate to $14.13.

— Monthly stormwater rates are planned to increase to $16.43 from $10.72.

During the Nov. 19 hearing on the budget, several residents spoke to the council’s plan to raise rates. Most agreed that costs to the city are going up, but questioned whether taxes and raising rates were the solution, as opposed to trimming city government. One person suggested privatizing the stormwater utility.

Erickson plans to come with answers to such concerns in December, but she provided a “snapshot” of the argument for the increases during the meeting.

“In 1994, 20 years ago, the population of Poulsbo was 5,415 people and we employed 79.2 FTEs. Of those 79.2, 16 [worked for] our fire department,” she told the council. “If you take those fire department people out, it comes to 63.2 FTEs.”

With a little math, those numbers equate to 86 residents per city employee, Erickson noted.

“In 2014, we have 85.36 FTEs and we have a population of 9,975,” Erickson said. “So now we have one employee for every 114 people. The population has increased 80.52 percent and the FTEs have gone up 35 percent.

“When people talk about shrinking government — holy smokes, we’ve been shrinking government. We’ve been doing it for 20 years.”

Erickson said she and the council are trying to be conservative with the rate increases, but there isn’t much of a choice.

“The biggest change is the increased maintenance in our stormwater and water departments, which is essential,” she said. “We have gotten behind in our maintenance, we need to catch up and we have federal mandates for stormwater that we need to meet. These aren’t really choices. We must do this.

“I hope citizens understand that it is the prudent thing to do — to get it done and get it fixed and make sure it stays fixed.”

Going into December, the preliminary budget leaves a relatively small gap between expenditures and revenues, though Erickson said that happens every year, especially when dealing with so many numbers. The council will take a closer look in December.

“We always have a gap,” she said. “There is an expectation that we might be hitting reserves but we never do. At the end of the day, we will have a gap of $300,000, something like that. And then what happens is that our revenues generally come in higher and our expenses come in lower.”

“With $300,000, we generally can find that in revenues or cut our costs,” Erickson said.