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ELMIRA (WENY) -- The Elmira City Council passed its budget Monday night, with city leaders confident they enacted the best proposal for taxpayers.

City council approved the nearly $32 million budget after taking some money from the reserve fund and increasing property tax rates.

The budget includes a tax hike that's a little under 3 percent, which means 27 dollars for a house assessed at $50,000.

City leaders chose to use $700,000 of Elmira's reserve fund money in order to keep taxes low. The budget also includes some raises for city employees.

Mayor Sue Skidmore says part of the reason the budget uses reserve fund money is because July's tornado cost the city half-a-million dollars, health costs went up 20 percent and other insurances rose 15 percent.

“If we did not take money out of our surplus to keep to the rate of inflation between salaries, pensions, health care costs, tax increases would have been about 10 percent. So between all those things, the fact that we do have some surplus to use we were able to keep it to 2.9 percent,” says Skidmore.

Skidmore added it was a very difficult process, due to the rising cost of health care, lack of mandate relief from the state and the cost of July's tornado.