Proposed budget changes from the Kingston Common Council’s Finance Committee includes $100,000 in new spending to support the review and possible amendment of the city charter. The move sets up a potential veto showdown with Mayor Steve Noble, who has said he is opposed to a wide-open charter review and revision process.

The council’s Finance Committee has spent the past month meeting with department heads in an effort to find additional cost savings in Noble’s proposed 2026 spending plan. The proposed budget totals $63.3 million and includes a tax levy increase of 5.75 percent. It is the second budget in a row to include a tax increase above the state’s 2 percent property tax cap after nearly a decade when the tax levy remained flat. City officials attribute the tax hike to skyrocketing health insurance and other personnel-related costs, along with flattening of the sales tax revenue that has bolstered the budget throughout Noble’s nearly 10 years in office.

The council’s revised budget, which will go up for a vote on Tuesday, does not include any significant spending cuts; the addition of funds for the charter review is the single largest change from Noble’s plan. Other cuts include cutting a proposed salary increase for Kingston Corporation Counsel Barbara Graves-Poller from $32,000 to $4,000 and reducing a raise for Noble from $4,000 to $2,000. The revised budget also increases projected sales tax revenue by $100,000.

The revised revenue projection will pay for a consultant to perform an in-depth outreach effort to form a volunteer charter commission. The commission will be charged with studying the city’s governing document, which was last revised in the mid-1990s, and recommending changes. Any changes to the charter would need to be approved in a public referendum in November 2027. Council President Andrea Shaut and Majority Leader Rennie Scott Childress (D-Ward 3), both longtime proponents of charter review, led the effort to get the process underway. Last month Shaut told lawmakers that the city had “kicked the can” on charter review for years and now was the time to move forward.

“Everybody says this needs to happen,” Shaut said at a Nov. 4 caucus meeting. “But there’s always something else that needs to happen first.”

Noble campaigned on charter reform during his first run for office in 2015 but has since backed off the idea. In October, Noble vetoed the council resolution creating the charter review commission, only to have it overridden by the council in a unanimous vote. Noble has signaled opposition to an open-ended review process that could lead to a major restructuring of city government in ways that could be hard to predict before the matter was put before the public. Instead, Noble proposed that the council form a subcommittee to come up with clear goals and directives for a future charter commission. Noble said he also supports an effort to digitize the city’s archives, something he said would be essential for an effective review of the charter.

The council’s addition of funds to support charter review sets up a clash with Noble that could result in another veto. If so, the council would have one more chance to override it at a Dec. 17 meeting set specifically to allow the council to respond to a mayoral veto before Jan. 1, when a new budget must be in place.