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The Austin City Council on Monday night narrowly approved its preliminary tax levy for 2024, which came down significantly from a projected 9.93% increase earlier in the month.

Between meetings this month, the city council was able to make cuts to various areas that dropped this year’s tax levy increase to 5.66% or $8,752,000, a number that was passed by a slim 4-3 vote with council members Jason Baskin, Jeff Austin and Geoff Baker voting against the increase. Joyce Poshusta, Paul Fischer, Laura Helle and Mike Postma voted in favor.

A part of the reduction was a $318,000 cut to contingency funding.

However, prior to this final vote, was another vote that failed along a reversed 4-3 voting line, which would have reduced the tax levy increase even further to 4.1% or $8,622,000. Getting to that number required eliminating the entire $450,000 from contingency that was originally floated at an earlier council meeting.

Poshusta, Fischer, Helle and Postma were against cutting the entire $450,000 and Baskin, Baker and Austin voted for the cut.

Once set, the levy can no longer go up, but it can go down, however, with no more meetings scheduled between now and Sept. 30 deadline, this essentially is the finalized levy.