It contains, among other things, a 2.5% cost of living increase for city employees and would use $25.9 million in property tax revenue, $653,940 more than this year. That budget passed its first reading at the Monday meeting of the Lewiston City Council and will go through two more readings before elected officials reach a final decision. At the same time, the council voted to have city staff write another version of the budget that would limit the property tax increase to the $203,950 of revenue from new construction and annexation. “It’s important when we’re raising the taxes, to raise it with the growth, if we do need to raise taxes,” Wright said. I can see some situations where some event takes place that’s very unexpected, where you may need to raise taxes, but I haven’t seen that event.”