Westbrook Mayor Bruce Chuluda plans to use a line-item veto to eliminate a $250,000 curbside recycling program from the city budget.

The Westbrook City Council approved the budget in a 4-2 vote Monday night, with Councilor Ed Symbol saying he was casting a vote in favor of the budget only because he knew Chuluda would veto the curbside recycling program.

Councilors John O’Hara and Michael Foley voted against the budget. If Symbol had joined them, the budget would have failed in a 3-3 vote. Councilor Suzanne Joyce was absent.

Symbol said after the meeting that he remembered Chuluda specifically mentioning a veto. “If the recycling piece gets taken out of there, then we’ll be down, I think, to below a 3 percent increase,” he said. “I can’t support a program having so little effect on the recycling rate.”

Chuluda later said he doesn’t remember dropping “the v-word,” but that it has been his intent that he would line-item veto the recycling program.

City Administrator Jerre Bryant noted in the packet sent to councilors before last Monday’s special council meeting that the administration does not support next year’s budget because of the proposed recycling program as well as the inclusion of nearly $40,000 in the contingency fund slated to be used by the school department for a recycling program. The school department had not included a recycling program in its own budget.

Chuluda said he is not sure if he will attempt to line-item veto the $40,000 in contingency funds because of a possible lack of support, but he thinks he has enough support to uphold the veto of the recycling program.

Chuluda originally proposed a curbside recycling program funded by a pay-per-bag system. The pay-per-bag system would have brought the recycling rate to an estimated 30 percent of the city’s total waste, according to a committee of residents charged with looking at what recycling program should be implemented in Westbrook.

The curbside recycling program Chuluda plans to veto would be funded by taxes and would raise the tax rate by 13 cents per $1,000 of valuation. It is expected to increase the city’s recycling rate from about 6 percent to 15 percent.

“It’s not appropriate to put that $249,000 and change on the backs of the taxpayers,” Chuluda said.

Next year’s budget total is at $51.5 million, with $29.4 million being raised from taxes. Under the current valuation, the tax rate is up to $24.74, 87 cents more than this year’s rate of $23.87, equal to a 3.65 percent increase. Tax bills in July, however, will show the revaluation’s tax rate of $15.60. The average $217,200 home will see an increased tax bill of about $488 over last July.

The city council will have their next meeting Monday, July 2, at 7 p.m. in room 114 at Westbrook High School.