Mayor Al Baldwin has been busy this weekend making a last-ditch effort to cut about $1 million from the city's 2009 spending plan.

The Vincennes City Council is expected to review the revised budget at Monday's regular meeting and public hearing, all set to begin at 5:45 p.m. at City Hall, 201 Vigo St.

"You start chipping away at the flesh until you get to the bone," he said last week from his office, the thick spending plan in front of him marked in several areas with pink and yellow highlighters. "Then you start chipping away at the bone until there's nothing left to chip away. That's about where we are right now."

The city council has been working for the last two weeks to cut the advertised budget of $18.7 million by more than 15 percent - about $3 million.

The council was able to cut much of that last week during budget hearings with the department heads, but Baldwin still had much to trim away. He has tediously been going through each of the department's line items, trying to figure out which ones had been overbudgeted, even slightly.

The 3 percent raises that were included for all city employees are likely to go, and the city council last week decided it couldn't fund a city ambulance service. If the ordinance, proposed by Fire Chief Mike Lankford, is passed, the city would have to look to the state for an additional appropriation, a path that could delay the start of the service for as much as a year.

The council has received several predictions as to how much revenue the city will lose as a result of House Bill 1001; the anticipated amount is somewhere around $770,000 next year and $1.8 million the year after.

The council could pass the budget as it is now and worry about making additional cuts later, with hopes that property tax revenue is higher than anticipated. But Councilman Don Kirk, who also chairs the budget and finance committee, is hesitant to do so. He thought it more important to make the cuts now and pass a "realistic" spending plan.

Baldwin called the process of reducing the budget "difficult" but was confident the job would get done.

"We'll get down to where we need to be," he said. "We'll say goodbye to half the police department, half the fire department, if we have to."

The council plans to approve the budget at its Sept. 22 meeting.