NORWICH – City of Norwich Mayor Joseph Maiurano sent a letter to state officials Tuesday stating his opposition to cuts in the state budget that could adversely affect local municipalities.

Governor David Paterson called the legislature back to Albany this week for a special session to discuss millions of dollars in cuts to the state budget. When the session was over, the legislature had agreed to cut more than $400 million from this year’s budget and more than $600 million next year.

Maiurano said he was initially concerned with proposed cuts to the AIM program, which provides sales tax money to the municipalities where they were generated. However, those cuts seem to be off the table for this year. This year, the city is slated to receive approximately $70,000 from the program, and initially, they were planning to receive as much if not more next year, however, they are not sure what effect the budget cuts will have on next year’s funding.

“I think the legislature is trying to look out for what we need to keep property taxes down in cities and villages,” Maiurano said.

In the letter the mayor said he was afraid the budget cuts would have a similar effect to those passed in the early 1990s, which caused “catastrophic shortfalls for municipalities and continue to adversely affect our budgets and local taxpayers, because we still receive less aid today then we did 20 years ago.”