A finance committee at Ottawa City Hall is working to cut an increase to your tax bill from 10 per cent to about four per cent.

A 3.9 per cent property tax increase translates to about $112 more in taxes for the average homeowner.

However, lowering taxes means the city is looking for places to cut spending and increase revenue.

"I hope we'll get it lower and I think there's a possibility to do that. But we first have to get people to accept the cuts that are made this far in the process," said Coun. Rick Chiarelli.

Cost-saving measures currently on the table include a wage freeze, a hike to OC Transpo fares, changes to bus routes and fewer hires for paramedics.

Wage freeze

Mayor Larry O'Brien is currently pushing for the province to enforce a wage freeze for all municipalities. He says most of the financial pressure facing cities comes from employee compensation.

However, the mayor's proposal is not supported by all councillors.

"The city needs to solve its own problems. We need to go through this budget line by line, item by item, department by department before we ask someone else to solve our problems for us," said Coun. Rainer Bloess.

"In one way, asking for a wage freeze is really passing the buck to another level of government."

No green bin fee

The committee also wants to scrap a proposal to charge a user fee for the new green bin composting program.

Instead of paying a fee for the green bin, the committee recommends funding the program from property taxes. That means everyone will pay for to the program, even if they live in an area that doesn't receive the service.

"We've got to get rid of that tax because people rightly thought that if council had access to that, they'd be jacking that up every year and using it for all sorts of things," Chiarelli told CTV Ottawa.

Changes to transit

Other measures include increasing transit fares by 7.5 per cent in March 2010.

The committee is also considering cancelling or re-organizing some of its bus routes. Those bus routes have not yet been identified.

The city's budget will be tabled to council on Dec. 9.