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WATERTOWN, N.Y. -- At Saturday's special meeting, the city council passed the 2012 to 2013 budget.

The budget, at $53.8 million, calls for a tax levy increase of about one percent, while the tax rate remains flat.

City leaders said they've been fortunate during the economic downturn, but they still faced challenges putting the budget together.

Watertown Mayor, Jeff Graham said, “We've been kind of blessed in the North Country with pretty good revenue streams on sales tax and on some additional state aid, which helped us over this bump. But there is a challenge with the increasing cost of the state retirement system, along with medical plans, and really the cost of keeping employees working gets higher and higher because of this retirement situation."

The new budget goes into effect July 1st.