Barring unlikely last-minute changes, Bedford property taxes will climb 2½ percent next year despite across-the-board cuts in the town’s discretionary spending.

At a public hearing Tuesday, the town board formally unveiled its tentative 2011 budget, which calls for $25.1 million in spending, largely financed by a property-tax rate of $29.38 and higher fees for town services.

The budget presented Tuesday night would automatically take effect Jan. 1 if the town board does not act on it by Dec. 20.

It cuts all departments’ spending, as it has for the past three years. In 2011, however, the departmental funding reductions, averaging about 10 percent, will extend to the town’s three libraries, which had been spared in the earlier economies.

Saying he spoke for all the libraries, Ed Baum, president of the Katonah Village Library board of trustees, told the board, “We are living in an atmosphere of great uncertainty.”

Besides Baum, only Fiona Mitchell of Bedford Hills, who urged the town to stop leaf pickups, and another audience member who agreed, were the only speakers at the hearing

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