The Portland City Council is poised to approve a $5.5 billion budget Wednesday afternoon that would fund new programs intended to help mentally ill or homeless people while cutting parks services.

The $5.5 billion figure is a nearly 6 percent increase from last year’s $5.1 billion budget. The general fund – a discretionary fund that pays mostly for police, fire and parks services – is set to increase about 2 percent to $577.3 million.

Funding for the Joint Office of Homeless Services is expected to stay flat at $32.1 million.

Although the budget would increase, it would pay for fewer services. That’s because costs for city workers’ salaries, retirement and health benefits are outpacing revenue growth, said Jessica Kinard, interim director of Portland’s City Budget Office.

The bulk of Portland’s budget pays for infrastructure and is nondiscretionary. Budgets for upkeep of city streets, sewers and drinking water systems come from designated tax streams or user fees and top $2.9 billion, for example.

The Portland City Council mostly debates the discretionary portion of city spending. Mayor Ted Wheeler and Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, for example, have disagreed on whether to fund the Police Bureau’s Gun Violence Reduction Team.

Planned cuts to parks programming has drawn the greatest ire from involved residents. Portland Parks & Recreation is set to get a $253 million budget, but that’s not enough to close an estimated $6.3 million budget gap caused by lagging program revenues and escalating costs.

Layoffs are likely and Parks & Rec will all but certainly cut programming at the Hillside, Laurelhurst and Sellwood community centers, the Columbia Pool, Multnomah Arts Center and Community Music Center.

Officials have agreed to fund new ventures, however.

One is a “Rapid Response Vehicle” ($337,126) that would allow firefighters to respond to low-priority calls, like many involving homeless campers.

Another is a mental health nurse triage program ($182,727) within Portland’s 911 center. That will pay for a consultant to study a new dispatch system allowing low-priority 911 calls to be diverted to a nurse.

If approved Wednesday, the city’s budget plan will be sent to a countywide review commission to check its compliance with budget laws. The council will then take a pro forma second vote on it in June.

Anyone wishing to attend the budget debate or testify on spending provisions may do so at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, May 22 at Portland City Hall.

-- Gordon R. Friedman

GFriedman@Oregonian.com

Correction: An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the Laurelhurst Community Center.