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NAPLES — The city of Naples might be short on money, but its budget could be getting greener.

The Natural Resources Department’s operating budget is increasing by almost 83 percent, from roughly $74,000 in 2008 to more than $136,000 in 2009. Wages and benefits for the three-person department bring its total budget to almost $442,000, according to the budget the Naples City Council tentatively approved Wednesday. A final vote is set for Sept. 17.

“It’s definitely an increase in the city’s commitment,” Naples Natural Resources Manager Mike Bauer said last week.

The increase comes as the city wrestles with a $3 million budget deficit the City Council is proposing to bridge by dipping into the city’s reserves and cutting 32 jobs.

Boosting the natural resources budget builds on the city’s 10-year vision plan, adopted this summer, Assistant City Manager Roger Reinke said.

Making Naples “the green jewel of Southwest Florida” was one of the plan’s major goals.

“There’s been many years of problems with Naples Bay and the city wants to correct that or take steps to correct that,” Reinke said. “It doesn’t happen overnight.”

The budget maintains $25,000 for a program that trains landscapers about how to reduce fertilizer and pesticide runoff into city waterways and Naples Bay.

The city also will spend $25,000 on water quality monitoring, almost $8,000 to maintain city lakes that have been planted with native grasses to soak up pollution, $10,000 on lake aerators and $6,000 on more reliable water quality monitoring equipment to help take on new monitoring jobs in Moorings Bay.

A couple new environmental initiatives get backing in next year’s budget too.

The budget includes $25,000 for water quality and sea grass monitoring in Clam Bay, a hydrologic study of the city’s pollution contribution to that estuary and oyster reef construction there.

Clam Bay has been at the center of a political turf war between the city neighborhoods of Seagate and Naples Cay and the Pelican Bay neighborhood north of the city limits.

The budget also includes $12,000 for a city effort at reducing its energy use, an outgrowth of a controversial decision this spring to sign the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement.

It sets a nonbinding goal for cities to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

Bauer said he plans to present an energy audit to the Naples City Council at its Sept. 15 meeting and ask for approval to set up a task force to find ways to cut the city’s contribution to global warming.

The budget increase coincides with an organizational change that puts the natural resources department under the direct supervision of City Manager Bill Moss rather than under Community Services Director David Lykins.

As part of the move, Bauer’s $113,000 salary is paid entirely by property tax revenues; in the past, the city’s stormwater fees paid half.