The city’s taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for the mammoth increases in education spending recommended this week by a panel of court-appointed special referees, Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday.

The referees, who were charged with devising a plan for providing New York City schoolchildren with the “sound basic education” they deserve under the state constitution, urged Albany lawmakers to boost allocations to city schools by more than $23 billion over the next five years. They didn’t specify what portion of that sum the city should have to pay, but they warned that Albany lawmakers should not require the city to pay too much.

At a Bronx news conference yesterday, Mr. Bloomberg for the first time addressed how he would finance the referees’ proposal.

“I don’t think anybody seriously thinks that we should raise our taxes in this city,” he said, adding that this is already “a high-tax city” where raising taxes even higher isn’t a real option.

“We only have a certain amount of money,” he said.

Mr. Bloomberg said he is already searching for a way to plug projected budget gaps. “That requires finding alternative funding sources or ways to do more with less,” he said, “and we’re doing that, and every agency is going to have to find a way to do more with less for the rest of this fiscal year and into next fiscal year to balance the budget, so that’s the first thing before we even get to that point.”

He continued: “The working people in this city can’t afford to pay any more in taxes, so if we want to put money in one thing, it’s going to have to either come from an outside source, Albany, what I think is appropriate, or from moving monies from one program to another, and that’s always contentious.”

While the mayor said it’s out of the question for city taxpayers to fork over billions of dollars more for education, he did not offer a solution for Albany, which is already facing a projected budget deficit of $6 billion in the coming fiscal year. And neither the Legislature nor Governor Pataki has volunteered to pick up the tab.

Earlier this year, the Pataki administration said it would give $2.2 billion more to the city over five years. The state Senate proposed an increase of $1.8 billion for city schools, and the Assembly suggested an increase of $3.8 billion.

All three of the plans – even the one proposed by the Democrat-controlled Assembly – assumed a substantial contribution from the city.

The Assembly’s plan, released last June, recommended that New York City finance about one-fourth of the added spending.

Mr. Bloomberg said he understands that it might be difficult for Albany to pick up the whole tab for the increases in education funds, but he said, “We send an awful lot more money to Albany than we get back. … We are in this situation because the state, year in and year out, under funded our education system, and now the courts say they have to fix it.”

Despite the mayor’s insistence that Albany pay, the chairman of the Assembly’s Committee on Education, Steven Sanders, told The New York Sun yesterday that 25% still seems like a reasonable contribution.

“The city has to support its own schools,” Mr. Sanders, Democrat of Manhattan, said in a telephone interview. “The city has to contribute some amount of money in support of its own schools.”

He said Mr. Bloomberg was “misreading the court’s decision” if he believes it would be appropriate for the city to receive billions of dollars but put up no money itself.

“I want the city of New York to get as much more state money as possible. That’s my position,” Mr. Sanders said. “But the state has a responsibility here, and the city has a local responsibility. They have to also over the next number of years increase their own contribution to their own school system.”

He said the city and the state both must set priorities each year in the budget-making process. He said the city should put some portion of increased tax revenues that have come in over the last few years toward education.

“I don’t think this is a question about the city having to cut programs to pay for education,” he said. “I think this is a question of the city wisely managing its budget and realizing that the city’s revenues since 2002 have been increasing every year. Some of that increase should be going for education.”

Mr. Sanders’s counterpart at the City Council, Eva Moskowitz, also a Democrat who represents Manhattan’s East Side, disagreed strongly.

“We waited 10 years plus for them to tell us that we’ve got to pony up?” she asked. “That is outrageous. It’s Albany’s responsibility to equalize the funding formula. It’s their formula. Not to mention that we’re funding many other districts and services across the state with our precious tax dollars.”

Professing wholehearted agreement with the mayor, she said: “This lawsuit was supposed to ensure that Albany gives New York its fair share. It’s the state Constitution that guarantees kids a sound basic education.”

A fiscal analyst at the Manhattan Institute, E.J. McMahon, said it was good that Mr. Bloomberg wants to avoid tax increases in the city. But Mr. McMahon said the mayor’s stance doesn’t necessarily mean city taxpayers will be spared the burden, and he said the special referees’ report is at this point just a report and not near implementation.

“This is not nearly over yet,” he said. “But one thing is absolutely clear: Whether it’s through a court order or some form of settlement short of a court order, this is going to force the city, as well as the state, to spend more money than it already does, which is plenty.”