PROVIDENCE – Mayor David N. Cicilline last night unveiled a budget plan for fiscal 2009 that calls for a 3.75-percent increase in the property-tax levy, a new pickup fee for excess trash and a $3 million cut from the School Department’s operations budget. It would require the merging of several departments and allow no raise for city workers.
“This is a budget that requires tremendous sacrifice,” Cicilline told the City Council in his annual budget address. In the midst of the state budget crisis, the national economic downturn and the foreclosure crisis, “the challenge … is to balance these forces,” he said, “to mitigate the short-term damage of the current environment in the most responsible way. And to do it in a way that guarantees a prosperous and healthy future for Providence families and our city.”
The tax increase in Cicilline’s budget plan, unlike those proposed in many cities and towns, falls short of the state’s 5-percent cap, the mayor noted.
To ease the burden for families already pushed “to the breaking point,” his plan also includes a new Working Family Property Tax Credit. The credit would apply to owner-occupied homes valued at less than $200,000 for a single-family house and $300,000 or less for a multi-family building. City finance officials calculate it would reduce the property-tax bite by about $250 for some 6,500 Providence homeowners.
The school cuts are the most difficult, Cicilline said, “because the healthy development and education of our children remains the city’s first priority.”
His proposed $3 million in savings from the Providence School Department’s operations budget would target the crossing-guard and transportation systems,with both possibly being affected. “Discussions have begun with officials from Local 1033 to determine the most cost-effective ways to ensure students are transported and guided to school safely,” the mayor’s office said.
In an initiative intended to boost recycling citywide – Providence now recycles only 10.6 percent of its trash, the lowest level in the state – the city next year will offer new recycling bins to every household, free of charge. It then will impose “a small assessment” on any trash beyond what fits in residents’ Big Green Cans, the mayor said.
Cost-cutting measures in Cicilline’s plan include:
• Requiring a mandatory four-day furlough for all non-union municipal employees.
• Paring by 10 percent, across the board, city grants “to community agencies that perform important services to residents.”
• Consolidating the human resources and financial functions of the city administration and the Providence School Department.
• Merging the city’s Municipal Court with the Housing Court to “capture savings by combining administrative functions and support staff.”
• Eliminating the Police External Review Authority and transferring its functions to the Human Relations Commission. Since its creation in 2002, the authority has worked relatively few cases, the mayor said, adding: “I am confident that Human Relations has the qualifications and capacity to take on the functions of PERA.”
“We are gathered at the center of our great and vibrant city tonight with some complicated challenges before us,” Cicilline told the gathering in the City Council Chambers.
“We have to absorb our share of the state budget crisis and we have to keep making government work for our residents,” he said. But, “if we can continue to aspire to our ambitious long-term goals for our city, we will not only get through this, we will emerge stronger than ever before.”
Additional news and information from the City of Providence and the Mayor’s Office is available at www.providenceri.com.
