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Since CrickeeRaven believes everything printed in the Warwick Post is true, I checked out the article and posted this response on that article:

Talk about slanted reporting. Sorry Rob Borkowski, this yet again proves that you and the Warwick Post can’t get the facts straight and are as bad as Corrente in making claims that simply are not true.

You write, “Take a moment to re-read something that was just mentioned: The fiscal 2017 tax rate is lower than the FY2016 rate, meaning it fell, rather than increased. [Corrente is claiming 16 straight years of tax increases under Avedisian; fiscal 2017 ends that streak, which goes unmentioned by Corrente.]”

The total amount of revenue budgeted in fiscal 2016 from property taxes was $221,900,051. In the current 2017 fiscal year, property tax revenue is budgeted at $226,606,952, an increase of $4,706,901. In this case Corrente is right, Avedisian increased taxes again for the 16th straight year.

Your snake oil reporting forgets to mention to your readers that with any property revaluation the final results are total revenue neutral, meaning the overall taxes collected will stay the same at the end of the revaluation if all things remain the same in the budget.

If overall property values in the city increase, the tax rate will decrease [that is what happened in this revaluation]. If overall property values in the city decrease, the tax rate will increase.

However since the Mayor Avedisian can’t control city spending each year and has been unable to balance the budget over the past two years tapping the city rainy day fund, he created a $3 million structural deficit carried into the fiscal 2017 budget.

That forced him to decide to either cut $3 million in spending (pipe dream] or at least increase the "revised reval tax rate" higher, to collect that additional $3 million needed to balance the budget. And that’s exactly what he did.

But to make matters worse he continued new record city spending by another $1.7 million, thus increasing the new rate even more. The entire $4.7 million went to the city budget, since schools were level funded again, to pay for more active and retired employee benefits.

So even through the tax rate is below what it was last year, that doesn't mean property taxes did not increase this year.

Bottom line Rob, you as well as Corrente are “playing political games with the facts”.