Road funds hiked, budget OK’d

John Howell
Posted 6/9/15

After four hearings and hours of digging into the numbers, the City Council on Wednesday night approved an amended budget that keeps total city expenditures of $294 million and tax rates as proposed …

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Road funds hiked, budget OK’d

Posted

After four hearings and hours of digging into the numbers, the City Council on Wednesday night approved an amended budget that keeps total city expenditures of $294 million and tax rates as proposed by Mayor Scott Avedisian. The budget will mean a 69-cent increase in the residential tax rate.

In the end, it was the allocation for road repairs that benefited from all of the trimming done of the mayor’s budget, rather than reducing the tax increase by about 30 cents. As the council wound down its deliberations Wednesday night, Ed Ladouceur of Ward 5 said during a recess he thought his constituents would rather the money go into roads. The 30 cents means an extra $60 for a property valued at $200,000.

As the council budget hearings drew to a close, the administration confirmed it had incorrectly estimated health care benefit costs in the current budget to the tune of $600,000. The error came to light as Ladouceur questioned how projected expenditure could exceed the budget in six accounts when costs are fixed.

Ladouceur and Joseph Solomon (D-Ward 4) questioned how this could have gone unnoticed.

“How can we be signing a check and not realize this happened?” Ladouceur asked. Solomon wanted to know if the money hadn’t been budgeted how the city was going to pay for it.

“It will come from some savings in other departments,” City Finance Director Ernest Zmyslinski answered.

The council snipped the mayor’s budget in a variety of accounts, with the biggest cuts coming in gasoline accounts, health care, overtime and the elimination of $200,000 to start a trust to deal with the liability of Other Post Employment Benefits, or OPEB.

Avedisian could have vetoed the amendments by the council, as he did last year with several amendments. He didn’t do that this time, although he questioned the council’s actions in a letter to the body.

“Cuts to gasoline and overtime run the risk of setting up certain departments for failure in this next fiscal year,” he writes. He is also troubled by the elimination of a position in the treasurer’s office advocated by the auditor general, which he predicted would delay reporting and the audit going forward.

Troubling several council members was the lack of information regarding contracts with the city’s three major bargaining units. While the administration reached agreements with municipal employees, police and fire, it refused to release those contracts until all three unions had voted on the agreements. As the results of the police vote were not finalized until after the council meeting, the information was not made available until the following day.

The administration plugged $1.4 million of increases into its budget to pay for the contracts. According to Bruce Keiser, director of administration, that would give all three unions 3 percent raises next year. Additionally, the contract that will come before the council on June 15 will give the unions additional three percent raises in the second and third year of the agreements.

But at the time of the vote the cost couldn’t be verified. Ward 9 Council Steve Merolla, the sole dissenting budget vote, said he couldn’t vote for a budget where it was unknown if there would be sufficient funds to pay for the labor agreements.

Merolla seemingly contradicted himself as he went on to say he thought the school department “is suffering” and priorities are out of line, meaning greater allocations, yet was critical of perpetual tax increases.

Increasing the mayor’s $1 million for roads came in two amendments. The first chunk of $505,000 was an amendment introduced by Ward 1 Councilman Steve Colantuono. The second came from Solomon after the council made an additional $868,000 in budget cuts.

City Council President Donna Travis suggested a recess so that the tax rate could be calculated based on the reduction. Solomon didn’t think that would be necessary, as he had ways to spend the money.

Ward 3 Councilwoman Camille Vella-Wilkinson also had a suggestion. She proposed boosting the management information system budget by $100,000 with the intent that the money would be earmarked for the purchase of Chromebooks to start a pilot program in schools to use the devices in place of textbooks. The point of allocating the funds to a city department rather than schools was to ensure funding of the program. That prompted discussion as to who would own and insure the devices.

But $100,000 wasn’t enough to initiate a program in the opinion of school business director Anthony Ferrucci. He was looking for $2 million to start off with 6,700 Chromebooks.

Faced with that information, Vella-Wilkinson abandoned her effort for the city to provide the Chromebooks and voted for the full $868,000 to be allocated for road repairs.

The residential tax rate, effective July 1, is $20.75; commercial/industrial, $31.13; and tangible personal property, $41.50.

The motor vehicle exemption, which was increased three years ago to $2,000 – $1,500 more than the $500 required by state law – remains unchanged, as does the motor vehicle tax rate, which is $34.60 per $1,000 of assessed value.

Comments

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  • Thecaptain

    The devil is in the details and for those that did not attend the hearings, this article does nothing to document the details of the hearings. I suggest watching the shameful city council and administration on USTREAM Warwick City Council. I would suggest that the residents invest in 6 alarm clocks that can be set to wake up 6 city council members during council meetings and budget hearings. It would be wonderful to find out if they actually had the intelligence level to pose a legitimate question. I would also suggest retaining the services of a couple of special education teachers to tutor some of the aforementioned council members, as clearly, they have no knowledge of skills in simple arithmetic.

    Tuesday, June 9, 2015 Report this

  • bendover

    Next step....CHAPTER 9...Now go back to sleep.

    Tuesday, June 9, 2015 Report this

  • danfire

    Did the Mayor present his 3,3,3, rasies he gave the to the police and fire or is he still keeping that hidden?

    Tuesday, June 9, 2015 Report this

  • falina

    Good Lord, John Howell could not be any further up the mayor's butt...

    Tuesday, June 9, 2015 Report this

  • allent

    who's the bigun wearing the mumu?

    Tuesday, June 9, 2015 Report this

  • patientman

    When I moved here in 2006 the rate was under $13. You can increase revenue through growth or taxes and fees. The leadership has actually lost residents and the contracting economy has greatly increased the burden on the remaining residents. The inability to make hard choices is a failure of leadership. The mindless reelection of leadership by the electorate is the failure of the people. You reap what you sow.

    Friday, June 12, 2015 Report this