In an 8-1 decision, the Warwick City Council has voted to establish a commission to oversee the finances of Warwick Public Schools after news broke that they were $9 million in debt for Fiscal Year 2025.

The commission will consist of five members, three nominated by the mayor with City Council approval, one nominated by WPS administration and one by the School Committee.

Its duties will consist of overseeing school expenditures and developing a three-year operating and capital financial plan, and it will disband after the Fiscal Year 2026 budget is finalized. It will not, Mayor Frank Picozzi said, have any powers outside of budgeting.

The sole dissenter in last Wednesday night’s vote was Ward 2 Councilman Jeremy Rix, who said that he was concerned about an appointed commission taking power from elected officials.

“Let’s not make any bones about it, the commission would be effectively controlled by political appointees,” Rix said. “I agree that this is a serious problem. I would also say that the current School Committee and the School Committee in recent years has had a much better relationship with the executive branch and City Council compared to many other School Committees … If I did not have confidence in the current School Committee, I might be supporting this legislation, but in recent years, the School Committee has really turned around.”

Rhode Island Auditor General David Bergantino called for the commission after meetings with Warwick’s administration and schools officials.

Bergantino, along with Picozzi and Finance Director Peder Schaefer, said that the commission would be necessary in order to close the deficit before it creates problems.

The biggest fear of the administration was that not acting on the deficit could affect the city’s bond rating, which Picozzi said would have catastrophic impacts on the city.

“With over $300 million in bonds to still sell, a lower rating would cost the city tens of millions of dollars,” Picozzi said. “This deficit must be lowered as much as possible now and be eliminated over several years with an amortization plan.”

The auditor general commended the city’s government and Warwick Public Schools, saying that the level of cooperation and urgency that the two had shown was promising and had left enough time for corrective measures to be taken.

“In my experience, such transparency and leadership is not always demonstrated,” Bergantino said.

Speaking against the bill and representing the schools was School Committee President Shaun Galligan.

Galligan said he was not against further oversight of the committee’s finances, but rather that, given the urgency of the situation,  creating a commission that would not be able to begin work until bills making it legal passed the General Assembly did not make sense to him.

He also argued that the $9-million figure listed as a worst-case scenario deficit is now outdated following the committee’s approval of nearly $3 million in cuts at a Jan. 14 meeting. Assuming cuts currently planned for February’s meeting are passed, Galligan said WPS would have reduced the projected deficit by roughly two-thirds, leaving a shortfall of $3,624,260.

“That’s what seven calendar days of work has done,” Galligan said. “And these cuts are very reasonable, considering what we started with.”

Ward 5 Councilman Ed Ladouceur, however, argued that many of the cuts were merely moving money from this year’s budget to budgets further down the line, noting that one such move in January’s regular meeting in particular – cutting $750,000 of the WISE Union pension contribution – bothered him.

“These are kick-the-can-down-the-road cuts,” Ladouceur said. “What you’re cutting today, you’re going to put back tomorrow. And you’ve already told us that tomorrow is going to be worse than today.”

Ward 9 Councilman Vincent Gebhart also questioned the sustainability of the commission to make meaningful cuts without being able to affect personnel changes, saying that only $40 million of the schools budget was spent on nonpersonnel matters.

Having people from outside the city look at the School Department’s budget without having a deep knowledge of Warwick’s school system, Galligan said, was also a concern to him.

“There’s no residency requirement within this proposed legislation,” Galligan said. “So you’re going to have someone, you know, come into the city, be appointed, make cuts, but not understand what the community’s priorities are, what the community’s needs and desires are. Then they’ll come in, look at numbers, and make cuts that will possibly have a detrimental impact on our community, our children and their education.”

The meeting drew several dozen members of the public, who were roughly split on whether establishing the commission would be a good idea, with slightly more voicing opposition to it.

Those against argued that it would subvert the School Committee’s elected officials, and also questioned the cost of the commission and whether the city would be able to retain professionals for the job.

Many also questioned why the city would create a commission to supervise school finances but not the finances of the city as a whole, arguing that existing rules would allow for a look at both.

“In the long term, the city budget is worse than the school budget,” former Councilman Bob Cushman said. “I figure we are going to be in a fiscal crisis probably two to three years from now… The city and the schools have been bailed out over the last five years [by] tens of millions of dollars in COVID funds; otherwise, this would have happened a long time ago.”

Picozzi argued that while the city has its own financial challenges, a similar measure would not be needed, and that the schools’ financial standing was the immediate problem.

Members of the public in favor of the commission took the absence of WPS’s administration from the meeting as a sign that they could not be trusted to run their own finances.

Another point of frustration at the meeting came from a lack of answers about how the deficit arose – something WPS is currently investigating internally.

Both Schools Superintendent Lynn Dambruch and Assistant Superintendent Bill McCaffrey attended a meeting with students in WPS’s special services transition program and their parents last Wednesday night, which Galligan said had been scheduled before the special council meeting.

Ultimately, an overwhelming majority of council members were in favor of creating the commission, citing the need to protect the city’s bond rating.

Ward 3 Councilman Bryan Nappa said that he viewed the commission as a “backstop” should WPS not be able to fix their financial problems on their own.

“We really respect you coming up here, and looking at this in the most favorable light, I truly hope that you all can work together and work with the administration and us to find a way through this, and that the actions we’re taking here tonight are largely never going to be realized,” Nappa said. “I have faith in your drive to make a resolution to this problem, but I think this is a prudent approach.”

The next step is for legislation authorizing the commission to pass the General Assembly. That is expected to take one to two months, should it pass.

If WPS’s finances are in order by then, Picozzi said, he would not appoint any members to the commission, thereby dissolving it.

Council President Anthony Sinapi said that if there are significant issues with the setup of the commission, they would be raised at the General Assembly.

“There’s no guarantee that it passes there. If they find issue with it, if they don’t think it’s a good idea, then it won’t,” Sinapi said. “If people still disagree with the content of this, they are more than welcome to lobby the General Assembly accordingly. But I think this walks a delicate balance.”