Mayor vetoes budget passed by City Council
WOONSOCKET – As promised, Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt has vetoed the cuts and other adjustments made to her proposed $144.3 million budget by the City Council, saying the panel’s version of the spending plan would stall the city’s recovery and result in unnecessarily higher residential property taxes than hers.
“The City Council’s amended budget will stall Woonsocket’s current and future progress, and will do so at the cost of increasing the Fiscal Year 2019 residential tax rate from the budget that I had proposed,” the mayor said in a veto message issued Wednesday. “I will, therefore, be exercising my authority to veto the City Council amended Fiscal Year 2019 budget because Woonsocket needs to keep progressing forward.”
The council could override the veto, but it needs a supermajority of five votes to do so, which means at least one of three members who already voted against the amendments – Councilors Richard Fagnant, Melissa Murray or Christopher Beauchamp – would have to change his or her mind at the next meeting, which is Monday.
The council voted 4-3 on June 18 to approve an assortment of reductions and changes in revenue forecasts that resulted in a net cut of some $770,000 to Baldelli-Hunt’s spending plan. Roughly $135,000 in spending for two new positions at City Hall, including an economic development director and a chief of staff for the mayor, were on the chopping block.
Crafted largely by Councilman James C. Cournoyer, the amendments all but obliterated the Woonsocket Redevelopment Agency, completely eliminating $500,000 in operational expenses for the body of mayoral appointees, and reduced the account for razing blighted buildings from $500,000 to $300,000.
The amendments eliminated funds for temporary services across multiple city departments, swapping them for a permanent “floater,” and authorized an additional $150,000 to upgrade the fleet of cruisers at the Woonsocket Police Department. Both the mayor’s and the council’s budget call for hiring a new deputy police chief for about $80,000.
The mayor’s spending plan had also envisioned reaping some $1.7 million on the revenue side from certain one-time only sources, including a trust-like fund to put to-
ward the future cost of healthcare benefits for retired members of the Woonsocket Fire Department, and the proceeds from the collection of a tax on vacant properties. But the council’s budget eliminates those revenue streams, arguing that it would be unwise to tap the funds amid looming fiscal “headwinds,” such as the anticipated loss of $1.7 million in property taxes from newly non-profit Landmark Medical Center about a year from now.
Beyond the ups and downs on the dollar side, Cournoyer and his allies on the council framed their spending plan as a step toward rectifying a longstanding imbalance in how the city divvies up the tax burden between residential and commercial property owners, including small businesses. The mayor’s version of the budget, Cournoyer argued, would have caused the commercial sector to pay some 35 percent of tax levy, a share that’s among the highest in the state, serving as a disincentive for business investment.
The council’s version of the budget would have curbed the commercial share of the levy to about 30 percent by shifting a small portion of the tax load onto the residential sector. Tax rates for both sectors would still shrink in the council’s version of the budget – just as they would in Baldelli-Hunt’s – just not as much for residential properties.
The bottom line for property owners?
In the council’s budget, commercial rates would land in the range of $33.20 per $1,000, a reduction of about 10 percent, compared to $36.10 in the mayor’s budget, or about 2 percent less. For homeowners, the council’s budget would put rates at about $24.84 per $1,000, or about 17.5 percent less than they are now, compared to $24.08 in the mayor’s spending plan, or a reduction of about 20 percent.
Taking into account the recently completed citywide revaluation, the council’s spending plan would roughly double the number of homeowners who would see tax bills increase, from about 15 percent to about 30 percent of the overall residential base.
“In short, the amended budget is a responsible and prudent budget that provides all the services we currently have, and then some, while constraining the mayor’s constant attempt to grow our budget to a level that simply is unaffordable and unsustainable,” Cournoyer said in a recent e-mail summarizing the changes. “The easiest thing in the world to do is spend other people’s money... like stealing the firefighters’ healthcare reserve to accommodate an election-year budget.”
In her veto message, however, Baldelli-Hunt says the council’s budget “moves the City away from principles that have guided” the administration because “it removes necessary tools needed by City departments to properly meet taxpayer needs, and eliminates funding for forward-thinking initiatives in economic development, infrastruc- ture improvements and blight removal.”
Citing the “economic and social quagmire” of past administrations, Baldelli-Hunt said she has replaced fiscal deficits with operating surpluses and achieved consistent improvement in credit ratings for the city from Moody’s Investor Services and Fitch’s Ratings.
“We are in a much better place than we were a few short years ago, however, we must continue to push forward with initiatives not only to enhance our day-to-day services to our existing taxpayers, but to also provide a more inviting environment for future residents and businesses,” the mayor wrote. “The City Council’s amended budget will halt the positive momentum that we have generated, and will drag us back to the failed practices of the past.”