Mayor’s budget cuts taxes for residents, business

WOONSOCKET – With COVID-19 exacting a heavy financial toll on residents and businesses, Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt says they will soon find relief in at least one place: Their fiscal 2021 tax bills.

Released Wednesday, Baldelli-Hunt’s proposed $152.2 million spending plan for the fiscal year that begins on July 1 calls for a 1 percent decrease for both residential and commercial tax rates. If the plan holds past the rigors of amendment by the City Council, this would be the fifth year in a row rates for at least one of the city’s tax classes has been reduced.

The shrinking tax burden comes despite an overall increase of about 4 percent in total expenditures, most of which is driven by spending for the Woonsocket Education Department. It accounts for about $88.3 million of the budget, almost $6 million more than current spending, but on the municipal side, Baldelli-Hunt says departmental budgets were wiped clean of all unnecessary expenditures to reduce year-overyear spending by about $128,000.

“We are living in unprecedented times and this proposed Fiscal Year 2021 budget was developed to reflect the economic and social pain experienced by our residents due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” Baldelli-Hunt wrote in the introductory message to the proposed spending plan. “Because many of our residents are hurting economically right now, I desperately wanted to present a budget that cut property taxes for our residential and commercial taxpayers.”

Baldelli-Hunt said the proposed cuts were achievable only because every city department, in a demonstration of exceptional teamwork, did some serious soul-searching about what it really needs to spend.

“Instead of giving in and increasing our tax rates in Fiscal Year 2021 we dug in and reduced expenditures across City government wherever we prudently could do so,” she wrote. “We looked at the cost, effectiveness and necessity of all City activities and programs and then scrubbed all our departmental expenditures, removing anything that can be prudently delayed, eliminated or achieved in a different manner.”

In a phone interview, Baldelli-Hunt said, “Raising taxes is not in my DNA.” But she credited her department heads with doing the hard work of bringing the proposed spending plan to fruition. “It’s because of them that we can do all of this,” she said.

If there’s one question-mark that looms over the city budget, it’s how much it will be reimbursed during the current fiscal year for