On April 25, Providence Mayor Brett Smiley announced the first budget of his mayoral term, proposing to increase city spending from $567.3 million to more than $585 million. Some of his priorities include: a new tax structure for many of Providence’s landlords, more police officers, raises for city workers, and new spending for some city services.
New property taxes
Under Smiley’s proposed budget, taxes for commercial landlords would go down, but taxes for homeowners and small-time landlords would increase. These are the first changes in these pay structures in about a decade. Landlords in owner-occupied buildings with five or fewer units would need to pay $18.70 per $1000 of tax assessed value. Conversely, commercial landlords would need to pay $1.30 per $1000. Smiley said the tax breaks “should be passed onto their renters,” but there’s no city requirement nor incentive program for the landlords to do so.
The proposal also includes a budgeted $7.1 million from the city’s non-profit institutions, like Brown University, with the expectation that the schools and the city will come to an agreement that they’ll pay more during this fiscal year.
Policing
Over the past 7 fiscal years, Providence’s budget for its police squad has slowly been ticking upward. Mayor Smiley’s proposed budget is no exception.
One of the biggest areas of spending in Providence over the past six years has been public safety – a category that includes things like police and fire staff, and the equipment they need. It’s also one of the line items in the budget that’s increased the most in recent years. This year, it stands to increase by 36% as compared to 2016.
Mayor Smiley has proposed to raise the public safety budget to more than $212 million. He plans to put some of that money towards training new police recruits – about 80 of them.
The police budget specifically would increase under Smiley by 49.2% as compared to 2016.
Worker pay and pensions
The city is proposing raises of 2.75% for most of its employees. It’s also proposing 4% raises for some fire department staff and 1% raises for some police department staff.
And, the city must keep contributing to pensions. This year, Smiley proposes to pay out $104,943,383 to city worker pensions.
Noise
In Mayor Smiley’s ongoing fight against noise, he has proposed a $100,000 increase towards the city’s noise ordinance enforcement team. According to spokespeople for the city, the team is not adequately trained on sound meters and other equipment it’s tasked with using to measure noise around Providence. This funding would help train them and allocate additional equipment. The proposed budget increase also includes a salary for an additional “Licensing Inspector” to expand the city’s capacity to listen for noise.
The post Mayor Smiley proposes more money for police, lower taxes for commercial landlords appeared first on TPR: The Public's Radio.