CRANSTON, R.I. — During a tense meeting on Wednesday night, the Cranston City Council rejected the mayor’s controversial $352.7 million proposed budget that would have hiked the tax levy by 7.4 percent to cover expenses at City Hall for fiscal year 2027.
The council voted 9-0 to send the proposal back to Mayor Kenneth J. Hopkins’ desk.
“This proposal was insulting, and I think we need to work together to revise this budget and make it feasible for our taxpayers,” said Emilia Vaziri, a city-wide council member.
“Our taxpayers are not an ATM,” she added.
Nicole Renzulli, a spokesperson for the mayor, said Thursday the administration was not surprised by the vote.
“Obviously, this wasn’t the mayor’s ideal budget, and we are aware we’re in an election year, and it’s not very popular to raise taxes,” Renzulli said. “Unfortunately, we don’t think it’s going to be very popular to make the cuts that will, may be necessary, in order to balance the budget without raising taxes.”
The council, by city statute, needs to act on a budget by May 15, according to Renzulli. She said she thinks by next week the administration will have another proposal for the City Council.
The city is already facing a projected $10 million deficit for the current fiscal year, which it intends to cover with the approximately $15 million sitting in its rainy day fund, according to Anthony Moretti, the mayor’s chief of staff.
Hopkins, a Republican, filed the budget earlier this month, placing blame for the financial situation on now-former finance director Thomas Zidelis, who resigned in March, according to the Cranston Herald.
In an address to the City Council on April 15, Hopkins said he had trusted Zidelis, and Zidelis had “submitted budgets for two consecutive years that were not just optimistic, they were wrong in ways that are hard to explain.”
“Public safety over time was cut to levels that bore no relationship to what these departments actually cost to operate under their contractual obligations,” Hopkins said on April 15. “Interest income was miscalculated. Debt service payments — the city’s most fixed, predictable financial obligation — were entered incorrectly.
“That is not responsible financial management,” Hopkins continued. “It is how a problem compounds and becomes the situation that we are now in.”
Hopkins said earlier this month he should have “pushed harder and asked tougher questions.”
“That’s on me,” he said.
To ensure the budget is balanced in fiscal year 2027, Hopkins filed the proposal that would have raised the tax levy by about 7.4 percent, arguing that the tax bill for the average single-family home owner in Cranston would increase about $500 a year, or roughly $42 a month.
At that amount, the budget would keep city services running without interruption and avoid layoffs for city employees, Hopkins said. (Around 20 employees left their positions voluntarily, electing to take separation packages, city officials said.)
“The plea is, accept this budget, modify it as you see fit, bite the bullet, and move on,” Moretti told the council on Wednesday. “It fixes the problem.”
Council President Daniel R. Wall said the budget “unfortunately places the burden of solving our budget deficit solely on the backs of our taxpayers.”
“The small amount of amendments that we found pale in comparison to what we need,” Wall said. “We do need to make concessions that are not in the purview of the City Council.”
Moretti was interrupted several times by the crowd at the meeting as he spoke. He said the City Council should also accept responsibility for what happened, as the elected body is supposed to provide financial oversight.
“I don’t like the mayor’s budget, he doesn’t like the budget, and he understands why people don’t like this budget. No one is happy with it,” Moretti said. “The one thing about this budget is we can’t look back. We all have to look forward.”
Moretti said the next budget proposal would include reductions in city services, layoffs, and likely “a negative impact on school funding.”
“We will earnestly make responsible budget decisions that keep students at the heart of our community,” Jeannine Nota-Masse, superintendent of the Cranston Public School District, said in a statement on Friday. “We have faith that the council will support our schools and our students.”
“We have to look in every area, but I can tell you, to find the kind of money we need to find is not something we’re going to do with a scalpel, because … a lot of little cuts is not going to get us where we need to be,” Renzulli said.
To keep the budget at a 4 percent tax levy increase, city officials will need to find about $7 million, Renzulli said. The next proposal could also require backing from state lawmakers, should the budget seek to raise the levy beyond the 4 percent cap.
On April 17, House Minority Leader Michael W. Chippendale, a Foster Republican, introduced a bill that would allow Cranston to exceed the cap. But said he will not request a hearing on the legislation unless he receives a City Council resolution requesting an exemption from the tax cap.
Chippendale noted that last year, the General Assembly passed legislation allowing Providence to exceed the state’s 4 percent tax cap at the request of Mayor Brett Smiley, a Democrat.
“Providence is run by Democrats, so the bill was submitted by Democrats, and ushered through by the Democrat majority,” he said. “In this case — it’s a Republican mayor’s administration — so the Democrats are understandably not interested in touching it.”
Chippendale said having the state’s two largest cities seeking to exceed the 4 percent tax cap underscores the financial pressures the municipalities are facing from factors such as rising health care costs, employee contracts, school budgets, and unfunded state mandates.
Hopkins’ administration and the City Council should “sit together in a meaningful, non-political way and do what people of Cranston have asked them to do,” Chippendale said. “But I don’t see good faith from this Democratic City Council.”
This story has been updated to include comment from Jeannine Nota-Masse.
Christopher Gavin can be reached at christopher.gavin@globe.com. Edward Fitzpatrick can be reached at edward.fitzpatrick@globe.com. Follow him @FitzProv.