Warwick
So last week, the Warwick School Committee became a James McLaughlin Award recipient by filing suit against the city to obtain $6.2 million in additional revenue for the school department. (We should take note of a matter that is undoubtedly completely unrelated: the Warwick teachers contract expires at the end of this month.) A potential…
The Providence Journal reported this development on the very day (i.e., yesterday) that a Rhode Island municipality was thrown into bankruptcy. With no clear answer from the state on whether communities that cut funding to their school districts last year have to restore some of that money, the Warwick School Committee is suing the city…
Trying to follow public policy debates — particularly those having to do with the transfer of government money — is like trying to make sense of an incoherent dream. Whenever you hear or read that there is “confusion” or “ambiguity” related to a particular law, it’s a reasonable assumption that one or more parties are…
WPRO’s Bob Plain piqued my interest with his story on how the new law (PDF, pg. 145 of file) allowing cities and towns to shift municipal retirees’ from private health care plans to Medicare will save Providence about $11.5 million. I haven’t heard what sort of savings this could mean for my hometown of Warwick’s…
As mentioned last week, Warwick saw a re-run of last year’s budget debate and now has a re-run of last year’s budget: flat-funded schools but an increase in city-side spending = property tax increases AND (new and improved!) the (re)imposition of the car tax. The council approved a budget of about $273.8 million and a…
Budget time in Warwick, which means the head-butting between the Mayor/City Council and Warwick Schools is essentially the same as last year and will probably have the same results. Without re-hashing the same arguments, here’s the quick version. The schools and city disagree on the baseline number for maintaining the level of effort for school…
As reported by the ProJo, Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian’s new budget includes significant tax increases (both in the property tax and imposition of the car tax) on the city’s residents. Additionally, the Warwick Beacon provided this helpful graphic to illustrate what it could mean for your average, two-car Warwick household: Avedisian blames the 2010 floods,…
Warwick Mayor Avedisian’s pension reform proposals are currently in the process of being reviewed by the Warwick City Council. In a nutshell, Avedisian proposes the following: 1) Minimum retirement age of 50 years old for Fire and Police and 59 for municipal workers. Right now, they can retire at any age as long as they’ve…
A bevy of education-related stories today. The repercussions following the Providence teacher “firings” continue, with Mayor Tavares getting attention from the New York Times. The ProJo reported that teachers fear it’s the end for seniority-based retention, which is kind of a strange way to put it because, as the story also explains, that end was…
I noted that Warwick Mayor Avedisian was offering up a pragmatic, if typical, pension reform plan in that it dealt with reforms for future pensions. Avedisian took to the pages of the Providence Journal to explain his plan, but, as Ted Nesi notes, Avedisian tries to get away with shoving the past pension problems aside.…