By RUSS OLIVO

WOONSOCKET — About 140 city residents packed the auditorium of Woonsocket High School last night pleading with officials for tax relief as the city mulls passing a budget that calls for the biggest tax hike in years.

And many came loaded for bear, toting posters with anti-tax slogans and hurling sometimes acrimonious invective at city officials, whom they faulted for a lack of leadership and an unwillingness to make tough choices to hold the line on taxes.
“Maybe you are sitting there fine and dandy but there’s a lot of us who aren’t,” Connie Wayland told members of the City Council, seated at a table on the stage. “There’s a lot of anger in this city. You’re going to have homes empty, people living in the streets.”
Even before the meeting began, a half-dozen signs were propped against the entrance to the high school with slogans that set the tone. “We are not a human ATM,” one said in crudely scrawled red paint. “The money tree is bare,” said another. More succinctly, yet another said “Enough is enough.”
What’s driving the outpouring of opposition is a still-evolving budget proposal that will already trigger an increase of about 16 percent on the tax bill of a typical home assessed at about $240,000 this year. Given the declines in property values caused by revaluation, that home is worth closer to $204,000 this year. Combined with a 40 percent homestead exemption at a new tax rate of $23.34 (up from $13.23), the bill for that home will jump from roughly $2,400 to $2,800 in the fiscal year beginning July 1.
But there are still so many variables in the budget that the picture could end up significantly worse. Perhaps the largest is that Mayor Susan D. Menard has chosen to level-fund the School Department, which is already suing the city under the Caruolo Act because it claims it was shortchanged to the tune of $3.7 million in the current year. Next year, the School Committee wants some $6.9 million more from the city than the current year — and Menard has left it up to the council to decide how much of that, if any, should be approved.
Menard did not attend last night’s budget hearing, but Planning Director Joel D. Mathews read her message to taxpayers in the preamble of the proposed budget.
“Simply stated this is not unacceptable and cannot be afforded by the taxpayers,” Mathews said, reading the part about the School Department’s request. “Due to the many unknowns that still remain in the budgetary process, I view this budget as one in a series of drafts leading to a final budget being adopted by the Woonsocket City Council.”
While individual taxpayers may be hit harder, the budget calls for an increase in the levy – the total raised by all property taxes citywide – of 11 percent. Still, the overall increase in spending is just 2.3 percent. The lopsided math of the budget is reflection not so much of an increase in spending, officials say, but an anticipated cut of $3.6 million in state aid.
But many people who attended the meeting apparently share the mayor’s take-no-prisoners approach to budgeting.
“Cut to the bone,” said John Croteau, standing stoically with his arms crossed in the back of the hall with three different homemade anti-tax posters. “No employee deserves to have lifetime medical benefits after working just 10 years. That’s insane. If they start with the little stuff first we might be able to get a handle on the big things.”
Richard Turcotte said his work week has been cut to four days and he pays $84 a week for health and dental benefits. He and other people in the same boat or worse are struggling, yet the city is still passing along to them the cost of non-essential services like “watering plants.”
“I just don’t get it,” he said. “I don’t think anybody gets it.”
One theme that emerged at the hearing is that the spending package is particularly unfair to the owners of two-family and three-family homes because their homestead exemptions would either shrink, or disappear altogether, under the proposal.
While the exemption for single-family homes would be15 percent higher than the current exemption, two-families would be rolled back to 8 percent from 10, and three-families, which enjoy an exemption of 8 percent, would get none at all. Officials say the proposed structure was jiggered, in part, to accommodate the uneven deflationary effect of revaluation on various types of real estate.
A new state law that prohibits municipalities from taxing any class of real estate at more than 50 percent of any other also dampened the city’s ability to shift as much of the tax burden as it used to on commercial real estate. The same law also pushed larger multi-families into the commercial category.
Roland Michaud accused officials of hiding behind the law to shift a disproportionate share of the tax burden onto multi-family property owners, many of whom do not live in the city and do not vote. But Michaud said the increases will be passed on to renters, causing a great deal of hardship.
“To me it’s an injustice,” Michaud said. “It wrecks neighborhoods and it wrecks affordable housing. We have to make it fairer.”
It was apparent, however, that the City Council was already getting that message well in advance of the meeting. City Clerk Pauline Payeur said council members have already drafted legislation to increase the proposed homestead exemption for two-family homes from 8 to 16 percent. The exemption would still be eliminated for three-families, but it would increase to 43 percent for single-families.
The council is expected to hold a workshop on the budget next Monday to further discuss possible adjustments and address the looming imbalance in the School Department, which some officials believe could trigger another Caruolo action if it is not addressed. The council is scheduled to formally adopt a spending package for the next fiscal year, with tax rates that are finally set in stone, on June 22.