The Cranston City Council held a special meeting on May 15, 2026, to consider and adopt a revised fiscal year 2026-27 budget, including amendments to expenditures and revenues. The council passed a resolution seeking state authorization to exceed the property tax levy cap to a maximum of 4.99%, adopted a $2,041,789 allocation split equally between the school department and the senior center, restored $200,000 for police vehicles offset by fee increases, and approved the capital budget. The meeting also included public comment, discussion on union negotiations, and procedural tabling of tax-related ordinances pending a June 1, 2026 follow-up meeting.
So she's gonna be the first thing. I'd like to call this special city council meeting to order on this night, May the fifteenth, two thousand and twenty-six. I call the meeting to order and ask the clerk to please call a roll. Present. Councilman Ander. Present. Councilman Rets present. Councilman Trafficancy. Councilwoman Mazari. Present. Present. Councilman Banana. Present. Vice President Heroyan. Present. Council President Wall. Here. Thank you. She is clerking from home, and I truly appreciate Director Renzouli stepping in to call the rule roll and take care of the stuff here in Chambers tonight. All right. And then I'm going to be seeking a motion to take the agenda out of order because I think it's going to be important that we address the resolution first, and then we're going to look at amendments and the capital budget just for a programming note. So if there's anyone in chambers, and I see uh Mr. Fryas has is signed up to speak. Um, please state he knows the drill, stage your name and address for the record, and you'll be given four minutes, Mr. Fryes. Uh thank you, Council President. Stephen Fryas, 107 Garden Hills Drive. Thank you for allowing me to make public comment tonight. I missed yesterday. I was at church for a confirmation for my daughter. So uh I'd like to start just by thanking the administration and the council for a couple of things. First, um, as a fiscal conservative, I'd like to thank you, the administration for putting forward a four percent budget. The four percent budget I know has been trashed by various people. However, when you're trying to do a four percent budget, the you have to reduce or eliminate what I would refer to as non-essential services. And to me, the senior center was not an essential service. Um, many cities and towns don't have a senior center, and I will elaborate on that further. On the schools were level funded, as you saw in the newspaper for the last couple weeks, the school department is now looking at millions of dollars of savings. They are not pursuing a currulo action, I believe. And the reason they're probably not is because what I saw of the cuts, none of them are mandated by federal or state law. That's why they probably wouldn't succeed. So I believe that the cuts, although dramatic, um, and that's probably the problem with a lot of people for them. Um, it was one of the most fiscally conservative budgets I have seen in history with Cranston. Just in general, to compliment the mayor, his administration. Under his tenure, when we started out, there was 197 full-time jobs in general government, not public safety in our library. Last year was 178. Under these budgets, whether the first one or the second one, he's reducing it by to 157 to 139. Either version, first version of one percent. That's significant. You've never seen this in history. Mayor traffic anti in 1996 reduced it by 20.