The Providence City Council Finance Committee met for the first time Monday since the Mayor unveiled his latest budget proposal. The councilors now begin the laborious process of hammering out a budget both the council and the mayor can agree on.
The committee heard from the city’s financial department, which provided a quick overview of Mayor Jorge Elorza’s $734 million dollar proposed budget. Over the course of the next several weeks, the committee will hear from a variety of departments, to go over their various budgets.
Councilman John Igliozzi is the head of the Council Finance Committee, the group charged with coming up with a workable budget.
“Every budget that every administration submits to the council is a request saying, ‘this is how we’d like to run the government and we need this amount of money to do it. So this process is all about, reviewing and looking into the details,” said Igliozzi.
Igliozzi said the committee will work to find a compromise between the Mayor’s proposal and the needs of the council.
“What happens is everybody gets in the scrum, and we just begin the deep dive of the particulars of the budget, working with the administration’s wish list of items and agendas they want, and also what the council wants,” said Igliozzi.
The current proposal is about a 2 percent increase from last year.
