Richmond Town Municipal Budget Summary for 2025-2026
- Richmond Democratic Town Committee
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
picture source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/off-the-road/49117396966, Peter Rintels
The Richmond Town Council is in the process of developing the proposed budget for next year. They are still looking for your input – there is one more public hearing on the budget on May 6th (at 6 pm) for you to share your input with the Council. Their proposed budget has three key threads:
Maintain the current tax rate – The proposed budget keeps the tax rate the same for the third year in a row. The council achieved this by making and leveraging adjustments in other areas, namely:
Debt service reduced significantly in the upcoming year
Reduction of the fund balance from 17.77% to the recommended 16.7%
Reduction of a Conservation Commission project from $200k to $45k, still allowing it to leverage their Municipal Resiliency Grant
Reductions in unspent supply budgets
As you look across tax rates in Rhode Island, there is a big jump in residential tax rates from towns with coastal property and those without. Rates where they have large, ocean-front houses tend to have less than half of the tax rate of inland towns, since the value of the ocean-front houses are so high. However, among the towns without coastal property, Richmond tax rates at $14.67 (per thousand of assessed value) is just below average for those towns (the average inland rate is $14.97).
Supporting road repairs – One of the common areas where Richmond is required to use bond funding is for road repairs. While the town tries to align road funding with matching grants, this results in spikes in debt when the town has to repair or repave roads. With the drop in debt service as some of our past bonds are complete, the town is working to reinvest those back into fixing roads on a more sustainable timeline. Rather than going out to bond, the town is aiming to implement a strategy where they would fund a set of ongoing repairs to keep up, rather than having to go out to bond every few years. This provides a more sustainable investment in town infrastructure, for an issue that affects many residents.
Investing in town employees – Retaining town employees has become one of our biggest challenges in Richmond. With a small staff, we’ve lost around several folks in the last couple years to opportunities with higher pay. A recent salary survey of towns in Rhode Island highlights how Richmond town employees tend to be on the lower end of reimbursement. It takes considerable time and money to bring a new employee up to speed on a job that covers a wide array of different tasks. To help support the staff, the council budgeted for a 3% cost of living adjustment to town wages (inflation was 2.9% last year, and the Social Security cost of living adjustment was 2.5%). They also included a $21k increase to the wage contingency for specific competitive or performance increases to offset the gap in Richmond salaries.
After the last public hearing on May 6th, the Council will approve the proposed budget and town residents will have an opportunity to vote on whether to accept it on June 3rd. It’s important to provide your input now, since they can still make adjustments to make sure that the budget is addressing to the needs of the residents. You can either attend the public hearing on May 6th at 6 pm at the Richmond Town Hall, or send an email to the Richmond Town Council members.
Christopher Kona
