While students were enjoying their holidays, tensions flared between the city of Providence and Brown. Most notably, there was a disagreement between Mayor Angel Taveras and President Ruth Simmons over the University's voluntary payments to the city. Since the beginning of the semester, Providence has passed a resolution that proposes removing Brown's blanket property tax exemption, and Occupy Providence has set its sights on the issue as well. While we sympathize with Providence's economic situation, we feel the city cannot ask students, families and faculty members to bail it out.
Under Rhode Island law, private non-profit colleges and universities are exempt from taxes on most property used for educational purposes. But Brown voluntarily pays taxes on some of its properties and makes additional contributions to the city, totaling approximately $2.5 million.
We recognize that Providence is in dire financial straits. The city currently faces a $22.5 million budget deficit, and taxing Brown's vast holdings of untaxed property may seem like an obvious solution. If the Providence City Council gets its way, the University could pay more than $4.6 million to the city in additional taxes. If Brown were to pay taxes on all of its property, as many in Occupy Providence have requested, the total bill would be more than $30 million.
We hope Taveras realizes that Providence will suffer if Brown's resources are depleted. As Simmons put it in a conversation with the editorial page board, "Brown is one of the few assets" Providence has to improve its economic standing. Brown is the second-biggest employer in Providence and fosters economic activity in the city. Further increasing Brown's financial burden would hamper the city's ability to alleviate its economic hardship.
Supporters of dramatically increasing Brown's property taxes or voluntary payments should ask themselves this fundamental question: Where will this money come from? With a tight budget and high expenditures on financial aid, Brown has limited financial leeway. Giving more money to the city would likely mean much of the following: increasing already expensive tuition, higher student loan bills that would limit students' occupational freedom after graduation, lower faculty salaries that would make recruiting and retaining high-level talent more difficult and much more.
We cannot support this resolution because the financial consequences to the University and its inhabitants are simply too damaging. Protestors justify their claims by pointing to lucrative administration salaries — but these very same people have noted the administration's tendency to look outside the walls of University Hall when faced with budgetary challenges. Brown has also been criticized by these movements for paying a smaller amount in voluntary donations than other private universities pay to their cities, but when one controls for size of endowment and annual budget, the University in fact pays comparable rates. While Occupiers and the Providence City Council imagine themselves taking on a wealthy private university rolling in spare cash, we urge them to bear in mind that Brown is populated not just by administrators with six-figure salaries, but also by students already struggling to pay tuition and staff already asked to make significant sacrifices. While we support Brown in increasing its voluntary payments slightly, we cannot support any dramatic change that would financially jeopardize our institution.
Editorials are written by The Herald's editorial page board. Send comments to editorials@browndailyherald.com.
