At a February press conference announcing the city’s potential looming bankruptcy, Providence Mayor Angel Taveras’ staff gave reporters a packet that included a page specifically devoted to explaining the contributions the University needed to make to help avert financial disaster.This emphasis underscored Brown’s strategic importance to the city’s attempts to close its budget gap. After cutting public services and jobs, closing schools and reducing some salaries in city government, the most recent budget hole today stands at $22 million — $7.1 million of which Taveras hopes will come from Providence’s major nonprofits. As the city’s largest property owner and the manager of a budget that dwarfs that of Providence, the University is a high-profile target in the Taveras administration’s effort to raise the funds. The University and the city were publicly at odds following Taveras’ announcement that the city could declare bankruptcy in June if the budget deficit is not closed. The two parties have since engaged in weeks of negotiations behind closed doors — with the mayor and his staff negotiating opposite a University team comprising President Ruth Simmons and her staff, led by Beppie Huidekopper, executive vice president for finance and administration, and Richard Spies, executive vice president for planning and senior adviser to the president. Many on the outside — Providence residents and Brown students alike — have called for the University to open its coffers to aid the city.
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