EAST PROVIDENCE — Every city purchase and tax dollar spent is being scrutinized these days in East Providence. One could say that’s what should be happening in a city whose leaders talk about filing for bankruptcy to solve a projected $8.3-million deficit.

Yet school and city officials believe rumors and exaggerations rather than facts and complete stories are dominating most water cooler talk, telephone calls and critical Internet blogs.

Take the two most recent topics.

Popular and expensive Blackberry cell phones were bought for a few city and school administrators. An anonymous caller to The Providence Journal said new Blackberrys — which have Internet and Palm Pilot capabilities as well as several other features — were bought for every person in the school administration building, probably sending the city further into the hole.

The truth is six phones were purchased at $29.99 each for the School Department. The city also received two free Blackberrys for the planning director and city manager, said Lori-Ann Fox, the city’s director of information technology.

“Everyone was on different plans, so we were getting hit with overages,” Fox said. “I switched everyone to a shared plan and told the companies to give me their best offer. [East Providence eventually chose Verizon.] It actually saved the city money.”

On average, Fox said, the city’s cell phone bills collectively cost $4,320 a month. She said pooling the minutes saved $1,300 a month. The school district’s average monthly cell phone costs were $1,324 per month; the new plan will save the district $540 a month, Fox said.

The new phones were necessary for those who received them, the schools’ finance director, Jerome Baron, said last week.

As a recipient, Baron said, he wanted a Palm Pilot to use as a date book and schedule meetings, but Fox suggested the Blackberry so he could also get Internet access.

“It’s not a lot of people [who got them],” he said. “And it will make things more efficient.”

His new cell phone wasn’t the only purchase questioned.

Baron also received a new laptop recently. Taxpayers in e-mails were irate that such an expensive item was bought during a time when teacher salaries are being reduced and there aren’t enough computers for students at schools.

Fox said the laptop cost less than $1,000, and Baron said it will be shared by the district leaders.

And while Baron agreed every penny counts, he said, “The fact that an entity of this size did not have a laptop is an absurdity.”

Baron said the hard drive on his office computer “fried” a month ago and there wasn’t anyone around to replace or fix it for three weeks. There wasn’t a spare computer, so he had to wait until people went to lunch to use their computers.

Said Baron, “It’s budget time and the chief financial officer should have a computer. Not to have one is ridiculous.”

apina@projo.com