From left are Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline and Daniel Beardsley, director of the R.I. League of Cities and Towns.

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The Providence Journal / Connie Grosch

It’s been a tough stretch in Cranston.

The City Council has abolished the municipal engineering department.

The School Committee has eliminated 17 supervisors of art, nursing and academic programs.

And the council and the committee are locked in a bitter dispute over $4.9 million in local education aid.

“It’s a very difficult time, being mayor, when there’s no money,” says Mayor Michael T. Napolitano. “Every day, somebody comes up to you and asks, ‘Are we going to be all right?’ ”

Napolitano’s lament is echoed in town halls and school departments across the state, as local government confronts its worst fiscal crisis in memory.

A sagging economy is biting into municipal revenues. And a property-tax cap limits what cities and towns can do to raise more cash.

Meanwhile, the state has chopped general aid to municipalities, while fuel, pension and health-care costs soar.

Throw in a federal cut or two and gloomy forecasts about Rhode Island’s fiscal future and there are plenty of long faces in local government circles.

“The fiscal situation for cities and towns is getting bleaker as each day goes by,” said Daniel L. Beardsley Jr., executive director of the Rhode Island League of Cities and Towns.

There has been the occasional spot of good news.

School officials across the state rejoiced last month when the General Assembly unexpectedly boosted education aid by $12.8 million for the fiscal year that began July 1.

And some of the most painful cuts threatened during budget deliberations this spring never came to pass.

In Cranston, talk of cutting middle-school sports and a popular program for gifted students faded.

And in West Greenwich, where the Town Council voted to eliminate 2 of 10 police officers, Chief Ronald P. Lepre said cost-cutting negotiations with the police union should allow the department to retain its full complement of officers. But the crunch has had real impacts in many communities.

In North Smithfield, officials are cutting some foreign language, business and home economics classes at the high school.

In Warwick, the School Committee voted to close three elementary schools this fall.

And in Providence, Mayor David N. Cicilline is pushing to raise the property-tax levy by 3.75 percent and to impose fees on trash collection.

The budget strain has local officials pleading for an overhaul of municipal finance.

“If all we do is try to muddle through for the next few years, we haven’t solved anything,” says Richard Brown, city manager in East Providence. “What we have to do is take this problem and make it an opportunity.”

Mayors and managers did win one long-sought bit of reform last month.

The General Assembly passed a law that, in effect, gives cities and towns the freedom to shop around for cost-effective health-insurance plans for their employees.

The measure prohibits municipal labor contracts from naming specific insurance providers.

But local officials say they need more.

They want state legislators to change the pension rules for municipal employees, requiring them to work longer before they can retire.

They are also pushing for the repeal of a state law that allows third-party arbitrators to impose sometimes costly police and fire contracts on municipalities after union talks break down.

Those proposals face opposition from the state’s powerful labor lobby.

Tony Capezza, Rhode Island state director of the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, said the binding arbitration law is only fair, since police officers and firefighters do not have the right to strike.

“If you don’t have binding arbitration, you would have to have the right to strike,” he said. “Lincoln freed the slaves years ago.”

Political opposition is not the only check on local officials. They are also showing some self-restraint.

Few in this tax-weary state, for instance, are calling for an outright repeal of the property-tax cap.

The law prohibited cities and towns from boosting property-tax levies by more than 5 percent for the 2008-09 fiscal year that started last week.

The measure shrinks the cap in subsequent fiscal years, bottoming out at 4 percent in 2013.

Senate Majority Leader M. Teresa Paiva Weed, the chief architect of the law, says she stands by the cap –– even in the face of layoffs and school closings.

“Property taxes are clearly the number-one issue on taxpayers’ minds,” she said.

And for all the hand-wringing, she notes, there seems to be little local appetite for significant property-tax hikes.

Executives in just 8 of Rhode Island’s 39 cities and towns –– Coventry, Middletown, Narragansett, New Shoreham, North Kingstown, Portsmouth, Scituate and South Kingstown –– proposed the maximum increase allowed for the new fiscal year.

Only eight other municipalities –– Bristol, Foster, Glocester, Richmond, Tiverton, West Greenwich, North Smithfield and Westerly –– petitioned for, and received, state permission to exceed the tax cap.

Communities are eligible for an exemption if they face a decline in non-property tax revenues, an emergency expense or excessive debt service costs.

If cities and towns are not rebelling against the tax cap, they do have a concern about an apparent conflict with another state law.

The Caruolo Act gives school districts the power to sue cities for more aid and –– by some readings –– to circumvent the cap.

Beardsley, of the League of Cities and Towns, said the state needs to repeal the Caruolo law, or at least reconcile it with the cap.

But while the League advocates for long-term change on Smith Hill, cities, towns and school districts are facing more immediate pressures.

In North Kingstown, schools Supt. Priscilla L. Feir recently quit after less than a year on the job, citing the impact of budget cuts.In West Warwick, the School Committee approved a teachers’ contract that pushed the town beyond the property-tax cap.

And in Warwick, the average homeowner will pay about $175 more in property taxes this year to help finance retroactive pay raises for teachers.

Back in Cranston, the mayor and City Council never seriously entertained a tax increase this past budget season.

Elections were approaching in November, after all.

And Napolitano, who has since announced he is not running for reelection, was still expecting a tight race.

But as the city’s financial problems mount, there is a growing sense in the halls of government that something has to give.

A midyear property-tax increase is a distinct possibility. Officials say salaries should be frozen and employees should pay more for their health care.

And officials fear that programs spared the budget ax, to date, will have to go.

Michael A. Traficante, a former Cranston mayor who now serves as chairman of the School Committee, said he cannot remember a more difficult time for local government.

“It never reached these proportions,” he said. “Never.”

dscharfe@projo.com