SMITHFIELD — Suburban and urban ring community leaders announcing the formation of a coalition to advocate for their common interests said yesterday that they would push measures to slow the increase of property taxes and prevent the state from financial ruin.

Cumberland Mayor Daniel J. McKee and Johnston Mayor Joseph M. Polisena, speaking on behalf of the nine communities in the coalition, outlined an agenda centered on public schools, including a desire to hold the state to last year’s levels of state aid for education, to repeal certain, costly state education mandates, and to request greater local government oversight in school expenditures.

Mayors, town administrators, and council presidents from Cumberland, Johnston, Lincoln, Cranston, Scituate, North Smithfield, Smithfield, and Portsmouth attended the noon conference at the Smithfield Senior Center.

Officials said that the state’s failure to address the needs of their suburban communities and the more than 400,000 residents they represent has led to the state’s fiscal woes.

“There is a direct association with the situation the state is in economically, and the road that we have been on,” McKee said. “It is not in the best interest of any community in the state to push us to the point where we can’t contribute anymore. If we get strangled, the state gets strangled.”

House Majority Leader Gordon Fox said in a statement last night that he looked forward to discussing the coalition’s issues in conjunction with the state budget.

“It is no secret that we have severe budgetary difficulties this year and our decisions will have to be made with those constraints in mind,” he said. “Historically, we have always assisted the local school districts above and beyond the proposed budget offered by the governor.”

The coalition proposes exempting school buildings from the state’s stricter fire-code regulations and repealing state special education regulations that are more restrictive than federal guidelines.

“Reducing state mandates doesn’t cost anything. It can be done with the stroke of a pen and would help these communities greatly,” Polisena said. “Do we really need to have sprinklers in all our schools when most students are trained to go right out the door when a fire alarm goes off?”

McKee said the coalition will advocate for changing the “school governance model.” One measure would require school districts to tell municipal administrators what the anticipated fiscal impact on a community would be to a proposed labor contract.

That report, called a fiscal note, would be reviewed by a municipality’s chief financial officer prior to the contract’s finalization and would avert problems some communities face with soaring healthcare costs.

“It’s like having everyone go out to dinner and order what they want and giving [municipal administrators] the bill. That’s not working anymore,” McKee said.

The coalition is also looking for a state aid formula that would give suburban and urban ring communities the same amounts of state aid they received last year and propose, over time, a gradual boost in the percentage of school department budgets the state covers.

“In 1992, when the state aid formula was changed, the logic of supporting urban districts made sense,” McKee said. “Today that is not the case, and we are quickly becoming communities in need.”

Polisena said coalition leaders have met with state Senate President Joseph A. Montalbano and are to meet with House leaders. In the coming weeks, the coalition will announce a meeting with the 22 state senators and 43 state representatives that represent their communities in the hopes that they will organize into a legislative bloc.

“We want results and the only way to do that is to create a strong enough voice,” he said.

pmarcelo@projo.com