PROVIDENCE — Mayor David N. Cicilline has no plans to veto any part of the city budget that passed for the first time Wednesday, and assuming the document receives its second passage tonight, the $616.7-million plan should be final.

Cicilline said that the budget for the fiscal year that began July 1 was a difficult one, but the council did the right thing in passing it with few changes. As it is virtually unchanged from the reworked budget he and the council leadership crafted earlier this month, he has no plans to use his line-item veto power.

“We did make some tough choices that had to be made in this difficult budget,” Cicilline said.

The City Council only made one late change to the mayor’s budget, restoring financing for the Capital Center Commission, the body that reviews development projects in the capital center area downtown.

That budget received its first passage Wednesday by a vote of 12 to 3, and should be confirmed by a similar margin tonight.

The $616.7-million budget includes a maximum tax increase, which will mean roughly a 4.25-percent increase in the average property-tax bill.

The city will also make $6.25 million in cuts from the schools, $800,000 from the Fire Department and $700,000 from the Police Department. On top of that, 16 vacant city positions will not be filled, for a savings of $825,000, and $4.6 million in unused city property will be sold.

Cicilline said that Providence is doing the fiscally responsible thing, particularly by eliminating the vacant positions, which the city had left unfilled this year in anticipation of their removal at budget time.

“Elsewhere, personnel numbers are being increased. I don’t think you’re going to find another city that’s cutting jobs. But we had to do it. I’m proud of the council for making the tough decisions,” Cicilline said.

But problems are still lurking: this budget, difficult as it was, includes no money for salary increases for the city’s 5,000 unionized employees. Contracts with the unions representing city police, firefighters, teachers, and municipal and school employees and support staff all expired by July 1 of this year. Some of the contracts, like police and fire, have not been settled since as far back as 2004, and are in arbitration. Those back years must be settled before the current year can be adjudicated.

“We’ll continue negotiating with all of our public employee unions. There will be an arbitration award on some of these in the next few months,” Cicilline said.

“It’s a difficult time, and obviously we’re going to negotiate at the bargaining table and do the things that are fair for our employees and fair to taxpayers, and then obviously we’ll have to deal with the financial consequences of that,” he said.

But he vowed that there would be no need for a midyear tax increase to pay the salary increases of the unionized employees.

Cicilline had originally submitted a $625.9-million budget in May for the fiscal year that began July 1, but that budget did not receive the support the mayor had counted on at the General Assembly, and the city soon found itself trying to climb out of a $27.8-million budget hole.

Cicilline’s first submission relied on the Assembly granting Providence authority to impose a number of new fees on city residents. Those measures failed, but Cicilline said that he may try to reintroduce them next year.

He also said that he disagrees with characterizations that when his city or another Rhode Island municipality asks for more money, they are begging hat-in-hand for bailout cash.

“Cities and towns are not going to the General Assembly asking for a handout. Cities and towns are going to the General Assembly asking for our fair share of what we turn over to them,” he said.

dbarbari@projo.com