Richmond Public Schools teachers and city police officers and firefighters would gain pay raises, but most city employees would have to make do with their current wages.

City residents would pay an extra $2.50 a month for improved trash pickups, particularly of tree limbs, mattresses and other bulk items, but would lose vacuum leaf collection.

Richmonders also would face an average 5 percent increase in bills for drinking water, sewer service, natural gas and stormwater control.

Those are among the limited highlights of Mayor Levar M. Stoney’s first budget — a largely stand-pat proposal.

As he promised during his campaign, Mayor Stoney did not propose any increases in personal property and real estate taxes in the 2017-18 budget plan he presented to Richmond City Council on Monday, saying he would not do so until he could prove that the city’s operations meet citizens’ expectations.

He also shied away from proposing Richmond’s first tax on cigarettes to add new revenue for a city that he said is not generating the kind of income needed to address the major problems it faces. Those problems range from the high level of poverty that grips one in four city residents to worn-out school buildings, aging city buildings, broken sidewalks and pothole-filled streets.

While Mayor Stoney described his spending plan for the 2017-18 fiscal year that begins July 1 as “fiscally responsible and lean,” with targeted investments in priorities like education and public safety, he preached the same message as his predecessor, Dr. Dwight C. Jones, about the lack of money.

“Let me be clear,” Mayor Stoney told the council in introducing his proposed $681 million budget, the smallest general fund budget in four years. “This is a budget that is built on very limited resources.

“We are four years behind in sidewalk maintenance. We don’t have the resources to repair all the potholes or our roads,” he told council. And the city has only 42 plows to clear the 60 snow routes, he said.

His proposal amounts to spending about $3,100 for each of the estimated 220,000 city residents, down about $180 per person from the current budget.

While some of the decline in spending involves shifts of money from the general fund to other parts of the budget as special funds, the Stoney administration is dealing with actual reductions in some areas.

Most notably, public utilities, a cash cow that has long enabled the city to avoid tax increases, is projected to provide $33.4 million to the general fund in the 2018 fiscal year. That’s a $4 million decline from the current fiscal year, when city general fund income from utilities was set at $37.4 million.

Even so, the mayor proposed that council raise average monthly residential utility bills by $1.77 for gas; $2.14 for water; $2.65 for wastewater and 19 cents for stormwater control.

In order to squeeze enough revenue to balance the budget, Mayor Stoney told the council that he has tasked the Finance Department staff with raising the tax collection rate from 96 percent to 97 percent to bring in an additional $2.4 million to ensure “everyone does his or her fair share.”

He said he also would revive the tax amnesty program next fall to enable delinquent taxpayers to avoid interest and penalties by paying off past due amounts to bring in another $2.4 million.

In addition, he has launched a review of the performance of city agencies in hopes of finding ways to save money, including potentially reducing the most costly element — personnel.

On the spending side, he said that he would provide Richmond Public Schools with an additional $6.1 million “to keep our valuable schoolteachers in classrooms instructing our children” and for other staff. He would seek to earmark money to improve teacher salaries, particularly for veteran teachers whose pay has moved closer to a starting teacher’s salary because of a lack of salary increases.

He called it the “largest single-year increase” to be proposed by a mayor since Richmond adopted the elected mayor form of government in 2004, although it is less then the $7 million increase City Council approved for schools this year and far short of the $21 million increase that the School Board had sought.

“The needs are not going away,” School Board Chair Dawn Page, 8th District, said. She added the mayor’s proposal would require the board to slash initiatives, “prioritize and find efficiencies” to balance its budget.

As for school maintenance, Mayor Stoney proposed to return to the city’s parsimonious ways. Saying the city has maxxed out it credit card and had little borrowing room left, he proposed only $1.6 million for schools to use to improve infrastructure, far short of the $9 million the city is providing this year and just a pittance of the $41 million the school system requested to improve buildings.

He also proposed virtually no new initiatives in capital spending on the city side, essentially embracing plans the council and his predecessor advanced for spending $60 million in 2017-18 on projects regarded as more essential.

For city operations, Mayor Stoney put public safety first. He proposed providing $1.3 million to provide a step increase for current police officers, $1.7 million to fully fund 40 police recruits whose training is beginning before July 1 and to provide additional funds to pay for a sonar system that will help police more quickly detect the location of gunfire.

Another $1 million will go to the Department of Fire and Emergency Services to provide a one-step increase in pay for firefighters and additional funds to pay for new recruits already in training.

On the trash front, Mayor Stoney is proposing that the council increase the current $22.99 a month fee for trash and recycling collection to $25.50 a month to raise an additional $2 million for the Department of Public Works.

The money would allow the department to buy eight new trash trucks and hire 15 people to beef up collection of tree limbs, appliances and other bulk items. Instead of responding to calls, the department would do pickups every two weeks across the city, if council approves, the mayor said.

Following the lead of other cities, he also is proposing to end the vacuum leaf collection that cost the city $1.7 million this year and allow the department to use that money to improve other elements of its services. Residents would have to bag their leaves to get them collected as bulk trash.

He also plans to shift $1.1 million from a potential surplus from the 2016 fiscal year to Public Works to enable the department to more quickly mow grass and launch a new alley blitz to address part of the backlog of 3,200 requests for repair.

In other proposals, the mayor wants to spend $200,000 to set up a fund he could use like the governor to attract and retain businesses.

He also proposed to spend $500,000 to hire six new people to beef up workforce training.

Still, this is all far less than he had hoped to undertake.

“I want us to get to the point where we are talking more about cutting ribbons on new developments than cutting services,” he said.

“There are no quick fixes,” he said, but he said his budget plan represents “the first stop on the road to ‘One Richmond.’ Many more will be necessary in the coming years.”