Declaring that Richmond “is strong,” Mayor Levar M. Stoney called for “bold and courageous” action to deal with some of the city’s unmet challenges such as decaying schools and public housing.

But the popular mayor mostly proposed taking small steps to address those challenges in his first State of the City Address delivered Tuesday evening in which he was interrupted repeatedly by applause.

The best example is his proposal to address what he called the “obsolescence, decay and decline” of the public school buildings that most Richmond students attend.

“This state of affairs is simply unacceptable,” he told the audience of more than 500 who gathered at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, from “overcrowding in the South Side or the deterioration of conditions at schools like George Mason Elementary.”

His solution: Raise the tax on restaurant and other prepared meals by 1.5 percent to generate $9.1 million a year. That would be enough to borrow $150 million for construction of new schools through 2023, a plan that would need City Council approval.

Currently, restaurant checks in Richmond include a tax of 11.3 percent, including 5.3 percent for state sales tax and a city meals tax of 6 percent. Mayor Stoney’s proposal would raise the tax to 12.8 percent, with the city’s meals tax increased to 7.5 percent.

“I do not relish imposing a higher tax” on restaurant meals, he told his audience that included members of City Council and the School Board and was heavily tilted to city employees and contractors.

But the city has “functionally used up its borrowing capacity” and must have new revenue to cover debt payments and create additional debt capacity, he said. “We are talking about one and a half cents. Surely, our kids are worth that much.”

However, his plan would allow construction of only a few school buildings over the next five years, leaving the majority of mostly African-American students in buildings he previously called “intolerable monuments to segregation.”

Some people are concerned that the mayor, like his predecessors, is focusing on new buildings and offered no ideas for ending the neglect of the larger inventory of aging buildings. The city for years has shortchanged school maintenance by an estimated $11 million a year, according to school officials.

The proposal also would fall far short of the referendum that Richmond voters approved by an 85 percent margin in November that called on the mayor to provide a fully funded plan to replace or overhaul all of the decrepit school buildings.

Paul Goldman, who led the push to get the initiative on the ballot, said the mayor’s proposal simply “kicks the can down the road” and belies his own campaign promise to make improving school facilities a priority. The meals tax plan the mayor advanced “is a failed policy,” Mr. Goldman said.

The mayor’s plan also falls short of the School Board request in December for $224.7 million to replace five schools with new buildings and to renovate two others between 2019 and 2023.

The School Board plan called for $85 million to build a new George Wythe High, $50 million to build a new Elkhardt-Thompson Middle and $80 million to replace Greene, George Mason and Woodville elementary schools.

While School Board Chairwoman Dawn Page told the Free Press she and most of her colleagues are supportive, the mayor’s proposal, if adopted, would force the board to sideline at least some of the proposed construction.

So far Councilwoman Ellen F. Robertson, 6th District, is the only one of the nine council members to openly endorse the mayor’s meals tax hike, although several other members hinted they could end up voting for it.

Council President Chris A. Hilbert, 3rd District, for example, did not immediately endorse the mayor’s plan. However, he said that he promised only to oppose an increase in the real estate tax when he ran for re-election.

Councilman Parker C. Agelasto, 5th District, said he likely will propose alternative ideas after getting pushback from restaurant owners in Carytown who largely are opposed to bearing the cost of school improvement with a tax increase that could turn away customers.

On other fronts, Mayor Stoney promised his next budget would boost spending on after-school recreation programs for city youths and provide funding to the police department to deploy civilians to connect residents in high-crime areas with employment assistance and social services.

The mayor also vowed to devote more attention to housing issues.

Quoting Harvard University sociologist Matthew Desmond, Mayor Stoney said that “everything else falls apart” when people do not have safe and stable shelter.

He said he knows from personal experience “what it is like to live in a place that doesn’t have heat, where you have to keep warm by wearing your winter coat inside and turning on the stove and opening the oven door.

“No one deserves to live in that sort of environment,” he said, referencing reports of failed heating in Creighton Court and other public housing communities. “The conditions in our RRHA communities are shameful and unacceptable.”

He even apologized that “for decades, the federal, state and city governments have let our public housing residents down. For that, I am sorry. We all must do better.”

He promised to do everything “in my power as mayor to address the current issues facing RRHA and work with them toward longer-term solutions,” and called for a “full accounting of the capital, mechanical and technical issues” facing the city’s public housing communities.

He offered no specifics as to the actions a city, already strapped for resources, could take other than to say “the work is complicated’ and that change would be expensive. RRHA has indicated that it has $150 million in deferred maintenance.

At best, Mayor Stoney called for a partnership with residents in public housing.

He also acknowledged that rising home prices and apartment rents are leaving too many people strapped to cover housing costs.

He called for the creation of 1,500 new affordable housing units over five years with the help of private and nonprofit developers, and said City Hall would retool its housing and community development functions “to put more focus on and bring more resources to bear” to accomplish that goal.

The mayor said the coming year will see the completion of the new bus rapid transit system and improvements in bus service; completion of the overhaul of the 17th Street Farmers’ Market, a renewed effort to consider redevelopment of the city’s 60-acre Boulevard property; and fresh consideration of proposals to bring a new coliseum to Downtown.

He also promised that the city would take steps to preserve and protect areas of Shockoe Bottom and Shockoe Valley to ensure that the enslaved men and women who built Richmond would be remembered and properly commemorated.

With plenty on the city’s plate, the mayor wrapped up the 40-minute speech with a rousing conclusion:

“I ask you again to join me in banishing the doubt and defeatism that have long impeded the progress of this great city on the big issues, and to be bold and courageous in embracing the positive promise of what we can accomplish this year, working together.”