Adventures in Town Government
Along with a table with the statewide results, Providence Business News has an article describing the results of “fiscal stress tests” that a state panel ran for cities and towns: Pawtucket, North Providence, East Providence, Central Falls, Warwick and West Warwick are in the most serious trouble, the Municipal Fiscal Stress Task Force reported Friday…
So, Bank of America is abandoning the Main Street location in North Tiverton that it has inhabited for decades (most of the time as Fleet bank). According to somebody in a position to know, the branch remains profitable, but corporate executives have analyzed the prospects of Tiverton, Rhode Island, and determined that there will be…
This article is a few weeks old, but I’ve been holding on to it because the statement contained therein really requires philosophical correction: One by one, mayors and municipal managers from Cumberland to Westerly told the House Finance Committee on Thursday that the midyear aid cuts proposed by Governor Carcieri will wreak havoc on local…
Jim Hummel’s original report available here. In addition to the issue of Mayor Moreau’s third party billing arrangement for his new furnace, Hummel’s report throws a spotlight onto the Mayor flexing emergency powers to deal with empty, foreclosed houses. These – and more than 200 other houses – were boarded up by Bouthillette’s company, under…
Here’s the scene: Shortly after 7:00 a.m. on a semi-rural road that locals often use to avoid a mile or so of Middletown’s two main roads, the school bus pulls up to a modest split-level house, and the driver opens the double doors. A middle-school girl skips up the driveway and stops a few feet…
At a time when common wisdom is marching straight toward a cliff labeled “consolidation” (at the bottom of which are sharp rocks of incumbency, special interests, and political corruption), I’m encouraged to see that the independent spirit lives on in some corners of the state: Started in early December by Prescott Avenue resident and Riverside…
Tonight’s the first meeting at which the Tiverton School Committee will address next year’s budget. The upshot is that Superintendent Bill Rearick is offering, as an initial budget, an increase at the state cap (4.5%). Of course, he included in last year’s budget “surprise” federal “stimulus” cash, so this budget is actually 7.13% above the…
I’m one of two people in the audience of an “emergency” Tiverton School Committee meeting, which was called in order to approve a memorandum of understanding from the Rhode Island Department of Education for the state’s Race to the Top application, and the sense that I’m getting from the discussion is not encouraging. Here’s the…
It appears to have fallen through the online cracks, but I’ve got the following letter in the current issue of the Sakonnet Times: On December 14, Tiverton’s town council meeting included a public hearing concerning a proposed “pay as you throw” trash program to fund the closure of the town landfill in five or so…
Mostly for the edification of Tiverton residents, I’ve posted the portion of the last town council meeting that represented the public hearing on a pay-as-you-throw trash program. Nine of the 10 video clips are in the extended entry.