Adventures in Town Government
There’s that learning curve again. Amidst all of the things that I’ve had to learn as a homeowner (not including carpentry, plumbing, electrical, and so on), it took me until today to realize an important part of my town’s tax structure: In addition to my annual property tax bill for the Town of Tiverton, I…
Although it’s not online, a letter of mine encouraging my fellow residents of Tiverton to ask the Charter Review Commission to reopen the question of partisan elections is in the current issue of The Sakonnet Times: To the editor: At the latest Charter Review Commission meeting, member Frank Marshall made a successful motion to strike…
Unfortunately, Melissa Wicks’s letter to the Sakonnet Times does not appear to be online, but the Tiverton resident has a point of view with which many folks outside of town government and a specific neighborhood probably sympathize: Since the current Sakonnet River Bridge is so pristine, I can see why there is a $14 million…
During a brief break, some of my fellow attendees of the Tiverton Charter Review Commission meeting engaged me in discussion, with two interesting points made: A Republican suggested that running as such probably costs a candidate votes. A Planning Board member suggested that, in Tiverton (at least), party doesn’t really matter, because anybody elected to…
I wasn’t planning to attend tonight’s meeting of the Tiverton Charter Review Commission, but based on the concern about its actions expressed by the school committee last night, I thought it worth observing. Also based on that concern, I sorta expected the attendance to be greater. I’m one of nine non-commission attendees, a group including:…
At last night’s Tiverton town council meeting, my man Councilor Hannibal Costa took the opportunity of a routine tax assessor request (regarding the firm that will handle the assessment) to make everybody well aware that he’s not going to sit idly by while rates get jacked up — what with all those houses sitting on…
The Projo is reporting that Stephen Tocco has lost his seat on the Smithfield Town Council by a decisive margin.
Thanks to the holiday, both the town council and the school committee are meeting tonight, and I’ve discovered that I’m not yet sufficiently informed to be able to spot the hot-button items on each body’s bland-looking agenda. So, I’ve started with the committee and will hit the council on my way home if the town…
Under “Institutional Racism, Quotas and Cranston”, commenter EMT makes the following observation: Actually, they need another station in Western Cranston (10-minute response times are unacceptable for a paid department in 2007), and NFPA-complaint staffing department wide. It would probably double the department, minus a few. There are a couple of broad implications in this comment.…
Most of the changes that the Department of Transportation proposed to the new Sakonnet Bridge project, last night, were centered on cost savings. The bridge will be starting closer to the water; parts of it will be built on back-filled land (rather than additional structural columns); the metal will be “weathered steel,” which acquires a…
