Adventures in Town Government
Tonight’s Tiverton Town Council meeting will almost entirely — excepting the closed executive session, of course — be taken up with a presentation concerning some proposed changes to the New Sakonnet Bridge from Tiverton to Portsmouth. I will say this: comparing the before and (proposed) after pictures really gives one a sense of what government…
I see that the Tiverton Charter Review Commission, formed to take a closer look at the town’s practice of financial town meetings and propose changes on the November 2008 ballot, has also taken up a possible change that I pondered last month: Another suggestion would have the town return to partisan elections. According to that…
I very much wanted to attend Donna Hughes’s lecture this evening at URI’s Kingston campus, but with teacher contract negotiations still ongoing, I felt somewhat obligated to attend tonight’s school committee meeting. Committee and union members alike may be asking: What school committee meeting? Apparently, it was canceled, but I’m not sure how a regular…
You know, in the handful of town council meetings that I’ve attended in Tiverton, I don’t think I’ve seen the council vote down a single increase in spending. Glenn Steckman, the town administrator, just requested permission to advertise for an assistant position that would represent roughly a $10,000 per year increase in salary expense. (The…
The number of cars in the parking lot of the Tiverton High School was surprising and forced me to park way out in a dark lot. The girls’ basketball game accounts for much of that, but the school committee meeting is the most heavily attended that I’ve seen yet. So far all is proceeding without…
Accusations of voter fraud in East Providence reached a hitherto unexplored level tonight when it was revealed that recently appointed School Committee Member Stephen DeCastro (D) is registered to vote in both Bradenton, Florida and East Providence, Rhode Island. In an emergency meeting at East Providence City Hall prompted by an inquiry from the Tax…
In a special election set for November 13, Smithfield voters will have the opportunity to answer the question: “Should Stephen G. Tocco be recalled and removed from the office of Town Councilman for the Town of Smithfield under the Recall Provision as set forth in Article IX of the Charter of the Town of Smithfield?”…
For some reason, it didn’t register when last I filled out a Tiverton ballot (for the first time) that most of the town’s key offices are “non-partisan.” That doesn’t necessarily mean that the representatives aren’t affiliated with a party — either officially or ideologically. It just means that voters and taxpayers have to take a…
Apparently — as the janitor informed me when I hopped out of the minivan with bloggerbag (aka a canvas briefcase) in hand — the union and the Tiverton school committee have decided to take eleven days off. So, no school committee meeting tonight. The way things operate ’round here, it’s as if the interested citizen…
Tiverton Town Councilor Brian Medeiros just proposed — and the council approved unanimously — a statement of support for the school committee’s “efforts to contain costs” within the boundaries set by the property tax cap with respect to the teachers’ union contract. Although the movement is largely symbolic, it’s very encouraging to see the council…
