Adventures in Town Government
“I had the sense that everybody around the table knew that we were part of the same team.” That’s how Tiverton School Committee member Carol Herrmann described negotiations with the teachers’ union this summer. On August 14, the committee passed the contract extension. It isn’t surprising that the negotiations would be “cordial,” as Herrmann put…
West Warwick for all; the essence of education reform; declines in people births; declines in business births; the easy street to dependency. Continue reading on the Ocean State Current…
Last night, I attended the first organizational meeting for the Tiverton branch of Sakonnet Toll Oppostion Platform (STOP), a cross-community effort to stop the state of Rhode Island from placing a toll on the Sakonnet River Bridge. If I was skeptical about the ability of residents to prevent the tolls before, I’m pretty well convinced that…
In his Saturday column, Ted Nesi makes a point that I’d been thinking about as the week came to a close, related to a proposed $40 million infrastructure bond in Providence: Governments should borrow to fund long-term infrastructure projects that have a higher rate of return than the interest on the bonds, but [in Providence’s…
When you’re budgeting for a school department, there are a lot of moving pieces. Of course you wish you had money to fund everything really well, but that’s not the case. Choices need to be made and sometimes cuts are necessary. But where those cuts should come from is often the topic for debate. We’ve…
We have a problem in many towns with how our governance is set up. Towns have an executive and a legislative body that assist each other in running the town. Those two manage the municipal affairs including the Town Hall, police, fire, public works and almost all other parts of the town. However for some…
Some of you might remember a few months ago when Senator Elizabeth Crowley of Central Falls wrote a letter to the editor in the Providence Journal excoriating the city’s receiver Robert Flanders. Flanders had recently appeared at the newspaper’s annual Follies show dressed in an executioner’s outfit and touted himself “Lord of the Pink Slip.”…
I was in my car yesterday afternoon listening to Matt Allen talking about this new ordinance in North Smithfield and talking with town councilor Ed Yazbak about it. The Town Council in North Smithfield will put new contracts up for public review for two weeks before signing. This ordinance will only cover contracts that the…
Federal Bankruptcy Judge Frank J. Bailey has issued a preliminary ruling that the Central Falls School District is not part of the City of Central Falls. The Projo has the complete ruling available here. Specifically, Judge Bailey rejected a request from Central Falls receiver Robert Flanders to issue a declaration “that the School District is…
Everything going on in Woonsocket sounds so familiar that I had to check back in Anchor Rising’s archives for the city. It’s worth scrolling down to the summer of 2009; very instructive. First observation, from a liveblog of a school committee meeting (most of which I missed): I’ve got to say that the casual atmosphere,…