Providence
Matt Allen asked a good question this evening: would this be acceptable if it does, in fact, focus solely on cars involved in real crimes? The Police Department is going to try out a new gizmo installed on its cruisers to automatically read motor-vehicle license plates and give officers a quick read-out of whether a…
The conventional wisdom is that Nick Gorham lost his seat in the Rhode Island House of Representatives because of his support for regionalizing Exeter, Foster, Glocester, Scituate, West Greenwich and part of Coventry into a single town of Westconnaug, offending the delicate parochial sensibilities of his constitutents. I wonder what Mr. Gorham’s former constituents from…
Here’s an eye-popper: Cranston spends more than a fifth of its total budget on pensions (not including teachers). Nine municipalities spend over 10%. While Rhode Island’s political leaders wrestle with state pension reform, there’s another big pension headache out there — the soaring cost of municipal pensions. A new study by the business-backed Rhode Island…
On the one hand, the concessions requested by Mayor Cicilline from 5,000+ city employees sound reasonable and necessary given the constraints on both local and state revenue faced by budgeters. [Side note: Local 1033, the city’s largest public labor union, is to be applauded for signing on.] An increase in the health insurance co-share to…
Combining Randal Edgar‘s story in today’s Projo on the likely next step that follows the inability of the parties(*) in Cranston to agree upon a new police contract via negotiation…After watching a tentative contract go down to defeat, the police officers union is taking its case to a new venue that could ultimately cost taxpayers…
What kind of a school system would let this sort of thing happen? It’s sure to be the end of quality public education as we know it (emphasis added): Starting this fall, teacher vacancies in four Providence schools — Hope High School, Veazie Street Elementary School, Lauro Elementary School and Perry Middle School — will…
The official last word – what, if any, disciplinary action the Providence School District will take against Mr. Robert Perkins – is now a week overdue, hopefully because the district is reconsidering a bad initial decision. In the meantime, David Quiroa had a pretty balanced take in Tuesday’s ProJo. First and foremost I have to…
… in the following press release issued at 3:08 pm today. Dear Friend, You have been an active supporter of the important work we have taken on together, and I want you to be among the first to know about an important decision I have reached. In these particularly difficult economic times, I am more…
Can someone please explain: – the flags of which countries are subjugated to rights of free speech and which are not; – how, when faced with a “situation” in the City of Providence, to determine if it requires a careful, six figure investigation or if it qualifies for an off-the-cuff snap judgment.
Here comes another historic, philosophical battle, this time in Providence: Education Commissioner Peter McWalters has ordered the city schools to begin filling teacher vacancies based on qualifications rather than seniority, an order that could fly in the face of the teachers’ contract. McWalters, in a no-nonsense letter yesterday to Supt. Tom Brady, said the district…
