Providence
DePetro caught up with Mack on the streets of Providence while covering the recent spate of shootings there, and it’s a must-watch five minutes. DePetro was respectful, but really pressed Mack on her beliefs about what’s going on in Providence and the effects of her own public statements. In a nutshell, to Tiara Mack, violence…
Not only are pension bonds a bad idea in principle, but Rhode Island has a sharp recent case study for reference. Yet, Dan McGowan reports for the Boston Globe that Providence “Mayor Jorge Elorza’s administration is planning to ask state lawmakers to allow the city to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars through a pension obligation bond,” avoiding…
For their weekly conversation, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss Governor Daniel McKee avoiding the underlying problems at Zambarano, the media ignoring the underlying violence of BLM rallies, Providence ignoring the underlying issues with public safety, and the implications of fundraising results from Congressmen James Langevin and David Cicilline.
Along the defund-the-police line, Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza recently released the results of a Walmart-family-funded study concluding that a “prevention-first approach” to public safety would “create a healthier, safer, and more just Providence,” but residents might wonder what “prevention-first” really means. Public Safety Commissioner Steven Paré has lauded Eugene, Oregon’s CAHOOTS program, which stands for…
When Mayor Angel Taveras took office, he discovered, very much contrary to the assertions of outgoing Mayor David Cicilline, that Providence’s finances were a “category five hurricane“. Yesterday, in a Providence Journal article, Providence Finance Director Michael L. Pearis pulled down the hurricane flags. “We turned a pretty significant thing around,” said Pearis, who was…
Has anyone else been paying attention to the job that Dan McGowan has been doing with his coverage on the Providence Economic Development Partnership (PEDP) for GoLocalProv? It seems just about every other day, he has some other important piece to the whole puzzle and further explaining the fund and how it has been used…
Stop me around the part that no longer makes any sense. Here are some values for you. This theoretical family nets $61,000 a year in income. That’s after taxes. However, they find that in spite of cutting everything they think they can cut and is unnecessary, and trying to bring in extra money through second…
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…
Lots of detail about a proposed settlement negotiated between Providence Mayor Angel Tavares and the heads of the city’s employees’ unions is available from WPRI-TV‘s (CBS 12) Ted Nesi and Tim White, including provisions like this one…Going forward, pensions will max out based on the same equation as the COLA freeze: either 150% of the…
According to a Ted Nesi article on WPRI.com yesterday, Providence will be receiving a $5 million advance from Johnson & Wales University (JWU) immediately. Back in February, JWU agreed to commit $6.4 million to the city over the next 10 years. What also makes this interesting is the city’s explanation on what they’ll do with…
