Tiverton
For several generations, Little Compton, RI, has been practicing a community school choice by sending its teenagers elsewhere for high school. The obvious choice should be Tiverton, just over an indistinguishable border, but at least since the ’70s, the kids of LC have been traveling to Aquidneck Island. My Patch column, this week, looks at…
As I write in this week’s Tiverton-LittleComptonPatch column, the two aspects of a local budget controversy are diplomacy and accounting. That is, one controversy is over communication and process, and the other is over actual tax dollars and how they should be allocated: The starkest delineation of this dynamic came during a special meeting of…
A local controversy with statewide implications is the subject of my Patch.com column, this week. In short, the Tiverton school department spent $367,165 in local funds to make up for estimated state funds that didn’t materialize, and now the municipal government is taking it back. Of course, given the season, I couldn’t treat the topic…
Last Tuesday, when I summarized some points that two state senators and a representative made to the Tiverton School Committee, I misstated something that Democrat Rep. Jay Edwards said, and he corrected me in the comments to the post. At the meeting, Edwards mentioned meetings with the House speaker (Gordon Fox) and the Democrat majority…
Everybody supports economic development, even in a proudly ruralish town like Tiverton, but as I suggest in my Patch.com column, the details are decisive: At least in the recent past, it has seemed that Tiverton’s policy for economic development has been that it should occur only in places in which businesses struggle to succeed –…
My Patch.com column this week takes up a minor local controversy over residents’ holding multiple town positions, in light of the relevance to local politics to larger political battles: The potential for conflicts of interest and corruption is remote between the school district and oyster farming; it is less so between those who draft the…
I’ll be writing a weekly column called “15 Miles of Main Road” for the Tiverton-LittleCompton Patch.com, and my first offering seeks to set the stage for what could be an extremely interesting couple of years in Tiverton politics, perhaps with implications for politics across the state: The infamous Tiverton Financial Town Meeting of May 2010…
I just learned, during tonight’s Town Council meeting in Tiverton, that Town Treasurer Phil DiMattia is projecting that the 2010 fiscal year brought nearly $1 million surplus. During a recession. With a large tax increase for the current fiscal year. That, by the way, doesn’t include federal funds given to the school department by the…
In all of its coverage of the election, thus far, including an “Election Digest” published last Thursday, the Providence Journal — like every other major news outlet in the state — has neglected to report on the fact that my local taxpayer group, Tiverton Citizens for Change, has taken a commanding role on the Town…
With 100% of the precincts reported, Tiverton put nearly every candidate endorsed by Tiverton Citizens for Change on the Town Council. That should make for a very interesting dynamic. More interesting, although less encouraging, is that the group left the School Committee and the Budget Committee (but for one endorsement) to the opposition. At the…
