Johnston – RI Future

September 6, 2016September 7, 2016

Citizens Bank trashes land, and land use planning

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Last week the big shots celebrated the groundbreaking for the new Citizens Bank headquarters on green space just west of I-295 in Johnston. Not me. I think the state is a triple loser, losing open space, tax revenue, and spending tax money. The 3,200 jobs that are supposed to be established there are not new but just a relocation of Citizens employees from built up areas in Providence, East Providence and Cranston.

Taxpayers are out because Johnston gave them a 20 year “tax treaty” (aka subsidy) and we will spend millions for a new interchange on I-295 at Greenville Avenue, and to extend sewer lines there. Providence Gas Company executives started Grow Smart RI because they were concerned with the high costs of providing infrastructure to such developments. Now that company is part of National Grid and they closed their building in downtown Providence, you cannot even pay a utility bill there any more. It seems corporate America is not interested in smart growth. Putting development where we have infrastructure is the core of land use planning, but everyone, including Statewide Planning, the Governor, RIDOT, and our congressional delegation seems ready to ignore this and roll over for Citizens. They don’t even seem to care that I-295 may become more dangerous with more traffic and more exit/entrance merges.

The site being developed, about 123 acres, is mostly forest and brush, and Greenville Avenue, now a pleasant residential area, will inevitably suffer from traffic and ugly sprawl development from the new interchange. Citizens employees may well live even further out, perhaps within the Scituate watershed, risking eroding our drinking water quality. Employees will do a lot of driving, there is no serious chance for transit there. Gasoline consumption in the US just set a record high and Citizens Bank seems determined to make us use even more. Perhaps the “fossil free” folks opposing some specific fossil fuel supply projects, (e.g. the Burrillville power plant, Keystone pipeline) should pay more attention to actually reducing the demand for fossil fuels.

Not everyone in Johnston is so pleased with this. I note the Johnston Sunrise had an “open letter” from the Johnston Homeowners and Neighbors Association decrying what Raimondo and Mayor Joseph Polisena have done to facilitate this project which can turn their neighborhood into another ugly commercial strip choked with traffic and gobbling up more green space. But nobody helped or even paid attention, the town council and the planning and zoning boards did what Citizens Bank wanted, including amending the apparently worthless comprehensive plan.

I note that potential subsidies for reusing downtown Providence’s Superman Building have drawn criticism from both liberal and conservative groups but the Citizens project has not. As a city kid originally from New York, I think this reflects a Rhode Island suburban mind-set, cities are for the poor and minorities, we move out when we can, no reason to put the jobs there. The East Side, anchored by Brown and RISD, is the main exception. Liberals and conservatives also mostly see the bus system as for the poor and minorities. Liberals are willing to subsidize it to keep it going, but for the most part will not use the buses themselves. Not even if service is pretty good – as it is in many places.

Finally, I’ll contrast this with what I just read about Denver, Colorado which has had unusual success in recovering from the 2008 recession. One key element noted in the article was regional cooperation in which various communities there support each other in generating development and building transit, rather than undermine each other as Johnston has done, So our cities struggle, maybe face bankruptcy, sprawl spreads further, and our life style keeps us pumping out the greenhouse gases.

May 25, 2016May 26, 2016

Johnston is RI’s third city to stop enforcing aggressive panhandling law

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Johnston is the third city in Rhode Island to stop enforcing its aggressive panhandling ordinance after the ACLU of Rhode Island sent the city a letter threatening a lawsuit. Providence and Cranston did so earlier this year.

“The police chief made the decision not to enforce that ordinance at this time,” said Pawtucket/East Providence Senator Bill Conley, who is also the city solicitor for Johnston. “We’re going to look at how these cases play out in court and revisit the issue.”

The city agreed via a letter not to enforce the anti-panhandling law after receiving a letter from the ACLU.

“We believe that the Town ordinance raises significant constitutional concerns by impinging on the First Amendment rights of the homeless and the poor,” said the letter from ACLU Executive Director Steven Brown dated May 10. “In the past year, in fact, at least three courts elsewhere have struck down laws very similar to the Town’s “aggressive begging” ban. See Thayer v. City of Worcester, 2015 WL 6872450 (D. Mass. 2015); Browne v. City of Grand Junction,2015 WL 5728755 (D. Colo. 2015); and McLaughlin v. City of Lowell, 2015 WL 6453144 (D.Mass. 2015). The unsuccessful defense of these laws has come at great financial expense to those cities.”

ACLU volunteer attorney Marc Gursky hailed the city’s quick decision to suspend the law. “I commend town officials for acting promptly in recognizing their constitutional obligations and in saving taxpayers from the expense of an unnecessary lawsuit,” he said.

“I am optimistic that as municipalities are compelled not to criminalize homelessness and poverty, they will instead collaborate with constituents and other advocates on solutions to these issues, including affordable housing and adequate income supports,” said Megan Smith, an outreach worker with House of Hope, an organization that helps homeless people.

Conley said it would be up to the city council to repeal the law. He doesn’t think Johnston police officers will still enforce it. “If that happened I think the chief would remind that officer that department policy is not to do that,” he said.

Providence agreed to stop enforcing its aggressive panhandling law in February – a move that drew the ire of downtown business interests. Courts have recently struck down laws targeting aggressive panhandling, saying panhandling is constitutionally protected speech and noting other laws cover aggressive behavior.

The ACLU, in its press release, said, it “is engaged in ongoing efforts to challenge and repeal laws that disproportionately affect the rights of the homeless” but said no further actions are planned at this time. RI Future is researching whether other communities have such laws.

Correction: An earlier version of this post neglected to mention that Cranston stopped enforcing its aggressive panhandling ordinance.

April 8, 2016October 4, 2016

6/10 project, and other things that remind me of Buddy Cianci

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I would hate that you should have an unfortunate accident. . .

Last night while I was speaking to some people about the Moving Together PVD boulevard proposal, a man in a grey sweatshirt came over and said “This one here better not get into an accident on his bicycle or he might not get to the hospital in time on his boulevard.*” That man, it turned out, was Mayor Joe Polisena of Johnston, Rhode Island.

I took a deep breath, not knowing the man was the mayor of Johnston, and reached out to shake his hand. “Hi, I’m James Kennedy. I understand that this might not make sense at first, but the proposal I’m pushing is about making commutes better for the suburbs. I’d like to explain that to you.”

“I’m the mayor, I don’t need your explanation. How much more is your boulevard going to cost?”

“It’s cheaper, actually. It’ll shorten bridges and allow us to put the grid of the city back together. It’s going to be better for drivers and help us lower costs.”

He walked away.

After Director Peter Alviti of RIDOT made his presentation, Mayor Polisena was given time to give comments. He again turned to me and stated that one thing he knows as a nurse is that “minutes count” and that a boulevard would back up traffic and cause people to die before going to the hospital.

In the second context, his statement was less of a veiled threat, and more of a factually inaccurate statement. But nonetheless, it was irking to have public officials point to me, make reference to me “having an accident” and then not being allowed to respond to explain my proposal. Alviti did not let me comment in public on the proposal, but instead funneled comments through table “stations” which divided the group and made it easier for DOT to control the conversation (I did convince some suburbanites, though. . . ).

Popsicles in Olneyville

Mayor Polisena may not know how to comport himself in public, but on the contrary, Dir. Alviti does. I know from having met with Dir. Alviti that he is a good man that wants the best for the community, but I think somewhere in the public process Alviti has decided that suburbanites can’t wrap their heads around the boulevard. This is why he’s been pushing a decked highway– what I’ve dubbed the “6/10 Dig”– instead of a boulevard.

Alviti grew up in Silver Lake, and he’s told me in closed meetings that he used to walk as a child from Silver Lake to then-contiguous Olneyville to buy popsicles at the store. No child could do that today, and I know for certain that in a difficult political environment, Alviti is putting forward his expensive highway decking approach because he wants to try his best to pull a good situation from a bad plan. But his plan is wrong, and we have tradition on our side on this.

I’ll betchya a Guinness. . .

What is a decked highway? Well, while the Moving Together Providence plan calls for shortening bridges so that they only have to cross the train tracks, a decked highway calls for full length bridges over the train tracks and the highway. But that’s the bridges. The decked highway is itself another bridge: a kind of “world’s widest” bridge. It’s not only full length, but the width of the entire area of whatever part of the highway is supposed to be covered.

How can I tie these disparate threads of the story together? Who do we know who made veiled threats, who was beloved by suburbanites who once lived in the city, and who dealt with heady questions about a world’s widest bridge?

Ah, I knew there was someone. . .

I may not have had the level of enthusiasm for Buddy Cianci that some have had, but I can say one thing: Buddy Cianci knew how to get rid of unnecessary infrastructure.

The “World’s Widest Bridge” (in the Guinness Book!) was once over the Providence River. The purpose of that bridge was to carry traffic around Suicide Circle. Buddy Cianci moved a river and the Northeast Corridor, and took that bridge down, to transform the waterfront of Providence. By contrast, we need not move any river, or any train tracks, and need only remove bridges that are about to fall anyway. And then we propose replacing them with a boulevard that continues off of Memorial Boulevard.

Like Buddy did. You know, but cheaper.

Where there’s smoke, there’s logical fallacies.

And for the record, though the concern raised by Mayor Polisena about traffic and ambulance response times is a legitimate one, he is unfortunately mistaken about the nature of traffic. To begin with, the highway creates a wall with pinchpoints that only allows traffic through at odd intervals, so that even though Olneyville Square has a nearly 50 percent car-free rate and no job centers to draw outside commuters, it has some of the worst traffic in the city. Creating a boulevard would open up and make better use of Harris Avenue (which is currently pinched into a one-way street at one end, and thus carries less traffic than it might otherwise be able to). Building a boulevard would mean shortening bridges over existing crossings like Dean, Atwells, Broadway, and Westminster, and thus allowing totally new streets to be reconnected– essentially adding lanes for traffic to use. Building a boulevard would mean that there would be development and walkability near the Bus Rapid Transit lines, which is essential if we want them to be more than a decoration, and to actually carry ridership. And all of those factors mean that a boulevard would improve traffic, not make it worse.

As a matter of fact, I’ve been taunted about fire and ambulance safety before, and so I researched it by contacting UK-born Dutch biking expert David Hembrow. He pointed out to me that traffic is so efficiently dealt with in the Netherlands that cities and towns have far fewer fire stations than in the U.S., and have better response times. But that wasn’t always the case. Here are some images I pinched from his website:

Oops, that one’s a before from somewhere else. Let me try again. . .

Wait a minute! Malfunction!

Ack! Where are my Dutch photo examples! Okay, last try. . .

This one’s Olneyvillestadt. I think that’s a part of the Netherlands. . . Next to SilverLakestadt and WestEnderstam. . .

Alright, you get my point. No World’s Widest Bridges, okay? It’s a bad idea. It’s not worth the G-Note getting passed down the hallway (and I ain’t heard about that, you hear? Have some sauce). A boulevard is the best option for suburbanites. All that Dir. Alviti needs to do is refer to the state’s greatest salesman, who, er, well, wasn’t the most legitimate or upstanding politician, but who was someone who knew how to make the Woonasquatucket a place to visit.**

~~~~

*As a side note, I took two buses from work to meet a carpool to Johnston, so I didn’t bike to the meeting.

**I voted for Elorza, alright?

May 27, 2015May 27, 2015

Another $815 million for the Narragansett Bay Commission?

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Besides the $120 million taxpayer ballpark subsidy and the $100 million streetcar to hardly anywhere, another elephant in the room is the Narragansett Bay Commission’s (NBC) $815 million Phase 3 stormwater project.

This is not paid for by the entire state, but largely by the 118,000 households in the NBC district – Providence, Pawtucket, Central Falls, North Providence, Johnston, Cumberland, Lincoln and the northern part of East Providence – almost $7,000 per household.

The NBC wants to proceed with this despite concerns about “affordability” – recognized by the EPA as legitimate, despite the potential of alternative “green infrastructure,” despite concerns about the fairness of who pays, and despite not having the time to assess the results of phase 2, just recently completed. Also, though there is some flexibility in meeting federal clean water standards, it seems the NBC goal is to go beyond the minimum, even as Phase 1 and 2 has already cost about $547 million and has approximately quadrupled sewer bills for residents, whether they rent or own.

The problem the NBC is addressing is the combination of our sewage with stormwater runoff overwhelms the treatment plant after a storm and untreated sewage get into Narragansett Bay. Phase 1 constructed the tunnels, pipes and pump stations to temporarily store the stormwater, phase 2 involved interceptors, drains and catch basin improvements. Phase 3 is apparently more tunnels.

Roughly 80 percent of the flow after storms is due to runoff from roads, parking lots and other impervious surfaces, but the cost is almost all born by those contributing the 20 percent of sewage. This is another subsidy to drivers from all over who use the roads and parking lots at stores, offices, state government, hospitals, colleges etc. A big beneficiary of the spending are shoreline property owners who pay nothing, shellfishermen and other Bay users. There is a possible social justice issue here.

There are few checks and balances. There was a “stakeholder” review process that few know about. The PUC rubber stamps what the NBC wants, even allowing monthly billing which tripled postage and processing costs compared to the previous quarterly billing, perhaps hiding the scope of the increases. Local politicians don’t much care, they are not blamed as the sewer bills are not collected through their tax system. The state’s environmental community understandably just wants the Bay cleaned up and is little concerned with who pays, even if the metro area becomes increasingly unaffordable. And though Transport Providence and others have tried to call attention to the role of parking lots and the auto culture that underlies a lot of this problem, and others on the problem of runoff from fertilized lawns, the issue, unlike the ballpark or trolley, is too complex to get easy attention.

While no expert on this, I do recommend attention to this issue and I wonder what the progressive community thinks about this project. Visit www.narrabay.com for the NBC viewpoint and plenty of information.

January 14, 2014

No permit required: political canvassing is a Constitutional right

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David Fasteson is mounting a challenge against Stephen Archambault who as the State Senator from District 22, represents parts of Smithfield, North Providence and Johnston. Archambault, though a Democrat, sits to the right on many progressive political positions. He has been rated at 29% by the ACLU and was rated 83% by the NRA, earning the National Rifle Association’s endorsement. In seeking the nomination of the Democratic party, Fasteson plans to run as a more progressive candidate.

It was while canvassing (going door-to-door in search of votes and support) in Smithfield on Sunday evening that Fasteson was approached by a police officer who told him that canvassing requires a permit under Smithfield law. A look at the law reveals that the permit is only applicable to canvassing for sales, not for religious or political reasons.

The Supreme Court has consistently ruled that onerous restrictions on religious and political canvassing are unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Relevant cases include Martin v. City of Struthers, Hynes v. Mayor of Oradell, Village of Schaumburg v. Citizens for a Better Environment, and Meyer v. Grant.

In a phone call with the Smithfield Town Clerk Monday morning Fasteson confirmed that he would need a permit if he were going door-to-door seeking to sell some good or service, but politicians do not need these.

Most likely this is just a minor mistake by an overzealous police officer, perhaps responding to a citizen’s complaint. Even so, it would behoove police officers to be mindful of the protections guaranteed our citizenry under the Constitution of the United States.

As of our last communication David Fasteson plans to continue canvassing, without a permit.

August 14, 2011January 7, 2012

Because donating to the Bruins and the Celtics matters to the pension issue….how?

I know the right wing loves to miss the little things…and the big things…and the inbetween things….that get reported in the media, but this one is perplexing. The lede in Projo reporter Mark Reynold’s story about Johnston’s potential decision to turn over management of local pension funds to TD Bank contains an interesting resume builder:

— TD Bank, one of the nation’s largest banks and a sponsor of both the Boston Bruins and Celtics, is interested in helping Johnston keep track of an estimated $42 million that’s been set aside to help pay the pensions of firefighters and police officers, officials say.

Now, there is nothing wrong with that lede I guess – supporting local teams is nice- but I suppose there would have been nothing wrong with also having a lede that said that TD Bank isn’t one of THIS nation’s largest banks but actually a Canadian Bank. And since when do private banks, American or Canadian, care so much about a munipalities future, never mind the well being of its workers? Now, the lede could have explained that TD Bank’s CEO pay was $11.4 million last year, an increase of 8%, which I am sure he earned, and which I am sure the tax payers of Johnston are very willing to subsidize with their hard earned tax dollars.

Like I said…it’s just about choices in focus, right?