Sabina Matos – RI Future

August 2, 2016August 3, 2016

PVD City Council extends tax break for Valley St. development

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The Providence City Council extended a tax break for the developers of a mixed use project on Valley Street because an anchor tenant relocated to Johnston.

“Do we really need another vacant or foreclosed property in our city,” said Council President Luis Aponte, who voted for the so-called tax stabilization agreement, after the meeting. He said the developers could have attained an administrative TSA for a smaller redevelopment had the council not awarded the tax break and that the city negotiated a good deal for residents by working with the developers.

Councilor Carmen Castillo was the only member of the elected board to vote against the TSA.

“We’re not a bank,” she said. “The neighborhood I represent never gets a tax break. We pay a lot in property taxes too.”

Councilor Sabina Matos said she supported the TSA because the council approved TSAs for downtown businesses so it was only fair that it do so for businesses in her district too. “We set a precedent,” she said. “We can’t give them to some developers and not others.”

Abacus Technology paid $1.8 million annually to rent 100,000 square feet of space in the Rising Sun Mills development on Valley Street but the company has decided to move to Johnston, said the developers.

“There’s no benefit to having Rising Sun Mills go dark,” said BJ Dupre, one of the developers, after the favorable decision from the Council. When asked if that would have happened if they didn’t get the tax break, another of the developers, Mark Van Noppen said it was a “distinct possibility.”

Aponte said the developers plan to reconfigure the commercial space into smaller offices. He said the TSA is void if they don’t pull all the requisite permits in 180 days.

“It’s hard to tell,” Aponte said when asked how much money the city budget would lose by extending the TSA to the Rising Sun Mills project. But, he added, “They are paying more than if they would have got a 5 year extension” as a result of the negotiations with city officials.

August 2, 2016August 2, 2016

With little notice, PVD City Council voting on controversial TSA Tuesday

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The Providence City Council has called a special meeting for Tuesday night and among the agenda items is tax stabilization agreements (TSAs) for 60 Valley Street, LLC and 166 Valley Street, LLC on behalf of the Rising Sun Mills Project. The ordinance is sponsored by Council President Luis Aponte. The details of the TSA can be found here.

The City Council unanimously rejected a similar TSA, for 100 Fountain St, in February, under intense public pressure. Aponte then said, given the city’s precarious economic situation, “It’s the right signal that the [Finance] Committee is sending to the public and to the [City] Council.”

The TSA being considered by the council notes that the “projects been suffered serious financial setbacks and hardships as a result of the collapse of the real estate and financial markets over the past several years” and hence a five year extension of TSAs granted in 2003 and 2006 is needed. In return, “the Project Owners of 166 Valley Street will make an additional investment of approximately $5 million which shall be used to convert approximately 85,000 square feet of the building from a single tenant space to multiple commercial spaces. This will assist in the Project Owners in attracting new tenants to the Project and will create new construction and potential permanent jobs at the Project Site.”

The amount of revenue Providence will lose in this deal is unclear.

Stop Tax Evasion in Providence (STEP) released a press release Monday claiming that that the Providence City Council leadership is failing taxpayers.

“You would think that the Council would be in no rush to go handing out more of these questionable extensions to projects that have already been paying very little taxes for 15 years, but you would be wrong,” says the STEP press release. “While the… promise of new spending and jobs from Rising Sun Mill owners would seem welcome, there are absolutely no safeguards to ensure they will invest what they say. Thus the city can be certain of neither jobs nor permitting revenue.”

The special city council meeting was announced on Friday, July 29, as big news stories broke, such as Representative John Carnevale deciding not to appeal the Providence Board of Canvassers decision that ended his re-election campaign and Attorney General Peter Kilmartin announcing the non-results of his 38 Studios investigation. Technically, the City Council went on break for August and was not due to reconvene until September 1.

As a result, this important meeting was almost missed.

The city council will also be awarding hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts at this meeting, according to the agenda.

July 26, 2016

Neighborhood improvements coming to Olneyville

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Olneyville is getting an upgrade as two new commercial spaces and 36 new affordable housing units, in 14 different buildings spread throughout the neighborhood, will be developed by next summer as part of a new $10.4 million project being called Amherst Gardens.

“We are excited to be starting construction,” said Wendy Nicholas, the executive director of ONE Neighborhood Builders, formerly known as the Olneyville Housing Corporation. “Amherst Gardens has been in the works for several years, and we are delighted that all of the pieces – the properties, the designs, the construction crew, and the funding – are now all in place.

The project, Nicholas said, is part of ONE Neighborhood Builders “campaign to improve the neighborhood, block-by-block, making it a better place for families to live, to raise their children and to find employment.”

ONE Neighborhood Builders described the project as a “scattered site housing development, with the new or rehabilitated homes scattered throughout the residential core of Olneyville, primarily along the Amherst Street corridor. The development will reinforce the small residential scale of the neighborhood, provide much-needed affordable housing, and resolve long-standing areas of blight.”

Cynthia Langlykke, of ONE Neighborhood Builders, said the scattered site design of the project allows for many properties, encompassing 10 blocks of Olneyville, to be improved. “The acquisition process for a project like this never easy,” she said. “But we think it has the biggest benefit to the community.”

Nicholas added, “In addition to creating much-needed affordable housing, our goal also is to improve the whole neighborhood as a good place for everyone to live, to raise their families and to work. We tackle the deteriorated or otherwise troubled properties scattered in our community.”

The apartments will be rented to people who earn annually less than about $30,000 a year, depending on family size. The two commercial properties do not have affordability restrictions. “Neighborhood businesses will be encouraged to apply,” Langlykke said.

“On behalf of the Olneyville community, I’d like to thank ONE Neighborhood Builders for rebuilding and reimagining Amherst Street,” said City Councilwoman Sabina Matos, who represents the Olneyville neighborhood. “Quality affordable housing is paramount to a thriving urban community. This development expands our housing options, creates a safer, more vibrant neighborhood for Olneyville families, and further improves the area around one of our most important assets—William D’Abate Elementary School—and directly benefits the students who learn and play there.”

The Amherst Gardens development, slated to break ground in January and be complete by August, “will reinvigorate blighted properties into vibrant, much-needed housing for families,” said Barbara Fields, the executive director of Rhode Island Housing, which contributed more than $700,000 to the project plus an $800,000 loan. “The Amherst Gardens initiative builds upon other investments in housing, commercial development, parks and the arts – all of which are enhancing the quality of life in the Olneyville neighborhood. Amherst Gardens is a great example of the kind of transformational development that the proposed $50 million Housing Bond will support.”

February 1, 2016February 2, 2016

Controversial TSA to be quickly decided on a busy night

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On Thursday night the Providence City Council Finance Committee was prepared to make a decision on a controversial extension of tax stabilization agreement (TSA) for the property at 100 Fountain St. Because of the unexpected death of former Mayor Vincent Cianci, the meeting was rescheduled to this Tuesday night at 6pm, one hour before Governor Raimondo’s State of the State address.

The proposed TSA will allow the property owners to pay only 25 percent of their assessed taxes in the first year, with a 15 percent increase each year thereafter until year five, when the owners will pay 95 percent of their assessed taxes. The owners stand to save hundreds of thousands of dollars, but the STEP Coalition (Stop Tax Evasion in Providence) has pointed out that, “[t]he construction jobs are long gone and these buildings have been occupied for quite some time.”

This is the first of four TSAs that will be voted on by the City Council this year. The four “deals pending before the city right now are even more egregious than usual,” said the RI Progressive Democrats (RIPDA) in a statement. “That’s because the development has already happened. There’s no question of encouraging development–the developers want their special tax deals to continue. This is just giving the city’s limited tax dollars to big developers. Pure and simple,” said the RI Progressive Democrats (RIPDA).

It is expected that the Providence City Council will raise property taxes on homeowners this year as Providence struggles financially. Many wonder why private taxpayers continue to pay ever higher taxes while connected developers get continued tax credits. STEP presented a petition signed by 400 Providence residents opposed to extending these TSAs.

The following City Councillors are on the Finance Committee:

Councilman John J. Igliozzi, Chairman
Councilman Terrence M. Hassestt, Vice-Chairman
Councilman Kevin Jackson
Councilwoman Sabina Matos
Councilwoman Carmen Castillo

November 19, 2015November 19, 2015

City Council committee passes tax break for hotel at choreographed meeting

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Some of the business suits worn in the Providence City Council Finance Committee meeting last night were worth more than a hotel worker’s monthly salary.

The power and pressure being brought to bear, to make sure that The Procaccianti Group (TPG) got their multi-million dollar Tax Stabilization Agreement (TSA) was enough to bend reality, as a five member committee was whittled down to three members and the final vote unanimous in favor of TPG.

City Hall was electric with meetings being conducted behind closed doors. What happened in the Finance Committee room was theater, the real deals were all made out of sight. The Finance Committee meeting seemed meticulously planned so that when it started, it would fall like a string of dominoes in favor of moneyed interests and to the detriment of hotel workers.

At issue was a 13-year TSA for the Fogarty Building site downtown, where TPG wants to build a new nine-story hotel. The building trade unions want the hotel, it will provide a couple years worth of good jobs. The hotel workers want the hotel and the jobs it will provide as well, but they wanted an amendment to the TSA “calling for workers to earn 1 1/2 times the federal poverty rate, or more than $14 an hour.”

Good wages for hotel workers are important. TPG is notorious for paying poorly, and the company requires their workers to do much more than workers at competing downtown hotels. Then there’s the steady stream of injuries to workers in TPG hotels. Unionization efforts at the Renaissance Hotel have dragged on for years and only recently did the hotel win a vote to unionize. Without the amendment, a new hotel full of underpaid, overworked and at-risk workers will be coming on-line even as Renaissance workers finally realize a fair contract.

On one side of the Finance Committee meeting room was Mayor Elorza’s Chief Operating officer, Brett Smiley, RI AFL-CIO leader George Nee, Michael Sabitoni, business manager for the RI Laborers’ District Council, state senator Josh Miller, a pile of lawyers and TPG reps, and prominent members of the Providence business community. Council President Luis Aponte stood nearby and monitored the proceedings.

Hotel workers and Unite Here! organizers, vastly outnumbered and outgunned, sat opposite.

Finance Committee Chair John Igliozzi was the city councilor who once suggested tying TSA’s to better wages way back in June, 2014. When it came time to amend the TSA, however, he was silent. Councilors Kevin Jackson and Sabina Matos were also silent, save to deliver the lines required to vote the TSA to the full City Council for final approval next month.

Missing from the committee meeting was Councilor Terrance Hassett, whose day job is Senior Investigator in the Workers’ Compensation Fraud and Compliance Unit at the Department of Labor and Training. He, like two other members of the finance committee, works for the state. It is well known that Governor Gina Raimondo wants this project to proceed. On background I was told that city council members were afraid of losing their jobs if they interfered with the deal, but nobody wanted to go on record.

(Given this, Providence voters might want to reconsider electing council members with state jobs.)

Hassett was a no show, but Councillor Carmen Castillo, a hotel worker herself, was there. She put her purse and coat down into her chair, then left the room to talk off stage with someone. While she was out of the room the Finance Committee meeting started and attendance was called. She was marked absent.

As the meeting got underway Castillo entered the room, recovered her purse and coat, and left without explanation.

There were three members left of the five member committee, enough for a quorum. As hotel workers looked on, the TSA was passed out of committee without the amendment they had requested. Millions of dollars in tax breaks were given to TPG.

There were smiles and handshakes all around as one half of the room erupted in enthusiastic conversation. Finance chair Igliozzi pounded his gavel for order, there was still the city’s contract with Local 1033 to be decided, so $40,000 worth of fine business suits moved outside and into the hallways, and eventually outside into the street.

The hotel workers gathered in a corner on the third floor so that a translator could explain to some of the Spanish speaking members what had happened.

But they understood.

This was government as business and business as usual.

September 4, 2015September 12, 2015

10 PVD city councilors voted for exclusionary zoning last night

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The Providence City Council voted 10-3 to modify the zoning code to add exclusionary zoning restrictions on student housing on Thursday night. Under the provision, persons defined as “college students” would not be able to live more than three to a house in zones 1 and 1A (map), despite reports in The Projo that many of the homes in question have as many as five bedrooms.

Zoning laws in Providence must be passed by City Council twice, and either have a veto-proof majority or be signed into law by the mayor. The measure, if passed a second time, would be a challenge to housing affordability and transit-oriented design. The upshot is that the 10-3 vote is very fragile. Just one turnaround would allow Mayor Jorge Elorza to veto the zoning change. I am contacting Mayor Elorza’s chief-of-staff Brett Smiley for comment, but by publication time it is unlikely that I will have word on the mayor’s position. Keep your eyes peeled for updates!

The tempest-in-a-teapot in Ward 5 started around student noise. Councilwoman Jo-Ann Ryan has tried proposing other methods of shunning students, including additional fees on student housing, but decided to settle on this zoning measure, according to reporting done in The Projo.

Changes in density affect transit. Transit viability is affected along an exponential curve, rather than a linear progression, based on density. So small changes in density through exclusionary zoning can have large reverberating effects on transit frequencies, and those changes disproportionately hurt low income people, especially time-poor low income people, like those with multiple jobs or children.

Changes in zoning like this also negatively affect housing affordability, not only for students, but for everyone. You might find yourself saying, “Who cares what happens to college students?” It’s not like someone is being discriminated against on the basis of race, or gender, or sexuality. Being a college student is just a stage in life, and it’s not even a stage in life that everyone goes through.” But the students who are most affected by this type of rule will be disproportionately those students who are riding the razor’s edge of affording school. Upper class students will shrug this off, and perhaps not even notice it, or be annoyed by it for lifestyle reasons.

Students who can find housing will. When students overflow from housing they may have previously been able to occupy, they may outbid others with less money looking for apartments. While sometimes this outbidding process can lead to greater housing development, resolving the imbalance, the zoning ordinance itself stops an increase in zoning density, and actually reduces densities below their existing levels. The price increases here are also not due to people’s increased desire for a neighborhood–which is at least a mixed blessing–but by artificial regulations that will just keep certain people out. The process of using zoning to limit housing is one of the things that has most affected displacement of working class families from homes. It tries to shape our cities into an imagined ideal of single-family homes that never existed except in the imagination of someone like Frank Lloyd Wright. This means that housing will become expensive, but with none of the attendant positives of that process–a kind of “stagflation” of housing policies.

Who are the people who voted for exclusionary zoning?

Councilman Kevin Jackson, Ward 3, Mt. Hope (my councilman)

Mr. Jackson narrowly won his last election against a write-in candidate, Marcus Mitchell, who started a write-in campaign for his seat just before Election Day. The election went to a recount. I have contacted Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Jackson on this issue, but as yet have not heard back, but multiple previous conversations I’ve had with Marcus Mitchell have centered on his involvement with RhodeMap, which opposes exclusionary zoning.

Councilwoman Jo-Ann Ryan, Ward 5, Elmhurst

Somewhat unsurprisingly, Councilwoman Ryan voted for her own bill. She is a new councilor.

Councilman Michael Correia, Ward 6, Manton

Councilman John Iggliozzi, Ward 7, Silver Lake

Councilwoman Carmen Castillo, Ward 9, Elmwood

Council President Luis Aponte, Ward 10, Lower South Providence and Washington Park

The Councilman’s vote for exclusionary zoning shocks me, because he has frequently been a voice for tenant’s rights and an acceptable if not perfect voice for transit-oriented development. This is a misstep for the Council President, and we hope he’ll change his vote.

Councilwoman Mary Kay Harris, Ward 11, Upper South Side

Councilman Bryan Principe, Ward 13, Federal Hill and the West End

I have to report disappointment on this vote by Councilman Principe, as I’ve found him to be a very urbanist-oriented councilman much of the time. I hope that residents in my old neighborhood of the West End will speak out to Councilman Principe, and that he’ll change his vote next week.

Councilman David A. Salvatore, Ward 15, Elmhurst and Wanskuck

Councilwoman Sabina Matos, Ward 16, Olneyville

Many of these councilpersons represent districts that ought to be unified in their opposition to exclusionary zoning for one reason or another.

Councilmen Yurdin, Zurier and Jennings voted against the measure. Councilmen Narducci and Hassett were not present at Thursday night’s meeting. Councilman Zurier’s hands haven’t exactly been clean. In his own district he has worked to make apartments and other types of multifamily housing less easy to develop.

Please contact your city councilor–and indeed, please contact the entire Providence City Council–and let them know that Providence is not supportive of exclusionary zoning policies. And ask Mayor Elorza to veto any vote next Thursday that isn’t over the veto-proof margin of 10.

Update: According to a by Patrick Anderson, Mayor Elorza’s office will support the zoning change, as proposed.

~~~~

July 7, 2015

Corporate welfare for billion dollar hotel chain in Providence

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Lost in all the discussion surrounding the reformation of Tax Stabilization Agreements (TSAs) in Providence is the fact that a multi-billion dollar resort hotel chain is an intended recipient of Rhode Island taxpayer’s largess.

TSAs are enormous breaks on property taxes negotiated by the City Council as an incentive for businesses to locate in the city. This week the Providence City Council is expected to vote on a package of TSAs that will clear the path for the so-called “meds & eds” project on part of the I-195 land.

The Providence Journal reported that included in the I-195 land life-science park proposal is “a Le Meridien hotel with 175 rooms and 10,000 square feet of meeting space.” The Le Meridian is to be operated by Starwood Hotels and Resorts, a company that regular reports cash flows of approximately $850 million to $950 million a quarter. Starwood runs 1,200 hotels and resorts, and paid dividends to their investors to the tune of $2.4 billion last year.

Under the new TSAs, “projects over $10 million will be eligible for a 15-year tax stabilization agreement that will see no taxes in the first year, base land tax only in years 2-4, a 5% property tax in year 5 and then a gradual annual increase for the remainder of the term.”

In essence, Providence will be giving away millions of dollars to billionaires.

In return, the “agreements include women and minority business enterprise incentives as well as apprenticeship requirements for construction and use of the City’s First Source requirements to encourage employment for Providence residents.”

Unfortunately, Finance Chair Igliozzi has declined to deliver on the suggestion he made last year when he said that companies that pay less than $15 an hour should not receive tax breaks from the city.

Igliozzi has not responded to a request for comments.