In 2012, East Providence’s state appointed budget commission voted to end the City Council’s health benefits. At the time East Providence was one of only 9 cities in R.I. that offered health insurance to its City Council members. However, in October of 2015, it became clear that some members of the City Council had started to receive health benefits once again.
During the City Council meeting on October 5th, resident and taxpayer Izilda Teves questioned the council as to how the benefits were restored. Mayor Tommy Rose first claimed that it, “was done in a resolution… a while back,” and that Paul Lemont, Acting City Manager, had restored the benefits. Teves then asked if there was a public hearing, and Rose said there was not.
Three Council members opted for health benefits when the rules changed, Tommy Rose, Helder Cunha, and Timothy Conley, the same three that addressed Teves’ questions.
This month a version of the resolution Rose mentioned began circulating on social media. The resolution seems to grant the City Manager the ability to restore health benefits and reads, “Now, therefore, be it resolved that the City Council of the City of East Providence authorize the City Manager, at his discretion, to restore any departmental cost reductions or nonunion, non ordinance based benefit reductions, including City Council health care benefits that the Budget Commission resolved.”
However, the version of this resolution at City Hall does not include the language granting the City Manager the ability to restore health care benefits, nor does the version that appears in the meeting minutes, the Resolution Book seen here.
Resolution 9 was approved during a City Council meeting on June 16th, during which the City Council members opted to suspend the reading of the resolution. All City Council members voted in favor of the resolution.
For a sitting City Council and/or the City Manager to grant benefits to themselves is a dubious practice. According to the City Charter, Council compensation is supposed to be changed by ordinance and take effect for the following term. Spending almost $50,000 on benefits for Council members should be a matter of public debate.
Some East Providence residents on the East Providence – Townie Civic Discussion Facebook group say this incident once again raises red flags regarding the city’s management of personnel issues. Recent allegations of racially biased city hiring practices, the poor decisions that lead to the almost hiring of the Dancing Cop and the problematic hiring of a new Town Manager without the qualifications mandated by the City Charter all contribute to an air of incompetence if not illegality.
Before trust in the City Council erodes completely, a proper investigation into the source of these new health benefits must be conducted.
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Planning to hire Tony Lepore, the former Dancing Cop, “was something to just add to the East Providence Christmas season,” said East Providence Mayor Tommy Rose, “It was nothing more than that, It wasn’t to be taken any other way but that. I’m sorry about the way it was perceived throughout the area and we would like to move forward with the holiday season and enjoy the holiday season.”
As apologies go, it wasn’t one. Rose apologized for the “way it was perceived,” which absolves him from any wrong doing and puts the blame for the entire debacle on the shoulders of those who “perceived” a race issue where the Mayor intended there to be none. Rose did not apologize for the initial attempt to hire Lepore, who was dismissed from his seasonal entertainment gig by Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza and Commissioner Steven Paré for escalating a minor incident, a young Dunkin’ Donuts employee writing “#blacklivesmatter” on a police officers coffee cup, to a media circus and embarrassing the city.
Still, residents of East Providence, who packed the city council meeting to take a stand against Lepore, mostly seemed to accept Rose’s apology, even as they raked him over the coals over his unwavering personal support for Lepore. Rose’s recent statements, such as, “We don’t have an issue in East Providence as far as race goes. There is no racial discrimination here,” also came under fire.
Eleven people, mostly people of color, took to the microphone to speak out against Lepore’s hiring, to declare unambiguously that East Providence does have “an issue… as far as race goes” and to call for an open dialog about the issue. The speaker’s “Townie Pride” was evident in the way they declared their love the city even as they acknowledged the reality of systemic racism.
Seated in the room, supporting the city council’s decision to not hire Lepore and the citizens whose voices made that decision possible, were leaders and activists from throughout Rhode Island. I’ll have a piece later today detailing a conversation I had with Black Lives Matter activist Brother Gary Dantzler, but for now let’s hear from those who spoke out publicly last night. (I apologize for any misspelling of people’s names, please contact me with corrections and I’ll get to them right away)
First up was James Waters, who kicked things off by saying, “The problem is he’s got supporter’s who’ve said some nasty things and he’s said some really scary things that scare me as a resident of East Providence.”
“We’re not part of some association or whatever you want to call it,” said Joseph Tavares, “We’re just a bunch of concerned citizens and we’re siting together having a conversation… We weren’t going to be beating anybody on the head or yelling and screaming or anything like that, we were just standing around and holding signs that say, ‘Hey, we’re here. Recognize us. That’s all we’re talking about.”
“Why are we even here?” asked Liv Delgado, “Why is this even a problem? I grew up in East Providence. We did fine without a dancing cop… With everything going on and all the tension in every state, we really don’t need this. I guess I just expected more of you Tommy, I really did.”
“Today is December 1st. Sixty years ago Rosa Parks made her stand,” said Anna Moniz John, “and the quote I chose is ‘You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it’s right.'” At the carousel protest against the Dancing Cop, “We did what we had to do because it was the right thing to do.”
“When I heard that the Dancing Cop was coming to our town to perform, I was just in disbelief,” said Maryann Fonseca, one of the organizers of the Carousel protest, “I could not believe that our elected officials were going to hire this guy after the town of Providence had just fired him… It got me so upset… I couldn’t believe… with all this racial tension going on across the country… that we would even entertain the idea of hiring this guy.”
Fonseca went on to ask why the public could not be more involved in the process of hiring seasonal entertainment. “Maybe you should ask the people, ‘hey, what are your interests’… Maybe we can use this opportunity have an open dialog…”
Lisa Scorpio is from Providence, though she lived in East Providence for twenty years.
“Mayor Rose, ‘racism doesn’t exist in East Providence.’ You don’t understand the reason for the protest? That’s part of the problem,” said Scorpio, before reading some of the uglier racist comments from Lepore’s Facebook supporters. I won’t transcribe them here. You can listen for yourself.
“That’s why there’s a problem,” said Scorpio at the finish, “and you need to recognize it Mayor.”
Scorpio got a standing ovation.
“You realized you made a mistake,” Angie Lovegrove told the city council, “and you corrected it. That shows great leadership, and I wanted to applaud you for that.” After the applause, Lovegrove added, “But I have to say I am disappointed that the Mayor didn’t feel it was the right decision, but I’m hoping this is a learning experience for him…”
Elizabeth Rose Avant, is a former resident of East Providence, and her father still lives in the city. “I love this city,” she began, but, “growing up in this city, I endured a lot. There was racial discrimination. There was significant disparity between blacks and whites in this community, and I did not feel that alleviated until I left… and when I come back… I know it still exists. ”
Rose Avant continued, “I’m so disappointed, Mr. Mayor, that you would endorse and like some of these racist comments that are coming across on Facebook, supporting these individuals… I don’t mean to attack you Mr. Mayor, but you have blinders on. For you to say that there’s no racial bias, no racial discrimination here in the city of East Providence… I encourage you to take this opportunity to reach out to the diverse community here.”
Dr. Isadore Ramos is practically a legend in East Providence. “I heard comments at the carousel that I heard in the sixties when I used to be out in the street doing the same thing,” said Ramos, “I heard comments like, ‘They’re intimidating people.’ Who’s intimidating people? … Let me tell you, those folks who were over there… were educators, professionals, they were like everybody else in this community, hard working people… They’re just standing there talking…”
“The word ‘matter’ at the end of that sentence on that cup is what the issue has been,” said Michelle Saunders, “and when you look up the word ‘matter’ it means ‘of significance.'” Saunders wanted to know if Lepore, whose future son-in-law is a person of color, believe that his son-in-law matters. “Do his black friends that he spoke about matter? … Is it such a bad word to think about? Those lives, that are being affected, that are being brutalized, do they matter?”
He’s not a cop and he’s not dancing, so we don’t have to call Tony Lepore the Dancing Cop any more. Let’s just call him Lepore, a guy with a knack for making news for doing nothing.
Lepore was not asked to dance in Providence this year, and he canceled an appearance in East Providence last night after protesters in sympathy with the Black Lives Matter planned to protest him at the event.
Back in October, Lepore embroiled himself in a non-controversy regarding a 17-year old Dunkin’ Donuts employee who wrote #BlackLivesMatter on a police officer’s coffee cup on Federal Hill in Providence. Had Lepore stayed out of it, the entire story would have gone nowhere, but Lepore, a retired Providence police officer who is locally famous as the Dancing Cop, held a protest outside the donut shop, insisting that the young woman of color be fired for her temerity.
She was not fired, of course. And Lepore’s protest ended with him settling for an apology from the donut shop management. Lepore claims that through his protest he stood up for police officers and against the Black Lives Matter movement. When I spoke to him briefly the morning of the protest, he told me that the entire controversy was because of him. He was proud to have used his minor status as a pseudo-celebrity to go after the job of a high school student. I realized then that I was talking not so much to a former cop, but to a fading d-list local celebrity clamoring for relevance.
It was sad, really.
Predictably, Providence’s Mayor Jorge Elorza and Public Safety Commissioner Steven Paré decided to not have Lepore back to badly direct traffic downtown, something that had become a tradition in Providence during the holiday season. There was a small outcry over this, with some people claiming that Lepore was being discriminated against because of his politics, but let’s face it:
Freedom of speech does not mean that our words have no consequences.
Enter East Providence’s Mayor Tommy Rose and City Councillor Tracy Capobianco.
Writing on Facebook, Capobianco explained that when she noticed that Lepore was available for the holidays, she thought, “Hey, we should get him for a few days here during the holidays, families would like that.”
Capobianco called Mayor Rose. According to Capobianco, Rose “made it happen.”
What exactly Rose made happen is in dispute. According to Lepore, Rose got him a gig doing his traffic dancing schtick outside East Providence City Hall from noon to 1:30 from December 10-24. In addition, said Lepore, he would be at the 9th Annual Tree Lighting at the Crescent Park Carousel. Lepore told the ProJo that we was getting paid $2000 for his appearances.
Capobianco, however, maintains that Lepore has not yet been hired by the city. She says Rose, “made it happen” by putting the hiring of Lepore on the City Council docket for Tuesday evening’s meeting, and calling Lepore to see if hiring him for the season was an option. “I don’t know why [Lepore] has announced to [the] media [that] it’s a done deal when it’s on the docket for a vote,” she wrote.
As for the Carousel appearance, Capobianco said that as Rose spoke with Lepore, he either “asked him about [the] Carousel or put him in touch with someone at Carousel.”
Ironically, one of the sponsors of the Carousel Tree Lighting is Dunkin’ Donuts. I wonder how they feel about being constantly associated with Lepore in the press?
The hiring of Lepore surprised some people, and throughout Saturday residents reacted to the news positively and negatively. Many people who live in East Providence, including URI student Rodrigo Pimentel and lifelong resident Maryann Fonseca, went on Facebook and planned protests against Lepore, to take place at the Carousel Tree Lighting.
Pimentel wrote, on her Facebook event page, that the “city’s choice to employ the Dancing Cop has shown that it has disregarded the issue of institutional racism, and the city is allowing enablers of institutional racism to represent the city.” Fonseca, when we spoke briefly outside the carousel, wondered why her tax dollars were being spent to bring in a controversial and divisive entertainer that Providence let go.
Just before I set out to cover the protest (and probable counter protest) I heard that Lepore had decided to not to appear at the Tree Lighting. Lepore wrote on Facebook that Mayor Rose called him about the protests being planned by “various organizations affiliated with Black Lives Matter.” Apparently, Rose was concerned that a protest would ruin an event that was “supposed to be a festive holiday experience for children and their families.”
Rose, wrote Lepore, left the decision as to whether or not to perform at the Carousel Tree Lighting to him.
Lepore wrote, “because of my concern for the children’s safety, I have decided to cancel. It is unfortunate that leftist agendas must spoil this happy event. It is evident that these groups are biased.”
He also wrote:
Lepore may still have Mayor Rose’s backing, but Capobianco’s support appears to be waning. She wrote, “Seriously I thought this was such a fun idea but turns out maybe it wasn’t, not the first time I’ve been wrong and likely won’t be the last time either.”
The protesters in sympathy with the Black Lives Matter movement who showed up at the Carousel, the ones that Lepore was so worried about, didn’t start any trouble of course. For the most part the people simply smiled and talked to each other and to the press. The tree lighting went off inside the carousel building without a hitch. Everyone seemed to be having great time.
But on Lepore’s Facebook page, the comments were ugly and racist. Aside from the ignorant and expected responses of “All Lives Matter” there were comments made about black fathers being deadbeats, black mothers being on welfare, and black on black crime.
One commenter called Black Lives Matter a terrorist group and the “scum of the Earth.”
Darker still were the comments that bordered on violent, as commenters spoke of bringing weapons to confront protesters, saying things like, “Carry arms then. I got my little 22 waiting. Little pistol… lots of damage” and “lol between me and you I got a .44 mag lmao.”
Lepore was right in his belief that his appearance might make children and families unsafe. But it’s not those in sympathy with the Black Lives Matter movement he needed to worry about, it was his own fans and supporters.
