For generations, our public schools have been underfunded, but that hit a new extreme during the pandemic. From 2020 until 2024, Providence schools were level funded at a time when cumulative inflation rose over 20%. This turned a systemic problem into a crisis.
As City Councilor, my top priority is fully funding our public schools. Then, I’ll go further, lobbying at the state level and rallying behind our teachers to ensure that we are:
Providence has had top-tier public schools before, and we can again. How we fund our schools directly impacts how they will perform. When the School Board, administration, and teachers have the resources they need, I know our students will flourish.
The city of Providence has published a report that outlines the necessary scope of what we need to do in order to solve the housing crisis. It is significant. Solving the housing crisis is crucial to regaining control of prices throughout Providence. The cost of housing doesn’t just stop at rental or mortgage payments; it gets passed on to employers and from businesses to consumers through price increases.
The primary source of housing cost increases is the lack of housing supply. In order to increase supply, we need to ensure there is development that will be affordable and improve the neighborhood's quality of life, such as on vacant lots or in place of closed storefronts. We need to streamline permitting, provide gap funding, and make it easier to repair old housing stock.
Development must also bring a significant quantity of below-market units. We can accomplish this through inclusionary zoning, like 200 other New England cities, temporary assistance housing, and supporting nonprofits like SWAP.
The City of Providence can and should use the Providence Redevelopment Agency and the Housing Trust Fund to develop housing and create the conditions for development.
We must have strong tenant protections. I will always back tenant unions and ensure that people are not losing their housing for anything short of just cause.
And yes, to successfully control housing costs, we need rent stabilization.
Rents have outpaced wages for over twenty years, forcing people to leave Providence and contributing to broader citywide inflation. We need to cap rents to protect our neighbors from being priced out or becoming rent-burdened. The housing crisis is driven primarily by supply, so as we increase our stock of housing, we can reduce the degree of rent stabilization.
By stabilizing costs for housing, we are working to stabilize costs more generally, as housing costs make up 36% of the Consumer Price Index. Landlords should be able to afford their home, but opportunity can’t come on the backs of working people. I have heard too many stories of landlords drastically raising rents to fund personal ventures and second homes, which can’t be allowed to continue.
Two very different but equally present crises of humanity are visible in our community. The impact of seeing violence against our immigrant and homeless neighbors on a near-daily basis is destabilizing, and we must do everything we can to stop it. I will work with my colleagues to establish an office of connecting services, which will help neighbors find the support they need from organizations across Providence. We will leverage our city's strong network of agencies and nonprofits to protect those at risk or in crisis. I will also fight for stronger restrictions and oversight mechanisms to eliminate PPD-ICE collaboration and strengthen policies that regulate ICE movement in Providence.
The city of Providence is in the process of paving roads and fixing sidewalks, and we need to fight to secure those projects in Ward 3. Our hilly and green neighborhood is beautiful, but unmitigated erosion and root overgrowth have created enormous barriers to transportation. We need to make sure we’re retaining the character and beauty of our landscape while also making it safely navigable by car, foot, or bicycle.
This includes North Main Street, where I will continue the work of the North Main Street Task Force and lobby the city to invest heavily. North Main Street was once so much more than a congested throughway, and it can be again. I support the light rail metro connector project to run along this corridor, as well as repairs to road infrastructure and wider pedestrian pathways to support local commerce. With the support of our community, we can make North Main Street a destination, an easier corridor to travel by car, and a safer place to walk.
The work is not limited to North Main Street. We need raised crosswalks throughout the ward in high foot traffic areas like Hope Street and in neighborhoods. I will listen to neighbors to determine what crossings and intersections are most dangerous, then help implement solutions like extending walk signals and adding crossing lights. I want to ensure every constituent has access to ADA-compliant sidewalks and vibrant green spaces.
Our community cares a lot about the global existential threat that is climate change. We have a responsibility as a ward uniquely unified on this topic to be a leader in preventative action. This means we need to create funding sources in the city’s budget that fills in “hot spots” or other amenable locations with renewable energy sources. It means we need to identify and support resiliency projects. And, it means we need to support active and mass transportation to ensure that we are reducing our local and, by consequence, global, carbon emissions.
The safety of our neighborhoods starts with prevention. Right now, our EMS is some of the busiest in the region. We can reduce the number of calls we receive and our speed in responding to them through funding. A call reduction could be accomplished by piloting a preventative care EMS team, like was recently piloted in Fall River to reduce the number of “frequent flyer” calls. The latter, we can accomplish by increasing EMS funding for staffing and to return service to reopen stations like former station 4 on Rochambeau.
We must understand that desperation also is a key driver for any criminal activity. Once again, prevention is the key. We need to ensure that we have a dedicated staff in Providence that are providing responsible intervention for people experiencing mental health crises, substance abuse disorder, or acute hunger. A proactive approach to intervention, like connecting people to long term care and resources, is humane, effective, and will ultimately save the city money in responding to incidents of crime or disorder.
I’ve outlined some ambitious goals in my description of how I plan to govern, but it takes significant resources to pay for schools, housing, a support services office, road improvements, green infrastructure, and to modernize the fire department and provide legal support for residents.
A dollar saved is a dollar earned: we need to revisit our city’s contracts and tax deals. We must ensure that we are not spending more than we are receiving in value, and that means everything from Waste Management to the Superman tax deal should be revisited.
At the same time, we’re never going to be able to afford great public services and amenities when nearly half of all land in Providence is exempt from paying property taxes. We need more support from Brown, PC, RISD, JWU, and the state, and we can’t allow any large institutions to get away with paying absolutely no money in property taxes.
We should see how we can shift the burden of paying penalties from individuals to the industries that impose on the public. This means fewer fees on individuals, such as processing fees or speed cameras, and more penalties for polluters, exploitative industries, and speculators. The shifting of this burden allows for our neighbors to be less encumbered by local government, for us to reduce harmful behavior without resorting to legal battles and seizure, and for our revenue that comes from fines and penalties to actually increase and be paid for by the industries that can afford it.
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