For Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline, it was picking up the pieces in the wake of corruption at City Hall after the conviction of Vincent A. “Buddy” Cianci Jr. on racketeering charges. For the next mayor it will be collecting the remains of a shattered economy in a capital city hit by the downturn with the force of a hurricane.
“It is such an overarching issue it overshadows everything,” Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce President Laurie White said.
Stimulating the economy starts with creating jobs, say White and Joseph Paolino Jr., a former Providence mayor whose family owns Paolino Properties. The city’s unemployment rate in July was about 13 percent, stalling consumer spending and economic growth. Drawing new businesses here, Paolino said, will create job opportunities, put money in residents’ pockets and right a city budget.
Providence already faces a projected $50 million budget deficit for the fiscal year that began July 1, and the next mayor will inherit a plan designed by Cicilline and the current City Council to address the gap.
To prevent a similar situation again, the new mayor may look at the city’s relationship with nonprofit organizations that pay no taxes on the roughly $3.8 billion worth of property they own. Or perhaps explore the city’s pension system that some estimate has more than $800 million in unfunded liabilities. Or maybe consolidate city departments internally or with neighboring communities.
Then there’s talk about reshaping public transportation in the city. And of what will take the place of the old Interstate 195 after bulldozers raze the highway and open about 20 acres to development. The next mayor will also inherit plans for a “knowledge district” brimming with research labs and startup companies to replace the Jewelry District vacated by manufacturers.
The mayor will also encounter a school department led by its fourth superintendent in eight years and one where 82 percent of the district’s roughly in which 24,500 students come from families below the federal poverty line.
He – all six candidates are male – may even need to sweat the (relatively) small stuff. Brenda Tabele, owner of Old Fashioned Robotics, wants the city to place signs telling people those alleys scattered across the city often lead to businesses like hers. And Doreen Ise, owner Rosebud Salon, said the next mayor needs to listen to the needs of small businesses, not just the large ones. A chorus of shop owners demands the next mayor improve parking for customers who leave holding their purchase and a parking ticket, courtesy of the city.
Last month, four candidates interviewed by Providence Business News called economic development one of, if not the, primary goal they would tackle if elected. (The other two candidates, independents Jonathan Scott and Stephen Woerner, announced their candidacies late and could not be reached immediately for comment.)
“We have to get people back to work,” said Democratic candidate Angel Taveras, a lawyer and former Providence Housing Court judge.
Taveras, 39, wants the city to focus on keeping businesses already in the city, recruiting new ones and reforming the permitting process to encourage new business.
And to provide an educated work force, he wants the city to put an emphasis on early childhood education and partner with higher education institutions. On the divisive topic of taxing the city’s nonprofits, Taveras said the city needs to explore everything while not spooking universities that provide an important economic boon to the city.
Within City Hall, Taveras wants the city to re-examine its pension system and look at cost-of-living adjustments in an attempt to rein in the deficit.
“The underlying issues are huge, and there’s not one silver bullet,” he said.
Democratic candidate Christopher Young, 41, said that to close the budget gap the city needs to take a hard look at well-paid department heads, the pension system and taxing Brown University.
Young said some department heads appeared employed merely because of political connections. He wants a slimmer City Hall at the top and a pension system for workers with a higher retirement age.
He also wants Providence to beef up its loan programs and provide loans to high school students pursuing startups under the guidance of teachers and members of the business community. Young said the concept provides an educational opportunity for students while sparking innovation key to improving the economy.
And in an effort to raise money, he would urge the General Assembly to allow the city to tax private, secular, higher education institutions with more than $1 billion in property assets and more than $1 billion in their endowment. As a practical matter, that would only apply to Brown, who Young called an economic engine but also a monopoly.
“You can’t allow one engine to run on full steam and let that engine suck up all the gas and all the fuel while the other engines are just puttering along,” he said.
Young sees Providence using the money to offer tax breaks to landlords as an incentive to lower rent, under the theory that lower rents lead to affordable housing necessary for workers driving the economy.
Democrat John Lombardi, now a city councilman, said the city needs to find a solution working with the universities and the hospitals, rather than forcing a solution on them. Instead of demanding universities make additional voluntary agreements, Lombardi, 58, would broach asking them to provide in-kind services like the use of their recreational fields or Brown University medical students providing low-cost health care and education to the city’s poor.
“You don’t do everything with a stick; you do it with a carrot,” Lombardi said.
He pledges to bring that attitude to the departments at City Hall, where he would work with unions to redefine the qualifications for pensions and start the process of moving workers to a hybrid system of pensions and private retirement accounts. He wants the city to consolidate departments within Providence and within the state and the region in an effort to reduce costs.
Democratic candidate Steven Costantino, 53, also called for changes in the school department, including boosting professional development for teachers and inviting nonprofit groups to bring social and recreational services directly to schools. Costantino, chairman of the House Finance Committee, already left his mark on the schools by shepherding to passage a statewide, educational-funding formula that will deliver more state money to the district. He called the formula an important first step to improving the district.
On the economic front, Costantino wants to spur jobs by making it easier to do business in the city. He envisions creating a central service center where permitting offices would be located next to each other rather than scattered throughout the city. Costantino would also create interdepartmental teams and assign one city employee to track each project.
And he called the city’s nonprofit institutions “vital” to the economy but which also need to understand the city’s fiscal shape. As mayor, he would seek to reopen discussions regarding the agreement between the universities and cities in which the schools make voluntary payments in lieu of taxes.
At City Hall, Costantino wants smaller budgets from city departments and proposals for consolidation. He also wants a close look at the pension system. And he dismisses ideas like floating bonds to close the budget deficit, saying that simply passes along the cost to future generations.
The difficult economy and city finances, Costantino said, provide the political will to make difficult – and unpopular – decisions that help straighten the city in the long run.
“I believe tough economic times – as tough as they are – are also windows of opportunity because if you don’t make these choices now you’ll never make them,” he said.
Christopher Young has my vote and support.