A city plan slowly takes shape

Barbara Bennett describes Providence Mayor Angel Taveras as an “active listener” who looks a speaker in the eye, asks intelligent questions and appears to take an even-keeled approach to decision-making. Like many in the capital city, Bennett, the vice president of law and policy at Johnston & Wales University, is waiting to see what steps Taveras takes on a host of issues related to economic development and city spending.
Bennett and others say they hold high hopes for the city’s first Latino mayor, a lawyer who took office Jan. 3 and once served as the city’s Housing Court judge. But Bennett and others also say they need Taveras, a Democrat, to start acting soon rather than just listening.
In Bennett’s case, there are clear deadlines. The university needs to know by June whether Taveras supports its plans to acquire two pieces of land freed up by the relocation of Interstate 195. The mayor and his administration have heard Bennett and other university officials outline their plans to combine the two J-shaped parcels with adjoining college property and build student housing.
“We’ve given them our story, and they’ve sat back and listened attentively,” Bennett said.
But Taveras has given little indication of whether he will support the plan.
And Bennett is not the only one waiting for Taveras to signal how he will tackle specific issues intertwined with the city’s economy.
Carrie Marsh, executive director of Community Works Rhode Island, served on Taveras’ housing and neighborhood-development transition team. She said Taveras now must take the report of the team and show he will act on it.
“I don’t know where he’s headed right now,” she said. “I know he’s gotten a lot of great input. … We just want to know how to best engage.”
In a brief interview with Providence Business News last week, the mayor said he has spent much of his first weeks in office gathering information. He has appeared at community organization events, participated in forums, and met privately with a host of business executives and leaders from the city’s nonprofit institutions. Last week, he traveled to Houston with Gov. Lincoln D. Chafee to tour the Texas Medical Center, which the governor has called a model for Providence economic development. Taveras said the trip displayed how close collaboration between the city and nonprofit institutions can benefit everyone.
But to collaborate well, Taveras said that he first must fully understand all the parts of the city.
“We have been meeting and listening to a lot of people and trying to make sure that people have the ability to have their voices heard,” Taveras said.
Taveras reiterated statements he made as a candidate – that economic growth cannot occur until the city puts its own fiscal house in order. In January, he assembled a team of financial experts to review the city’s finances.
“You’ve got to be in good fiscal health in order to sustain good economic development,” Taveras told PBN.
And there is little doubt the city’s coffers need help. Providence overspent its budget last year by about $57 million, according to an audit commissioned by City Council, and faces projected deficits stretching into the tens of millions of dollars in the future. The budget situation has become so grim that the Providence School Department last week sent notices to all teachers informing them that they could be laid off in the next school year.
Providence City Council President Michael Solomon said he’s not surprised that the budget has consumed much of Taveras’ attention given its dire straits.
“His economic policy has been kind of put on the back burner for the time while he works on the budget,” Solomon said.
But aspects of an economic plan are progressing. Solomon said Taveras and he have met about the future of Allens Avenue, a strip of waterfront land where tensions run high about proposals to build development that could displace the area’s industrial businesses. And in January, Taveras made good on a campaign pledge and announced a search to fill a new position of economic-development director. Melissa Withers, the director of communications for the mayor, said the search committee has been asked to complete its work within three months, and the director is expected to be paid between $120,000 and $150,000 and oversee the departments of Arts, Culture and Tourism, Planning and Development, Inspections and Standards, and Zoning and Licensing.
Also in January, Taveras appointed lawyer Zachary Darrow as a special adviser regarding development of the land where Interstate 195 once stood. It is land that many have called central to building a so-called “knowledge economy” in the city to replace the long-gone jewelry manufacturers that once dotted the Jewelry District.
Last week he was expected to announce the appointment of a consultant – paid for with federal dollars – to help create a plan for building the knowledge economy.
Business leaders say Taveras also appears to be forging a good relationship with Chafee, and that both appear to be strong believers in building a knowledge-centered economy.
“I’m very encouraged,” said Dan Baudouin, co-chair of Taveras’ economic-transition team and executive director of The Providence Foundation. “For someone who’s been in office for seven weeks, he’s already done a lot.”
Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce President Laurie White, who co-chaired the economic team, said the Houston trip could prove a “watershed moment” for the city, because it would allow Taveras and Chafee to understand and build a sense of urgency in righting the city’s bruised economy.
“I think that this is an excellent first sign” of Taveras’ economic plans, White said. The team Baudouin and White chaired delivered Taveras a report with 36 specific recommendations, and team members wrote they were “eager to witness the transfer of ideas into action.” Among the recommendations are creating an economic-development position, establishing a marketing team to promote investment in Providence and keeping a list of economic-development accomplishments during the first 100 days.
The team also encouraged him to designate a Knowledge District Development Commission to report back in June and bring the city’s nonprofit institutions to the table in an effort to demonstrate “the new way of moving Providence forward.”
Taveras has met with officials at Brown University, in addition to JWU, school representatives say. They said Taveras has not broached the idea of renegotiating the payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement worked out by his predecessor David N. Cicilline. Under that deal, four of the city’s universities are voluntarily paying the city about $48 million over 20 years based on their tax-exempt properties. As a candidate, Taveras told PBN “that conditions have changed for everyone” and he wanted to sit down with the schools.
Neither Johnson & Wales nor Brown is anxious to reopen the agreement. Marisa Quinn, vice president of public affairs at Brown, and Bennett, from JWU, both called the agreement “fair.”
On the economic-development side, Taveras the candidate told PBN he supported the creation of a small-loan revolving fund for small business in the city. He also called for the city to suspend, for a number of years, property taxes on properties that have been improved.
It’s a lot to tackle, said Colin Kane, a principal at Peregrine Group, an East Providence developer, who appreciates Taveras’ slow and deliberative tact.
“Once he has his facts understood and the people he wants in the staff positions, I think we’re going to be impressed,” Kane said. •