Richmond Town Council Meeting for May 16, 2023
By Cynthia Drummond for BRVCA
RICHMOND -- Members of the Town Council named several applicants to the Zoning Board at the May 16 meeting. They also agreed to consider a proposal to join the state’s “Learn365” initiative and heard from an unexpected guest, former Cranston Mayor, Allan Fung.
The Zoning Board
The council considered seven applications for full and alternate positions on the Zoning Board. The applicants were former council President Nell Carpenter, current alternate member Louise Dinsmore, Robert Sayer, Joyce Flanagan, Linda Zambrano, James Brear and former state representative, Justin Price.
Councilors Michael Colasante and Helen Sheehan wanted to appoint Dinsmore, but with council President Mark Trimmer, Vice President Richard Nassaney and member Samantha Wilcox opposed, they were unsuccessful.
Councilors ranked their preferred candidates. Brear received the most votes with Carpenter second and Price third. Sayer, Zambrano and Flanagan were fifth, sixth and seventh.
The council then voted on the appointments. Brear was appointed to a full position on the board, which will expire on July 31, 2024.
Carpenter’s board position, which Nassaney opposed, will expire on July 31, 2023.
Price was appointed to the second alternate position.
Trimmer reminded those who had not been appointed that there would soon be another opportunity for them to apply.
“I was asked tell everyone who didn’t get appointed tonight that on July 31st, there is one permanent and two alternate positions that are opening up again, and I invite all of you to apply for those,” he said.
Asked later why Dinsmore had not been considered for the full- time board post, Trimmer said he did not feel he could support her.
Dinsmore has been publicly critical of some council members in the past, including Trimmer, who said he had felt it necessary to ask each Zoning Board applicant to state how they felt about a member of a town body criticizing another town official.
“They indeed have the right to say whatever they want, but I have the right to vote whatever I want, too, and that’s why I did not vote to promote Louise, because although she’s knowledgeable, I don’t feel she has the restraint and bearing,” he said. “And I’m fine with that being stated, because I told her that.”
Dinsmore would have been required to resign her alternate position in order to apply for the full-time position. Sheehan pressed Trimmer on the Dinsmore appointment.
“I think someone can resign and apply at the same time. It’s discrimination,” she said.
Colasante said he believed that as first alternate, Dinsmore “should automatically slide right in to the full position, and she comes with the most experience. There isn’t anybody here, right? that has any experience other than Miss Dinsmore.”
Nassaney countered that Dinsmore was required to resign her alternate position but that the resignation was not on the meeting agenda, and therefore, could not be considered.
“The way that the procedure has been, and has always been, is that you step down from apposition, you put your application in for the new position,” he said.
“That’s nuts,” Colasante interjected.
Nassaney continued,
“And it’s not even on our agenda. The resignation is not on the agenda. If it was on the agenda, then we would have taken care of it as an agenda item,” he said.
Economic Development
Trimmer, who was criticized for inviting a representative from an economic development firm to the May 2 council meeting, asked the council to consider issuing a request for proposals, or RFP, soliciting a company or a consultant to advise the town on economic development strategies.
Sheehan produced a job description that she had drafted and distributed shortly before the meeting.
“If we’re going to put out an RFP, we need to be able to say what we want to have happen,” she said.
But Trimmer said he had not had time to look at Sheehan’s document, and Wilcox, reached a few days later, said she had received it minutes before the meeting.
“It was distributed to us, maybe, five, 15 minutes before the meeting, but the council chambers are loud,” she said. “You have people waiting for the meeting to start, where they’re having their own individual conversations, so I find it hard to concentrate.”
“When Helen presented the job description for the person that we’re supposed to hire, at the meeting, that was another snafu,” Trimmer later said. “Between Helen and Mike, each meeting, they come and they show up and they pass things out that aren’t on the agenda, that aren’t discussed that haven’t been agreed upon, that don’t have electronic copies.”
Allan Fung
Sitting in the audience was former Cranston Mayor Allan Fung, who said he had decided to attend the council meeting after seeing an economic development consultant on an agenda of the Economic Development Commission and attending that meeting.
Fung was not on the council meeting agenda, but Trimmer invited him to speak.
An attorney with the firm Pannone, Lopes, Devereaux & O’Gara LLC, Fung said he was interested in submitting a proposal.
“The reason I’m here tonight is because I wanted to listen in on the conversation with the RFP for economic development,” he said. “I’m a firm, [an] individual, and I just wanted to say, I’m a little confused and the reason why I’m a little confused about the discussion what’s going on, I had an opportunity yesterday to come before the Economic Development Commission and I saw an agenda item for them for an RFP as well. I want to try to figure out, exactly, because my background at the law firm is putting together deals. A lot of what I do is in the state and municipal sphere.”
Fung asked the council to explain what it was looking for in a consultant.
“I could provide the appropriate services to kind of help put the models, guidelines in place, what we have, do we have the right toolbox, reaching out,” he said. “A lot of the stuff we did in Cranston, all the communities, with the appropriate business to put… you together, with the right developers, businesses, that may have an interest but this is where I think that scope is important of what Richmond is looking for.”
Trimmer withdrew his motion to draft the RFP and asked town staff to draft an RFP for the council’s consideration.
“I think we should get the information together,” he said. “I think maybe we should have a workshop, but I would like to limit the workshop to an hour so it doesn’t become a bully pulpit session.”
Contacted several days later, Trimmer said he had been surprised to see Fung at the meeting.
“It was orchestrated by Louise [Dinsmore] and Colasante, because Colasante knows him,” he said. “…I figured I would grab him while he was there because I respect him, and have him come up and just speak for a little bit – not to snub him off but, I was totally and completely unaware.”
“I wasn’t expecting him to be there either,” Wilcox said.
It appears that the continual political bickering on the council might be starting to deter developers from coming to Richmond.
“I had two developers specifically say ‘I have seen social media, news reports and watched Town Council meetings and I’m not sure this is a town I want to do business with,’” Trimmer said. “They’re saying ‘hey I know that you guys are claiming that you are pro-business, however, we really fear investing in the town, even though we’d like to, because of the political rancor, the comments that are made about three sitting town councilors, including comments made about the Vice President and the President.’”
Learn365
The council voted to sign the Rhode Island Municipal Education Compact, part of Gov. Dan McKee’s “Learn365RI” initiative to enhance and expand educational opportunities in Rhode Island communities, outside of school hours.
After questioning program representative Jeremy Chiappetta on whether signing the compact would usurp the authority of the Chariho Regional School District or result in additional unfunded education mandates, the council voted to sign the compact on the condition that the town could later withdraw its support.