Some residents were irked by initial plans to change the popular annual PVD Fest. How is Smiley responding to the criticism? And as a former state official, how does he view the ongoing fallout from a troubled trip to Philadelphia in March by two Rhode Island officials? I’m Ian Donnis. This week, I’m going in-depth with the mayor of Providence, Brett Smiley.
TRANSCRIPT
Ian Donnis: Welcome back to The Public’s Radio.
Brett Smiley: Thank you.
Ian Donnis: You’re a former state official, you served as Chief of Staff for part of Gina Raimondo’s time as governor and then lead the State Department of Administration. So I’m curious to your your reaction to the ongoing fallout from the controversy involving a disastrous March trip by to Rhode Island officials to Philadelphia. Are you concerned about the message or perception that this sends about Rhode Island?
Brett Smiley: It’s certainly an embarrassment. But I also know and was a state employee and it does not represent how most state employees behave and how they present and represent the city and the state to the rest of the country. I don’t think this is the norm. I think this was an exception, an embarrassing exception. But nevertheless, not how Rhode Islanders and Rhode Island State officials normally conduct their business.
Ian Donnis: The trip to Philadelphia was to visit with officials with Scout a company that’s hoping to renovate the Cranston street armory. There are a lot of questions about what’s going to happen with that project now, are you doing anything to try and move that process forward?
Brett Smiley: Yeah, I’ve been a great champion for this project and will remain so. I’ve been involved with the building for a long time. I think most Providence residents have some connection or some great story to that building. I remain optimistic that we will see its redevelopment. I remain a champion for the project. And I hope that this latest chapter does not derail our efforts to turn that into something contributing for the city and for the region.
Ian Donnis: Your first budget proposed raising the residential tax rate by 5%. You expect to be able to avoid tax rate increases for the remainder of your term.
Brett Smiley: I hope to and I’m glad you said tax rate because it is often confusing for residents. When we do revaluations, which happen every three years. And if your property tax value goes up, it might mean that your tax bill goes up. But I hope that this is the only time we need to raise tax rates in my term.
Ian Donnis: The General Assembly session recently ended and I believe lawmakers passed a bill that you were backing that would require taxes for for profit entities that are housed in real estate owned by nonprofits. What difference will that make for the city financially?
Brett Smiley: This is a really important piece of legislation that I was proud to you know, my office wrote and was championed by the Providence delegation, although it will apply and have benefits for communities well beyond Providence. It’s statewide legislation. When our large nonprofit institutions start to act like commercial landlords and they rent out space to anything from a Starbucks to a private doctor’s office practices, those tenants will now have to pay taxes just like they would if they were in a building owned by a private landlord. And so I think this is a question of fundamental fairness, it will result in several million dollars of additional tax revenue for the city of Providence. And it also it will impact I think the future growth of these institutions where if they thought that there was an advantage to start buying buildings, not for their institutional use, but to lease out to other parties, this will curb that behavior, or at least make sure that they’re on a level playing field with all of the other property owners in the area.
Ian Donnis: Where do things stand with your efforts to exact higher payments from nonprofit entities in Providence?
Brett Smiley: So we have been negotiating with the private colleges, the four private colleges Brown, RISD, Providence College and Johnson and Wales, since I took office. We’re making good progress. And I hope to have a tentative agreement to present to the city council in the next couple of months. We’re kind of in the closing chapters of those negotiations. And they’ve been going well. There’s two main hospital groups in Providence one is Care New England. Care New England has an existing agreement with the city with one year left on it. And Lifespan currently has no agreement and we are anxious to start those negotiations, but not have done and have not done so yet.
Ian Donnis: You announced some changes recently to PVD Fest and there was a bit of a backlash. The sense was that this has been a good event for Providence. Why did you choose to make changes?
Brett Smiley: Yeah so, I mean, there was a backlash in some corners, but there was a lot of support in other corners. We chose to try to put the focus back on the artists which is what I think is best about the festival. Providence has a great reputation as a Center for Arts and Culture nationally. And over the last couple of festivals, it had turned into more and more of an outdoor street fair, focused on drinking and less on the performances. And so we changed the venue to the Providence riverfront. And we’re not allowing open containers this year, I think that will allow it to become more family friendly, and also put the focus back on the Arts, which is where they should be.
Ian Donnis: And do you expect that restaurants bars went have an opportunity to offer a beer garden type experience?
Brett Smiley: Yeah, that’s our hope we’re, you know. Public safety is first and foremost for all of us. And as has been reported many times in other contexts, we have a shortage of police officers in Providence right now. So we are trying to allow for block parties or what we call extension of premises where a restaurant or a bar could move into the sidewalk, or even perhaps into the parking lane, to allow them to have kind of a party outside of their venue. But we need to make sure that we can properly police and secure those areas so that they’re safe for everyone to enjoy. We’re trying to work on that. And that’s our hope. We’re trying to work on the staffing models right now. And we’ll have a lot of guidance for businesses in the weeks to come. What we’re not going to change is the open container rules. That’s the rules to allow you to actually go from restaurant to a restaurant with an open drink. If we are able to allow for some of these parties and extension of premises, you will have to finish your drink at that restaurant or bar before you go on to the next.
Ian Donnis: We’re talking here with Providence Mayor Brett Smiley, and you mentioned the shortage of officers in the police department is that can adversely affect the department’s ability to respond to the higher number of calls and violent calls in the summer.
Brett Smiley: We’re going to continue to effectively police and patrol this city as we always have. What it ends up meaning is that a lot of officers have to work overtime. And they make up for the shortage in staffing through working longer hours, which is a stress and a strain on our officers. And sometimes can be a strain on our budget because of course they’re making overtime rates of pay as opposed to regular, which is why I think it is both the right thing to do for public safety but also the right thing to do financially, to continue to run regular and repeated academies until we get up to a level of staffing that is more appropriate. I will say you know, people in Providence people who come to Providence should not worry that we can’t adequately police the city. We do cover everything that needs to be covered. And in the event of a major emergency, we would call on help from other law enforcement agencies,
Ian Donnis: The current environment of higher interest rates is having a chilling effect on development. Does that mean that the Superman rehab project is virtually at a standstill?
Brett Smiley: Well, it is certainly not under construction right now. And the developer has been pretty clear that the interest rate environment and the construction cost escalation that has occurred over the last couple of years has impacted their preliminary financial models. And so they’ve been talking to the state and to the city about what additional either support or programs could help them get started. And I’m very much at the table to try to see that happen. I think that that is a transformative project for Providence and for the state. And given that it is projected to be housing, including 20% affordable housing, I think is one piece of the solution to our housing crisis right now.
Ian Donnis: I did some reporting this week on the parent of Roger Williams Medical Center, Prospect Medical Holdings and some of the ongoing fallout from that. I’d like to ask you about the city’s tax deal with Roger Williams Medical Center. Yes, the Medical Center is a leading taxpayer in the city, but it’s my understanding it gets a pretty generous tax benefit. How is that working out?
Brett Smiley: So they have a tax stabilization agreement or a TSA with the city where they pay a discounted rate of what they would pay were it fully taxed. I will say, they pay a lot more than what Lifespan and Care New England pay. And so, you know, hospitals around the country are figuring out their future and in Rhode Island, of course our hospital systems are struggling financially. And so our relationship with Roger Williams and their TSA, I think is actually comparatively better than our relationship financially with the other major hospital groups and that signed agreement with them has provided some predictability for the city and it has provided pretty significant tax resources for the city. I frankly wish that the other hospital groups had the same level of commitment to the city as as they do.
Ian Donnis: I’d like to get your response to some polling by NPR, NewsHour and Marist. This week, the finding was that a majority of Americans say gender is defined by birth, and that the number of people who believe that is up by 16%, or 16 points since 2022. That seems to reflect how Republicans have made more of an issue out of transgender rights. If that is shifting due to political currents, what is necessary from people who believe that gender is more fluid than that, and not necessarily defined by birth.
Brett Smiley: So I think that we can and should be doing a few things. First, as a public servant, I feel an obligation to provide legal protections, and particularly legal protections to minority groups. I mean, those are the people who need the protection of the law the most, because sometimes the angry majority can for political purposes, or otherwise start to act and stoke fear for their own gain by continuing to highlight or further marginalize minority groups. And so in the state and in the city, we should continue to advance legal rights for trans folks in our community. Second, I think that there’s a kind of a moral leadership that public officials, myself included, should exercise to make sure that we continue to treat with respect and dignity, all members of our community, including the gender non-conforming community and our trans folks in our city. And then finally, to really make sure that we lift up and highlight and promote the humans who are making incredible contributions to our city. And I’m proud to have several trans folks serving in my administration, and they’re not there because of their gender identity. They’re there because of their competence. And I think that’s great. And so, It is sad to me, as a member of the LGBT community myself that, you know, we seem to be taking two steps backwards after one step forward on some of these issues. And it is purely for the purposes of stoking fear and amassing power. And I think in places like Providence, where we are such a welcoming and open community, that we have an obligation to not just continue to speak out for those of us in Providence, but to use the benefit from living in a place like this to try to advocate for those living in other communities where the kind of overall societal acceptance is very different.
Ian Donnis: Thank you so much for joining us, the mayor of Providence, Brett Smiley
Brett Smiley: Thanks, Ian.
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Most Rhode Islanders have never heard of the Health Services Council, which is an advisory board to the state Department of Health. That’s where a clash initially played out in 2020 over the future of CharterCARE, the third-largest hospital chain in Rhode Island. Attorney General Peter Neronha ultimately conditioned a change in control at CharterCARE’s parent company on the creation of an $80 million escrow account, meant to ensure the survival of Roger Williams Medical Center in Providence and Our Lady of Fatima Hospital in North Providence. Before that, however, back in 2020, a string of physicians and a few elected officials offered their unqualified support for a change at CharterCARE parent Prospect Medical Holdings. Why does this matter? Neronha says if the deal went ahead without the escrow account, Roger Williams and Fatima probably would have gone out of business. You can read about that and a lot more in my weekly TGIF column, posting around 4 this afternoon at thepublicsradio.org or on Twitter @IanDon.
Our producer is James Baumgartner.
I’m Ian Donnis and I’ll see you on the radio.
