Mayor Charles Lombardi’s decision to dismantle the
skate park in that the town....OUTRAGOUS!
“What’s next?” *he
asked. “Will he fill the pool at the Recreation
Center with cement should people use it improperly, or will he close
the playgrounds for our tots because someone drew graffiti. While
he’s at it, maybe he should cancel Halloween.”
*Councilman Frank A. Manfredi
UPDATE
01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, October 3, 2007
By
Richard C. Dujardin
Journal Staff Writer
NORTH PROVIDENCE — Pointing to
provisions in the Town Charter that they say makes them the ultimate
authority on how town property is to be used, members of the Town
Council last night called on Mayor Charles Lombardi to abandon his
effort to relocate the town’s skateboard park to a site off
Smithfield Road and to return the park to its original location at
the bottom of a hill in Stephen Olney Park, down from High Service
Avenue.
The unanimous move, which brought
cheers from a dozen or so skateboarders as well as a number of
residents opposed to the relocation, came on an evening that saw the
council challenge the mayor’s authority on several fronts, including
his decision not to build a new public works facility next to the
former town landfill on Smithfield Road, but to keep and renovate
the existing facility in the middle of a residential area off
Mafalda Street.
Before the night was out, the council
approved an ordinance, with only John A. Zambarano and Raymond
Douglas voting no, to prohibit the mayor from spending any more
money without council approval from a $3.5-million capital
improvement bond issue that was approved last year.
Chastising Lombardi for letting the
developer who had signed an agreement to buy the existing public
works site for $1.1 million back out of the deal, members voted
unanimously to demand that the mayor undertake legal action to force
the developer, Pasco Izzo, to live up to the original
agreement.
Though there have been several
disagreements between the mayor and council over the last few
months, the tension became more apparent in last night’s series of
council votes.
Councilman Paul F. Caranci said he
would ordinarily agree with his colleagues Douglas and Zambarano
that the council should not “micromanage” how money is spent, but
the mayor’s track record of trying to use bond issue money for
things it was never intended for obliges the council to step in to
make sure the expenditures are appropriate.
“I like to give the administration
maximum flexibility,” Caranci said, but added that the mayor’s
attempt to completely change what taxpayers were originally promised
had to be challenged.
Caranci said that had the original
plan for the public works garage proceeded, public works employees
would now have a completely new facility to work from, and residents
living near the existing public works garage would no longer face
the noise and discomfort of trucks rumbling through their
neighborhood.
Because the facility remains where it
is, he said, residents who were thinking they would move but stayed
because they thought the garage was being relocated, are stuck
because of conditions in the housing market; and people who did move
in now also find themselves trapped.
In an interview yesterday, Lombardi
attributed the council’s complaints about the bond issue money to
politics.
Estimating that there is still about
$2 million of the bond issue money in the town coffers, Lombardi
complained that no one questioned the fact that more than $800,000
from the bond went toward projects that had been undertaken and
completed by his predecessors even before the bond issue was
approved.
But the biggest debate last night was
over the skateboard park.
Anthony Grande, of 23 Link St.,
presented a petition to the council signed by 90 area residents
opposing relocation of the skateboard park from one area of Stephen
Olney Park to the other, and offered a laundry list of reasons why
it should have never been moved.
Councilmen Frank A. Manfredi, Douglas,
Caranci and John E. Fleming Jr. said they agreed, and apologized
that neighbors and skateboarders were put through the ordeal.
Caranci said the relocation would mean
that the park would lose 38 of its 72 parking spaces, exacerbating a
“dangerous” parking situation that would force people driving
youngsters to ball games to park on the street.
Wendy A. Regan, whose home at 4
Colonial Drive is about the same distance from both locations, said
many of the complaints about the skateboarders could just as easily
be used against other youth sports activities — if not
more.
“Where is the outrage over the
loudspeakers used regularly at the high school field during the
Friday night football games and Sunday morning and afternoon Pop
Warner games?” she asked. She said the traffic created by skaters is
significantly less than the other recreational uses sanctioned by
the town.
One official speaking in defense of
moving the park was Police Chief Ernest Spaziano, who said that the
terrain made it extremely difficult for emergency vehicles to reach
the original site and that the walking path was too narrow even for
his cruisers.
Members of the council countered that
if the $8,000 that has been spent trying to move the park had been
used to widen the path for cars, the controversy would have never
arisen.
