In 2022 I ran for Mayor of East Providence. I did not win, and this site sat mostly untouched for four years with the campaign still on the front page. Today it changes jobs.
The campaign pages are still here, filed under 2022 Campaign in the menu, exactly as they were. I want people to be able to see what I said I would do and hold me to the same standard I would hold anyone else. But the front of the site now belongs to the work that has kept me busy since: running a heat pump company in this city, finishing buildings in Riverside Square, coaching at Riverside Little League, and paying closer attention than ever to how East Providence actually works.
That attention is what this Writing section is for. The questions have not changed much since 2022. Why did the typical East Providence home go from about $190,000 in 2010 to roughly double that by 2022, and higher since, and what could the city realistically do about it? Why do small businesses grow more slowly here than elsewhere in Rhode Island? Where does the city’s money come from, and where does it go? What would it take to build the kind of housing that people of ordinary means can afford?
I plan to work through those questions here, one at a time, with the numbers attached and the sources linked. Posts are organized by topic so you can follow a single thread: Housing, Small Business, City Budget and Taxes, and more as they come. Some of it will be long. Some of it will be wrong, and when it is, I will say so and fix it.
If you have a question about East Providence that you think deserves that kind of attention, send it my way. The point of all this is the same as it was in 2022: build together.