hard deadlines

Don't imagine that Director Michael P. Lewis will be on hand with news crews and fancy ribbons when RIDOT slinks into town today to post a 10-ton weight limit on the Escape bridge. A recent inspection noticed problems, so large vehicles will need to seek alternate routes. Including school buses. Here's the scoop:

RIDOT inspects all of its bridges once every two years. The latest inspection and load rating analysis for the Cove Bridge showed some areas of deterioration in its concrete beams. This recent inspection prompted RIDOT to set its weight limit at 10 tons. Due to this posting, RIDOT will increase the frequency of its inspection process for this bridge.

All passenger vehicles (cars, pick up trucks, SUVs, vans) are permitted to pass over the bridge. With the new weight restriction, all trucks and school buses will need to seek alternate routes. Vehicles in excess of 10 tons seeking access to the Island Park Business District should use Exit 2 off of Route 24 to Boyds Lane. Drivers unsure of the weight of their vehicles should consult their registration, which lists the vehicle’s gross weight.
— via RIDOT press release

"Drivers unsure of the weight of their vehicles should consult their registration?" WTF? What freaking planet are these people from?

Can't wait to see what this does to the bus schedule tomorrow. Thanks for the great maintenance, guys!

School Committee Chair Sylvia Wedge hears about health projects from Hathaway School kids.

It was a bittersweet meeting of the Portsmouth School Committee this evening, with memories of the late committee member Doug Wilkey, and a presentation by kids from the schools participating in a health and wellness program that he helped to start.

School Committee Chair Sylvia Wedge announced that there will be a memorial service for Mr. Wilkey on Thursday afternoon at 1 pm at the United Methodist Church in Portsmouth. A moment of silence was held at the opening of the meeting, and several speakers remembered Wilkey's long history of service to the town.

"I will miss Mr. Wilkey very much," said Superintendent Susan Lusi, "He had a tremendous committment to the community, the school committee, and our students. Doug always went above and beyond. I'll miss his commitment and his sense of humor."

Assistant Superintendent Collen Jermain remembered how Mr. Wilkey, an avid motorcyclist, would always beep when he passed her house in the summer. And she welcomed the students from the Portsmouth Elementary and Middle schools who presented some highlight's from this year's health and wellness program. "Fitting that tonight we're going to be celebrating those initiatives," said Jermain, "Since Mr. Wilkey was instrumental in getting this started."

Over 30 parents, students, and staff from the schools were on hand for the presentations, which the kids from Hathaway Elementary kicked off by describing their activity calendars, used to track progress in helping kids stay active and make healthy food choices. Dr. Christina Martin, principal of Hathaway, was on hand, as were the parent volunteers who launched the pilot program last year, which was then picked up at the other schools.

Folks from Melville Elementary talked about their program, which included not only students -- who logged 500 hours of phsyical activity and walked a total of 587 miles -- but also staff, who had their own "Biggest Loser" competition, shedding a total of 165 pounds since November. Elmhurst showcased their walk-and-play club which used donated pedometers and a board game developed to help students learn about healthy snack choices. Principal Bob Ettinger thanked the school committee for "Keeping parents healthy by making them walk a quarter-mile from the parking lot."

Students from the Middle School talked about the work they had done surveying their peers to develop recommendations for healthy snacks in the cafeteria, as well as the web site they developed to educate and inform.

Karin Wetherill of the Rhode Island Healthy Schools Coalition had dropped by the meeting to see what Portsmouth was doing, and was very impressed. "It's wonderful to see the kids teach other kids — it makes such a difference," said Wetherill. "And the community has really taken it on, you can see that by all the parents that are here with the kids."

Just one of the many ways that Doug Wilkey touched — and will continue to touch — lives in this town.

After extensive discussion and a trip into executive session, the Portsmouth Town Council tonight voted unanimously to reject the single bid received for operating the transfer station for the next three years and issue a new request for proposals. Representatives from the current facility operator, Waste Management, successfully made their case to the Council that there were issues with the bid process which led to them not submitting a proposal.

"I don't know if Council actually saw the notice in the Providence Journal of April 10, said attorney Donna Lamontagne, representing Waste Management, "But it doesn't make reference to the pre-bid conference." Instead, she noted, it pointed people to the on-line system used by the town, provided by a company called Novus Vendor. This on-line system may have failed to deliver notifications to potentially interested bidders, she said, and there were even questions about whether the RFP had been listed. "I called Novus Vendor in Florida," said Lamontagne, "and he had no record of the bid having been posted."

While several on the council raised questions about fairness to the sole bidder, and possible implications for future contracts, the sense of the group by the end of the evening was to go back out to bid.

Town Administrator Bob Driscoll took advantage of Waste Management's presence to ask if they would extend the current contract by 60 days to accommodate preparation of the new RFP, and they agreed.

Note: I know I usually try to write this stuff up fast, but I've got early meetings in the morning. I'll try to fill in more details tomorrow, but that's the nut.

Today, May 10, is the anniversary of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, and Amtrak is celebrating with National Train Day. There are events in stations all around the country, and here in Little Rhody, the Railroad Museum of RI — located in Kingston Station — will be offering guided museum tours and other displays.

RIDOT will be getting into the spirit as Transportation Week kicks of on Monday with a robotics competition at URI. And Friday is Bike To Work day — if you live near Providence (or even if you don't), why not check out the excellent Bike Providence blog for more info.

Rail and bikes and alternative transport are important parts of our post-carbon future. Let's give 'em a little love.

The empty seats said it all. An audience of barely 15 showed up at the Portsmouth Middle School auditorium for this evening's public comment session on the Berkshire Advisors performance audit of the schools.

It seemed that most people who read the report or heard about the results in the local media — or here — didn't feel the need to speak out. The Berkshire report found the schools were generally doing a good job, suggested a few tweaks to procedure, and recommended additional resources. No smoking gun. No millions in waste.

"It's unusual for us to say thre aren't areas of fat or waste or extra spending," said Berkshire consultant Maureen Costello-Shea, describing the things notably absent in the report. "Where we did not comment, we reviewed the information and found no issue or concern. We would have had a 500-page report if we mentioned everything we didn't find a problem with."

Which probably also explains the empty seats. Of the folks who did attend, the most discussion was around the recommendation to cut a school nurse at the elementary level. "What's going to happen to these little kids when there's no one to patch them up?" asked one parent of a kindergarten student. Costello-Shea pointed out that in many other districts, schools share nurses, and that Portsmouth was providing what appeared to be excess capacity, while there were gaps in providing core services in other areas.

But Council President Dennis Canario assured the audience that the Berkshire report offered recommendations that were still subject to review. "We rely on the School Committee and Superintendent to implement what they can," said Canario. "As far as the school nurses are concerned, I personally, if they recommend we do not eliminate that position, I would trust their judgement. Know the nurse situation is a big concern to parents."

Of the questioners, only Cheshire Kathy Melvin (who has a ranting attack piece in the current PCC newsletter) took the opportunity to harangue the audience at home.

"Another thing I'm concerned about is co-teaching," said Melvin, asserting that it was an "experimental" program "not accompanied by any research or facts" and arguing that "students can't afford another 3 years of this experiment." She lamented that "The audit wasn't all I hoped it would be." You can expect to hear this as the major PCC talking point, since the results weren't what they hoped for. I didn't realize that Melvin had a doctorate in education and was so thoroughly familiar with the literature on pedagogy. Oh, wait. She wasn't.

"Co-teaching is not an experiment," said Costello-Shea. "It has been in place for the past 20 years, as have inclusion models. Especially with No Child Left Behind, districts with self-contained special education classrooms have been required to do just what Portsmouth has done in the past two years. Research has been performed over years. Research all shows that regular education students progress at higher rates because of being in co-taught classrooms." She added, by way of explanation, "We didn't talk about that because it's well known."

Superintendent Dr. Susan Lusi also rose to respond to Melvin's assertions. Seconding Costello-Shea, she noted, "It is new to us, but it is not experimental.

And then Lusi got to the nut of the issue. "In my time here, by my estimation, this community has spent $332,993 turning this system inside out looking at the data. That's the cost of the Tent meeting, the Caruolo proceedings, and this performance audit." Lusi then stated the obvious. "When we brought our budget to the Town Council, I told them that if I took all of Berkshire's recommendations, we would need another $221K. That's less than we spent over the last two years looking at the system."

So what has the PCC really accomplished? Sure, transparency is good. Sure, having a second opinion (and a third, and a fourth?) can be valuable. But we had two independent auditors, a Superior Court judge, and now a performance audit, and they all come to the same conclusion: the schools are generally well run and there is no waste or mismanagement of funds. How many times do we have to pay people to tell us the same thing before we're allowed to just spend the money on educating our kids?

There was, of course, a question about Elmhurst, and Dr. Lusi quoted from the engineering report which said "We are fine using the building. There is no evidence of structural distress." she said, adding that they did recommend keeping the area with the wall cracks locked. President Canario added, "There you have it, right from the source, school is not falling down."

And then Tailgunner Gleason got up to the mike to both claim that she was the person who proposed the audit, and, bizarrely, become the only member of the Council to attack the results. She said they made a "great error regarding nursing situation," and went on to criticize the thoroughness of the Berkshire's analysis. "What I see missing is numbers, fiscal information," she said. "I guess I was just looking for something different. Strictly from the Council point of view, I'm thinking fiscal analysis." Costello-Shea replied that they were logically focusing on performance and resources, but that they had reviewed all the financials, and as with other areas, if they found no problem or recommendation for improvement, there was no comment.

Councilor Len Katzman offered a minor correction. "Councilor Gleason said she proposed the audit, but in fact, Dennis Canario first proposed it when he was a Councilor in 2006, and he deserves some credit." (Canario got a round of applause.)

So Canario appropriately provided the wrap-up. Referring to the differing perspectives about education spending in town he said, "People will disagree on the color of the sky." In his experience, he said, "When you have two different sides, you bring in an outside person to mediate." He indicated that the report served this function, and now that the results were in, we could finally say "You know what? We're doing a good job. Portsmouth is a high-performing town."

A note sent from Portsmouth School Department Superintendent Susan Lusi reports reassuring results from the engineering report on the Elmhurst school:

Dear Members of the Portsmouth School Community:

Yesterday, we received the report on Elmhurst School from the structural engineer at Odeh Engineers, Inc. According to that report, we are fine to continue using the building as we always have, and there is no cause for concern regarding the structure.

The ProJo also has the story.

Portsmouth Library Board president Michael Mello presents funding request to the Town Council.

The exchange between Michael Mello of the Portsmouth Library and Town Council President Dennis Canario was typical of the groups that came before the Council last night, pleading their case for money in the 2008-09 budget, and most returning empty-handed, at least in this preliminary pass.

"We think the Council has lost sight of the fact that we do provide a service to all the citizens," said Mello. "We are the only library in Rhode Island that has not had an increase in aid in 3 years. We will lose $5K from state aid. We are now running 6 fundraisers with most funds going to operational costs. If you do not provide an increase in funding, we must resort to using our endowment. We appreciate the town is in financial difficulties, but we need support for our operational budget."

Council President Denis Canario was sympathetic but firm. "I can appreciate everything that was said," Canario noted, but went on to reject the assertion that the town had lost sight of the Library's needs, "I personally take exception to that. I was one of the biggest supporters of buying the land for the [new parking area next to the] library. This Council has serious challenges facing this town."

The bottom line: the Council, while they appreciate the plight of the library, denied the request for increased aid and could offer no more than flat funding, year-on-year, at $439,930, the largest chunk of civic support.

As Councilor Jim Seveney noted, "We're in a zero-sum game here. We're at the cap. I'm sorry to say that $13K is considered serious money, but in this environment, it is."

The rest of the civic support groups in the "A" list — those that provide essential, nonduplicated services specific to Portsmouth — were lucky to see flat funding. Portsmouth Action for Youth (which runs the after-school program at Hathaway and summer activities), an unquestionably valuable service to parents, got their $54K, but no increase, which, given rising costs that everyone is familiar with, is essentially a cut. "Some of the programs we wouldn't be able to run this year," said director Cybil Pacheco.

Same deal for the Portsmouth Arts Guild, the Portsmouth Historical Society, the Senior Citizens Center, and the Portsmouth Prevention Coalition. Flat funding. And these were the lucky ones.

All the "B" groups — organizations that had had other funding sources or that provided services that were not essential — were zeroed out on this first pass through the budget.

Councilor Jim Seveney moved to give $500 to the first group up, American Legion Post #18, in line with the token funding given to B groups last year, but Tailgunner Gleason wouldn't go along, saying she favored zeroing all the requests. "It's a very unfortunate situation but it's reality we can't ignore," said Gleason. "I'm hoping over the next two years this can all change for the better."

Is Ms. Gleason aware that the tax levy cap shrinks by a quarter point each year over the next two years? Is there some law of economics that only she understands? Evidently not, because Peter McIntyre jumped on the bandwagon.

"This is the first one in B," said McIntyre, adding that he did not want to proceed with giving token funding back to each one. "We are in a terrible bind financially. Maybe 2 or 3 years down the line we can look at some of these."

Seeing the sense of the Council, Seveney had no choice but to withdraw his motion, but he clearly wasn't happy. "I don't think we're hitting the priorities," he said, and moved to zero fund the American Legion.

And it continued that way: Red Cross: Zero. Anthony House bus trip: Zero. Boy Scouts: Zero. Child and Family Services: Zero.

East Bay Community Action Plan CEO Dennis Roy pleaded with the Council. "We delivered conservatively over $400K in services into Portsmouth in the last year," he said. "We want you to be part of that solution. I ask that you consider the work that we do."

Zero.

"Good luck," Roy muttered to the CEO of Newport County Mental Health as he approached the table. It didn't help. NCMH: Zero.

Newport County Womens' Resource Center, Samaritans, Visiting Nurse Services: Zero. Volunteer Center of Rhode Island: Zero. Youth Success: Zero.

All youth sports programs: Zero.

I'm reminded of the comment that Councilor Len Katzman made last year at this same meeting. He said, "When people say that they want less government — this is what less government looks like."

Dr. Numi Mitchell shows coyote packs on Aquidneck Island.

Shifting gears, Town Administrator Bob Driscoll introduced Dr. Numi Mitchell, the lead scientist on the Narragansett Bay Coyote Study to talk about the results of her team's study of the population on Aquidneck Island.

"Is it true they would chew their own leg off to escape from a trap?" Councilor Seveney asked. "I'd chew my leg off to get out of this meeting."

Dr. Mitchell reviewed some of the background — coyotes only came to Aquidneck Island about a dozen years ago, they are opportunistic omnivores, they are highly territorial, and they naturally control their population based on the availability of food. The study used GPS radio collars to track 17 coyotes in the 10 packs that exist on the island.

It was clear, said Mitchell, that they were finding food plentiful. "Whenever they are roadkill," she said, describing their lush fur, "They look like they lived on a diet of Nacho Supreme." And they were quick to learn the location of human-provided augmentations to their diet — "subsidies," in coyote-study jargon. Mitchell, showed a spike of visits to an area where winter kills from a lamb farm were stored. "One person feeding coyotes will train the entire family," she said.

But there was good news. Since they are territorial and naturally match population to food supply, a natural control program is cheap and feasible. "When you stop subsidizing coyotes, they defend a larger area. Decrease subsidies, you'll see a decrease in population." The next step she proposed was to work with the Council to develop wildlife feeding ordinances which would prevent inadvertent (or intentional) feeding.

Now I'm sure it was unintentional that Dr. Mitchell's presentation happened to fall on the civic support night, but it is hard to mistake the lesson. In nature, only the fittest survive, and subsidizing a pack only leads to an excess of coyotes. But what about Cub Scout packs? Or Samaritans? Are we really just animals, driven only by the laws of physics and biology, efferent agents of Nature red in tooth and claw?

This is what the conservatives would have us believe. The act of "giving" money to organizations like the Visiting Nurses only promotes sloth and excess, sleek coyotes feeding at the public trough, rooting through the dumpster at Burger King instead of fighting and killing for their supper.

Is this really who we are as humans? Is this really who we are as a community?

Is this the Portsmouth you want?