The Cranston City Council met on April 20, 2026, to conduct a wide range of business including citations, resolutions, committee reports, public comments, appointments, and a lengthy discussion on the city's budget crisis and tax levy cap. The meeting also included an executive session regarding legal bills.
Call this meeting to order at this time, and I ask the clerk to please call the roll. Consul McGraziano, present. Conservative. Present. Present. Consulman Vaziri, present. Present. Here. Um, at this time I'm gonna request that the young men from Boy Scout Troop Sixty Six come on up here in the front so they can lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance this evening. And I ask everybody in the audience to please rise for Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic States. Thank you, gentlemen. Our first item of business this evening um would be acknowledgments, commendations, and citations, and our first citation will be a congratulation citation. And I'm gonna step down here. I'm gonna ask the turn attorney uh Marcel to excuse me a second. Uh thank you, Council President, members of the council, Nick Lima, registrar director of elections for the board of canvassers. So we're honoring here uh tonight uh the council's honoring an issue a citation to uh four uh students, I think three three could make it tonight, um, who are being honored for their civics engagement service to our city through something that has never been done before in Rhode Island, but is done in nearly every other state in the country. Um this is one of the few areas, I think in elections administration where we've been behind the eight ball on, and that is the creation of I voted stickers uh that celebrate the city of Cranston and also involve our our local students. So we partnered with Cranston Public Schools about a year ago in order to start a I voted sticker contest in which art students uh in the schools would have the opportunity to design stickers that celebrate civics engagement in Cranston. So we won't have the same old I vote sticker from the state every single year. We'll still have that sticker by the way. But for the first time ever in any Rhode Island city or town in the 2026 elections, we're going to have these new stickers. Uh some of the contest roles were they couldn't be AI generated. They couldn't have uh any businesses or anything on there. So sorry, Dells Lemonade, there's no Dell's Lemonade I vote a sticker. Um they had to celebrate uh the something about the city of Cranston. Uh so we have amazing our work, amazing designs. There were ten finalists, the board of camisters considered, and these uh four students uh were all selected for their designs that are going to be honored here. And uh, Council President, I just want to thank you and the council for taking a few moments out of your agenda to recognize them. Thank you, Mr. Lima. Those of you who know me know I'm a teacher in my other life, and one of the subjects I do teach is law and government and civics. So I can emphasize probably hopefully as well as Mr. Lima's eloquently, the importance of civics education, important of people be involved in their in their government and the proceedings. So not to belabor the point, the resolution uh reads as follows the Cranston City Council. Let it be known that the Cranston City Council hereby issues. And this is signed uh by all the members of the city council. Um just congratulations to you. And the first citation would go to uh Julia Ragar. Okay. Uh Ray Pedagog. Yeah, we're gonna uh Lex Lexi Montebon. And uh Samantha De Cesre. And perhaps I could ask the members of the school committee to come up with that education. So I can do it at once. We have one that we actually have more citations. That's okay. So the mayor also has citations for the same students to read. This is to certify and make known unto all whom these present shall come that Mayor Kenneth J. Hopkins hereby issues a citation too, and all the students that were just presented will get one in honor of your exceptional creativity, artistic talent, and dedication to civic engagement demonstrated through your design of the new i voted sticker selected by the board of canvassers for use in the city of Cranston's 2026 elections.