The North Kingstown Town Council met on Monday, January 23, 2023, at 6:30 PM in the Town Hall Council Chambers. The meeting included discussion of legislative priorities with the state delegation, receipt of a historical painting donation, a presentation on renovating the municipal office building, public hearings on liquor license renewals, approval of consent agenda items, and a detailed discussion on the whistleblower ordinance.
Okay, are we all set, uh Madam Clerk? Okay. Sorry for being late, everybody. We are on, thank you. I'd like to call this meeting to order for Monday, January 23rd, 2023. Uh pursuant to Rowan Laws General 42-46C. Notice of this meeting has been uh posted, excuse me, on the Secretary of State's website. I'd ask everyone to stand and join with a salute to the flag. Thanks. Is everyone's microphone on? Madam Clerk, do you have the list of who signed up? Public comment. Town Sergeant. Okay, thank you. While he's doing that, I'll take the liberty to make a couple comments. Um this past spring, I had the opportunity to participate in a national study about violence and politics by the University of Illinois at Chicago. The folk the focus, the study focused on negative, hostile, menacing, uh, and menacing communications between constituents and public officials. It concluded that the constant personal and negative discourse fuels threats and abuse. Experts had warned according to the article that this may get worse. Unfortunately, this is a trend that has hit North Kingstown. Two thousand nineteen resident made a post uh social media stating that the members of the town council deserve to be covered in stones or better still hanged in the village center. Recently, school committee received a death threat via email. Where are you on the political spectrum? Death threats are unacceptable. We have a great community, quality of life is superb. Overall, North Kingstown is a great place to live. And in fact, many times we get issues wrong. However, none of us deserve death threats. So let's work together to make our community better, not tear it down, not pure pu not tear people down, not have death threats. We're better than that. With that, I'll take uh public comment. Thank you. First person to speak a public comment is Mr. George Brennan, two uh unrelated topics. I'd like to congratulate uh the planning department, uh Ralph Mollis and his team, and uh I have a feeling uh the new economic development uh person, Ben uh had a big hand in having seventeen businesses decorated on the post road. Um this program has been in effect for three or four years now with very low and slow participation. Uh obviously it's difficult when you have uh owner operators or you have absentee landlords or people who are just renting buildings, they don't really get on board a lot of times because you have too many lays to go through. But I do want to congratulate you, Ralph and and Ben, for doing an excellent job in getting 17 businesses and I expect 17 more next year. Uh secondly, uh I'd like to uh uh stand in support of item number 23. Uh we have uh the work for the advisory committee, which I am the vice chair of um and we have a person up uh nominated uh for membership, uh Suzanne Mancini. Uh I've known Suzanne for six years in uh her professionalism and her dedication to the village and her business and the community is uh unbelievably strong, and I recommend that we appoint her to that position. Thank you very much. Thank you, George. Um Mr. Dick Welch. Good evening and thank you. Um I want to tell you that uh I myself and I'm sure other people in this room in this town uh look to the town council as being the head of our town government. And as such, they were responsible for more than just the town uh and the municipality government itself. They also need to be responsible for and oversee other departments in the town, and one of them being the school department. The situation that came to light uh on the uh the meeting about the superintendent, I felt and others feel as an embarrassment to this town.