Date: October 30, 2023 (Monday) at 7:00 PM
The Town Council met to address a consent agenda, public comments, a presentation on automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) systems, a review of the Wickford Art Festival location, reports from the Town Manager and Finance Director, and approvals of aquaculture expansion applications. The meeting included significant discussion on public notice for coastal projects and the future of the art festival.
Madam Clerk, I have seven o'clock. Do you have seven o'clock? Seven o'clock. Good evening, and welcome to the people's house in North Kingstown I'd like to call this meeting to order. Uh pursuant to Rhode Island General Laws 42-46-6C. Notices meeting has been posted on the Secretary of State's website. I'd like to uh join us with a salute to the flag, but afterwards I'd ask that we take a moment of silence in memory of Sarah Roach. Um just learned of her passing. She lives in town on Anquatucket Road, has two daughters and uh family lives in town. Um it's very, very sad. Obviously, uh uh keeping your thoughts and prayers, all the folks in um in the Gaza Strip, uh both Palestinian and Israeli and quite frankly foreigners who are um who have passed. So thank you. Anyways. Undergone as well. Thank you, everybody. Uh item four on our agenda is public comment. Uh so far we have three people who have signed up. The first person is Sarah Carter. So Sarah, if you can go over there, there's the microphone and uh state your name and address for the record. And we ask you keep your comments to three minutes. Um good evening, everybody. My name is Sarah Carter. I live at 195 Crowfield in Saunderstown, which is just a little bit north of the uh Jamestown Bridge. And I live in a community of uh seven homes and adjacent to it uh called Crowfield, and an adj and our next uh north northward community is called Plantation Lane. And we are uh uh uh we own the land down to the beach. And um I'm coming I came here today because uh there was a flyer left in my mailbox about the oyster farms that are being that exist uh off of the Rome Point conservation land. And um I now know because I spoke with the gentleman from the coastal resources, I understand better what was uh the flyer was relating to, and I understand that there's going to be there's a proposed additions to these oyster farms, but they're within the perimeter of what we already see. So the concern that uh I'm here to talk to you about and um I speak with the uh permission of my my fellow neighbors, it's a big family compound, so we all know each other very, very well, and um I can produce a document with um names, addresses, and uh try to get the ones from plantation lane as well if that's useful to the council. But basically we have two concerns. One is that we never received any notice until this flyer was stuck in our mailboxes about the additions to the oyster farms. And from my my home, I can see the oyster farms and out on the bay. So we wanted to speak to you about hoping to be able to have notice of anything further out on the water, oyster farming or some other kind of uh commercial endeavors that might take place off of our beach so that we would have an opportunity to respond. We just felt that we got lucky that this flyer was stuck in the mailbox. Um the second thing that we're concerned about is having a commercial a commercial uh endeavor off of directly in front if it were to expand directly in front of our beach, our moorings. Um, and uh that that we're a residential community and we hope to not have commercial activity directly in front of our homes. So that's what I wanted to get on the record with you folks in the council and hope that this is something that we could uh have notice and hopefully not have additions to right in our front yard. Thank you. Thank you. Um how many residents do you estimate you're speaking for? On Crowfield Road, there are seven homes, which probably represents about well, with the children and everything, 40 people. So this will be an agenda item uh it's later on our agenda. Uh you may want to also reach out to uh Senator DiMario and Representative Craven. Uh express your concerns to them. Okay. Okay. Um Senator Mario in particular, she has a pretty lengthy coastline for she represents a pretty so I think this would impact uh a number of her constituents, and I would think that she would have a real interest in this. And she's they're both very responsive. So thank you very much. And I thank you for the folks who responded to me when I reached out to you. Thank you very much.