The North Kingstown Town Council convened on Monday, December 11, 2023, at 7:00 PM in the Town Hall Council Chambers. The meeting included a joint pre-budget consultation with the School Committee, routine business, reports from the Town Manager, and discussion on several town initiatives. The session lasted approximately two hours, covering a wide range of topics from schools and infrastructure to legal settlements and community events.
General Laws 42-46-6C. Notice of this meeting is a post on the Secretary of State's website. I'd ask that we all stand and salute the flag. Congratulations. Thank you, everybody. At the end of every sports season, I uh try to um comment and compliment our teams on their accomplishments. Um for the high school teams rather. But uh there are other accomplishments our kids do that we're also very proud of. Um I've been in touch with the high school, and I've been told that 37 students accept were accepted into the All State Music Ensembles, which I think is really impressive. Six uh students were ranked three in the state, five students ranked uh second in the state, and another five students were ranked number uh first in the state. So I think that's great news. Good job uh school committee. I know Mr. Case, you have a background in music, so uh maybe they follow they followed your lead. So anyways, uh moving on. We have three people who signed up for public comment. Uh the first person is George Lundquist. If you could go over there so the people at home would hear you, we ask you to keep your comments three minutes, and uh we have a little timer here that uh uh President Pro Tem uh Page monitors. So if you can say name and address and uh and make your comments for the court comment uh you're welcome, sir. Next is Nolene Thompson. Ms. Thompson. Is this on? It is, we can hear you. Um may want to push it down a little bit for yourself. There you go. Yeah. Um my name is Noeline Thompson, 5C Grassway, North Kingstown. Um there's a fairly long list of qualifications for the ideal person to replace Jenny Hoskins on the North Kingstown School Committee. Um I'd like to suggest two that I think are really critical. Not that the others aren't important, but you'll probably hear about them and they're probably obvious. But there are two that matter to me. The first is that I think uh we need someone who doesn't represent a particular side or political bias. The current school committee is already populated by some very strong and sometimes divergent thinking people. School committee meetings already seem stressful enough. This group would benefit from a new member who would listen to different sides of an issue, keep bringing discussions back to the values and mission of the group, and work to help the group hear and really learn from each other. The second criteria is someone who is genuinely concerned about the success of the school committee itself. After all this town and the school department has been through over the past few years, because of the athletic department scandal and the failed bond initiative of this past fall. The school committee itself, I think needs to rebuild and establish credibility with the town. I believe developing the right set of plans and successfully getting a bond passed to build a new middle school will help this to happen. So the new school committee member, I believe, needs to be able to establish trust and a decent working relationship with the existing school committee and genuinely want to help the committee succeed with the next bond proposal. So I'm strongly suggesting that the new member not be a social media personality or representative of some particular special interest group, especially one that has already taken a strong public stance against a new middle school. Politics are going to get into high gear soon enough with the upcoming election next year. Until then, I think it would be wonderful if the current school committee were able to focus on the crucial issues already facing them and not have to spend the majority of its time dealing with people who are there to build up their social media presence and work on their own political agenda. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Ed, in perfect timing. Mr. Anne Andrews.