The North Kingstown Town Council met on April 15, 2025, to address a range of routine and special business items, including the appointment of a new Building Official, updates on school bond projects and the public safety complex, and public comments on water supply, school transparency, and parade funding. Several consent agenda items were pulled for discussion, and the council approved most items after debate.
Our property, so that's why I say it's a learning land purchase slash land swap. We're doing some geotechnical engineering on it right now to make sure that the land is buildable. Um we've done a phase one. We may have to do a phase two. Once we've done that, I'll be back before the council at a public meeting asking for approval for the purchase slash swap of that land. Okay. Thank you. I guess there will be one follow-up question and then I'll sit down. Um I I'm thinking of what the school is going through and having public meetings and what have you. How come there isn't anything similar for the safety complex? It's but because right now we feel that we're more productive in a workshop type of session. Um there are the engineering, it's virtual, there are a lot of virtual attendees. There's the engineering firm, the architect firm, not gonna bore you with everyone. Um there's a specialty firm that uh specializes in public safety complexes. Um our former fire chief, our current fire chief, members of the police department, finance legal myself. So it's a big team. Um handling more like a workshop, just trying to get this project off the ground. Uh, if there's any questions at all, please let me know. I'll be glad to try to give updates every meeting. No, that's not answering your question, but please let me know. I'm more than happy to give as much information as possible. But they're in the morning. Um that doesn't mean that you couldn't attend, they're in the morning, they're workshops in um now that you brought it up. Maybe we could have a couple of public meetings to just bring together what we're doing at in the evening, but we're meeting every single week right now because time is of the essence. So I again if there's any questions you have, let me know, and I'll take your question. Um I think it's a legitimate question, and maybe we can find a way to make it uh at least have a public meeting to talk about a recap of what we've done and get some questions, public comment, then go back into workshop. So I think that's a a good point. Okay. I would also say that I think that the uh building subcommittees, that's by law, that's by state law. That's the same. That is correct. That is correct. So thank you. Uh Mr. Kurt Fisher. Kurt Fisher, one of the four of Phillips Street. I just want to bring up to the town council and the public a situation that I don't think many people are aware of, and that is the precarious water supply that we have. Because we are headed for serious problems this summer if we have a very dry summer. Because I took over public works, town engineered public works in the 70s, and I was given a situation that had occurred because of overpumping of our town water wells. And I suspect that's happened again in the past because the car pond water wells are basically useless once again. Because my predecessor earlier at that car pond well would pump maybe a minute and a half too many gallons a day. They pumped it too much during a drought and destroyed the well. And so my point to bring this up is we need to somehow address and support the water department and coming up with more supplies, because we are just about as bad of supply situations as I was confronted with back in the 70s. Where we've overpumped in the past 30, 40 years, whatever it is. I can't think that fast. If you overpump them. And also I want to include we do need to take pass on the town of Jamestown, which we discussed some, because we cannot afford to be bowing them out, so we don't have to spend money on increasing their water supply. We've bailed them out a couple two or three times some number of years ago. But I don't think they've done anything to solve their problems. And there's you know, there's something else I want to mention too, but I can't think of it off the top of my head.