Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
The North Kingstown Town Council met on Monday, September 28, 2026, at 7:00 PM in the Town Hall Council Chambers. The meeting covered updates on the Bitumar odor issue in West Davisville, Quonset Development Corporation (QDC) activities, a continued first reading of an ordinance to ban retail pet sales, and approval of the Wickford Elementary School sale. The agenda was reordered to place reports before public comment, allowing residents to hear new information before speaking.
Good evening. Let's call this meeting to order from Monday, September 28th, 2026, North Kingston Town Council in the People's House in North Kingstown. Pursuant to Rhode Island General Laws 42, 46-6C. Notice of this meeting has been posted on the Secretary of State's website. Since we last met, North Kingstown lost an angel and mom and a great person. Renee Kenyon, 55 years old, fortunewoods drive, mother of two, and great spouse to John. I'd ask after we salute to the flag as we give a moment of silence in Renee's honor. Thank you. Thank you. So we have a little bit of a different format tonight, and I would like to make a couple of comments about it. For the most part, we have stay stuck to that format. However, in certain circumstances, we have modified that at public count at public town council meetings when there's been new information. Excuse me, everybody, given to the public at the meeting. But the person, the constituent point this out, in light of what is happening, particularly at Quonset, uh there is a lot of new information in reports that they may want to comment on. So after some reflection, I thought that we would uh on a trial basis put the reports first before public comment, and that way the public would have an opportunity to hear what the reports say and comment uh on any on any agenda item or those uh well the report, sorry. So uh with that, um we're gonna go to reports first, and I'd ask the town manager to start us off. Thanks, Ralph. Thank you, Mr. President. So School Department Bond projects, uh Councilperson Kim Page gave a detailed and thorough update on the new Wickford Middle School project and the various school capital improvement projects at our last council meeting. The next meeting of the building advisory subcommittee is this Wednesday evening at 5 30. In addition, members of my administration and I will be scheduling a meeting with members of the middle school construction team to discuss some of their on-site irrigation plans. I will provide a further update on the School Department Bond projects after these meetings at our October town council meeting. As far as the public safety bond projects, we had our weekly internal uh meeting this past Wednesday, and site work will begin in the new public safety complex on our Quantet property this week. The necessary permits have been approved and issued. RICON will be mobilizing equipment, stripping the topsoil, installing soil erosion controls, potentially fencing the site, and demolishing existing utilities over this and then the next couple of weeks. We have filed a variance appeal with the State Building Code from the renewable from the renewable energy systems requirement. The proposed public safety complex is all electric and will be serviced by our renewable uh energy metering agreement. As a result, any requirement for on-site or off-site renewable energy systems would be redundant, would provide us with power that we would not use, and actually would impose an unnecessary financial hardship. So we have filed an appeal with the State Building Code. An update in the flock cameras, as we know, there was a motion and direction enacted by the Town Council at their August 17th Town Council meeting. The motion had six parts, and as authorized by the town council, I wanted to go over each of the six parts here this evening. So part one required the town to immediately cancel any and all existing contracts with automated license plate readers or flock vendors. Flock has been notified that we will not be renewing our contract and that we wish to proceed under the terms of the contract to cancel and terminate the remaining three months of our existing contract. Flock has agreed because we have already paid them through the end of November, so Part 1 has been adhered to. Part 2 required that no new contracts for these ALPR systems be entered into by the town without the express permission of the town council. This has also been complied with. Part three required that all installed flock cameras be immediately disabled and made non-operational. This has been complied with as the North Kingstown Police Department's access to all flock cameras in town have been disabled, and we have asked the vendor to remove all cameras. Part 4 required that flock cameras be permanently removed from their installed locations. As I just mentioned, all cameras have been disabled, and we have asked the vendor to remove all cameras. We don't have any reason to believe that this won't be complied with, and our expectations are that the vendor will have the flock cameras removed within the next thirty days. Part 5 has asked that flock cameras operated by the Rhode Island State Police be permanently removed from locations within the town of North Kingstow. At this point, it is our understanding that the Rhode Island State Police have one flock camera in the town on a State Road at West Allenton.