Cicilline wants to regionalize police, fire departments
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Cicilline Wants To Regionalize Police, Fire
Providence's mayor says it's time for the state to take a
NBC 10
Providence Mayor David Cicilline said during a taping of “10 News Conference” that he would like to regionalize police, fire and public works districts in seven cities and towns in Providence County.
CRANSTON, R.I.—Providence Mayor David Cicilline said Friday during a taping of “10 News Conference” that he wants to create metropolitan police, fire and public works districts.
“I’m already drafting three pieces of legislation. I will be prefiling before the end of the year that will authorize the seven cities and towns of Providence County to create a metropolitan police district, a metropolitan fire district and a metropolitan public works district,“ Cicilline said.
Providence, East Providence, North Providence, Cranston, Pawtucket, Central Falls and Johnston would be included in his plan.
Cicilline said the mayors of the surrounding communities support a regionalized approach but that union contracts and Rhode Island’s parochialism stand in the way.
“It will be our responsibility as leaders of these communities to negotiate what those metro districts will look like,“ he said.
Talk of regionalizing municipal services is gaining momentum in Rhode Island after cities and towns lost state revenue sharing dollars because of massive state deficits.
Cicilline said it’s time for Rhode Island to take a “county” approach to local governing just as many cities and towns have done across the country.
“There are counties all over the country that are bigger than Providence County that run their police and fire and do it well,“ he said.
The Providence police union said it hasn’t heard a thing about the mayor’s plan and several mayors told NBC 10 they haven’t seen the proposed legislation.
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Reader Reactions
very large budget deficits and rapid accumulation of public debt – is unsustainable.
jim and bill that was a shame it was a love feast ,come on you let davey boy go on telling his lies about the fire dept come on you know those numbers he said where lies ,no rebut from you guys is a shame…....
smd6685: You are correct with your comment about the schools/teachers eat up most of the budgets. In fact, in the city of Warwick .80 cents of every dollar that comes in from property taxes goes directly to the school budget…no doubt towards teachers salaries and benefits. Mayor Avedisian in that city is incompetent to make this happen. Taxes have nowhere to go, but up. In Cranston, .55 cents for every dollar goes towards the school budget. It goes on and on and on. The teachers control the property taxes in this state. The NEA is more powerful than the Teamsters, Laborers, and Longshoreman Unions combined.
I give a lot of credit to East Providence School dep’t for drawing a line in the sand…..thank you Anthony Carcieri. It’s nice to see some backbone left in the state. Run for GOVERNOR…..PLEASE!!!
I doubt that Cicilline would ber put in charge of the expanded department. He, as mayor of one of the communities, would probably be one of the board of supervisors of the department—but not in total charge. The other communities would also have their supervisor to speak for them, their input and their concerns taken into account.
That is the only way something like this could be implemented, anyway.
While there may be some merit to this, I think the savings will not be what everyone expects. Contrary to what many people believe,Police and Fire departments typically make up a small portion of municipal budgets. Command staff will be the only areas of savings and possibly by eliminating a few police/fire stations. If you really want to save money by regionalizing, look at the schools. School departments eat up the majority of budgets and most of that money goes to salaries and benefits. By reducing and consolidating administative staff among many other school services, the savings would be monumental and immediate. Future savings would come from building larger schools which would allow for sale of old buildings and lower maintainence costs.
The idea of regionalization is overdue and necessary, but the idea of Cicilline being in charge makes my skin crawl. His administration is completely corrupt (the city agencies seem to take pride in abusing the city taxpayers) and otherwise wasteful and inefficient. Also disturbing are the Providence city policies like the refusal to cooperate with federal law enforcement officials on immigration issues—would the region become like the disgraceful purported “sanctuary city” for illegals that Providence is? One is judged by the company they keep: Cicilline’s two former law partners are in jail for outrageous illegal behavior, none of which behavior Cicilline has ever criticized. His father was involved in the alleged Cadillac Lounge $100K liquor license bribe scandal. Get rid of Cicilline first, then put regionalization in place quickly.
This is the first idea out of a politician in a long time THAT MAKES SENSE! All too often the efforts of these separate departments are duplicated—and look at the duplicated salaries of the people in charge of those departments!
I can only see one thing that will really frost the buns of some of those in charge—they’ll either have to take a demotion—or they will be out on their backsides.
I agree with the comment “Get it done!“
39 cities & towns in RI…what a joke!!! The taxpayers are figuring it out finally…just call your ffiends in FLORIDA and ask them why they only pay $1000-1500 a year in property taxes? ANSWER: 1 fire district—1 police district…1 school district…the UNION GOOMBAHS can’t steel the money, and by the way they have better technologies and their roads and infrastructure is FAR BETTER than ours. MORE WITH LESS!!
Here’s the deal folks….RHODE ISLAND is now the WORST state in the country for providing a positive business climate, NO BUSINESS=NO JOBS; NO JOBS=HIGH UNEMPLOYMENT; if we do not cut back and regionalize ALL public services (including education), it means HIGHER TAXES; and DO NOT rule this out with an incompetent GENERAL ASSEMBLY,,,they will at least try this option. Do you want to pay higher taxes? Watch your kids leave the state to find employment?
There are about 1 Million people in the STATE of RI….39 different govt’s and about 1 Million people in ORLANDO, FL…...ONE GOVT System. Do you get it….we need to cut back, and centralize ALL of our functions.
This is going to be a HUGE fight with the UNIONS…..stay strong, and stay tough….Good Luck Mayor Dave….you are on to something BIG…..this alone will assure you get RE-ELECTED!!! You have nothing else going for yourself. Have your staff call some other states where it is working and present this to the people. They will get it. The UNIONS cannot and will not go on TV and tell the folks this is a bad idea because IT makes sense. You can’t make a reasonable argument against this when you have examples of it working elsewhere!!!
Im for this. I have a hx of firefighters in my family. Providence should be left alone. Nothing needs to merge with PFD. All you people against this, explain to me why the F we need 39 cities and towns!!? All with separate fire depts!? Its all about greasing palms. For example Coventry really needs 5 individual fire departments are we serious! That means 5 different chiefs and all the boys he needs…. come on wasted money. This state should be brokendown into sections. For example. Merge that dump aka as central falls because they only have 1 station a and they are 1 square mile. Guess what… now your part of pawtucket. W. warwick, now your warwick. johnston, cranston, n providence, all 1. This state is a mess. I’m done
The unions in RI will never let this happen….If the Mayor really wants to save money hen Privatize instead of regionalize.
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