Tom Sgouros: Short Takes

Tom Sgouros: Short Takes

International Coastal Cleanup

Every year in the fall, the International Coastal Cleanup does what it can to pick up trash all along the shore. This year is no different and next Saturday, September 17, from 9-12, the state chapter of the Audubon Society will host dozens of places around the state where you can pitch in for a few hours and make Narragansett Bay a little cleaner. I'm the beach captain in Wickford Harbor, and anyone who would like to join me there is welcome (bring a boat if you can), but there are plenty more around the state. Click here for more information and to find a cleanup site near you.

Food

An important issue I don't get to write that much about is food. The truth is that there is little or nothing resembling a real food and agricultural policy in our state. Farms get turned into housing developments with nary a whimper, and land that should be long-term productive goes to someone's short-term profit instead. Our farmland is the most expensive in the country, and that is an unsupportable burden for our farmers, and should be a concern for anyone who eats.

The fact is that New England is one of the few places in our nation where good food can be grown without irrigation, and that should make it a national treasure. (Irrigation can certainly make things better here, but a farm can hope to get through a year without it.) But Rhode Island land isn't flat enough or big enough to support the industrial agriculture that is now the norm, and so it's been passed over, and most of our food is grown in the most chemical-and-energy-intensive way possible. In the long term, this is good neither for us nor our planet.

GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST

This is not news for many people, but that's only because local food has recently become a cause du jour. But Rhode Island does have some farsighted activists who recognized this reality three decades ago, and that's when they founded the Southside Community Land Trust. SCLT started just as a community garden, but it's become much more, with a bigger farm out in Cranston, and a resource center for would-be urban farmers, and more.
This Thursday SCLT will celebrate their 30th anniversary at a harvest celebration fundraiser. There will be fresh goods from the SCLT farmers, as well as contributions from Al Forno, CAV, Chez Pascal, Cook and Brown, Edgewood Café, Friendship Café, Genesis Center, Julian’s, La Laiterie, Local 121, New Rivers, Nicks on Broadway, Pho Paradise, El Rancho Grande, and Sunnyside Café and desserts from Sin Cupcakes and Cold Fusion Gelato. So go support a great cause, but also go because the food will be great!

Click here for more information.

Municipal Investments

Some good news from the Treasurer's office: The state has established an investment pool for municipalities. Cities and towns currently keep their cash balances in local banks and that's well and good, but banks aren't giving much in the way of interest these days. Pooling the resources of our cities and towns is a better way, and will provide better returns, something the cities and towns sorely need.

Unfortunately, what they also need is trust, and it's not perfectly clear to me why any of the cities and towns should trust the state with their money just now. There is some bad history here. For one thing, a similar pool was established in the 1980's as a private money-market fund, and while facing some pressure in the early 90's, it went quite suddenly belly-up when Treasurer Anthony Solomon abruptly pulled all the state's money out. Several cities and towns were left holding the bag, though the state had no losses. The structure of the current arrangement won't allow the same irresponsibility, but it's not free of risk to the cities and towns, either, largely because of the state's attitude towards its municipalities.

There's a decent comparison to the cities and towns that participate in the state pension system. The deal here is that the towns retain the responsibility for the funds, but they are invested and the liabilities are managed by the state retirement system. This is mostly a good deal for the cities and towns, but it has provided the state with more financial leverage over the cities and towns than it would have otherwise. To put it mildly, it isn't screamingly obvious that this leverage is always used to the municipalities' advantage.

Central Falls' decline has shown us more clearly than words ever could that the cities and towns are essentially on their own financially. If you imagine that Central Falls' problems are those of an unruly child, then this kind of discipline is all to the good. That is, of course, the consensus view at the state house. But the consensus view is wrong, and the truth is that Central Falls is much more a victim, of our state's policy of de-urbanization and de-industrialization. Its plight was made worse by poor management, but its bed was made by other forces far larger than the city, something that is true of all the towns in the state.

Tom Sgouros is the editor of the Rhode Island Policy Reporter, at whatcheer.net and the author of "Ten Things You Don't Know About Rhode Island." Contact him at [email protected].
 

If you valued this article, please LIKE GoLocalProv.com on Facebook by clicking HERE.