The Narragansett Town Council held off on taking action Monday night on a resolution seeking the General Assembly’s authorization to ask voters whether to approve the issuance of $3 million in bonds for affordable housing development in the town.
The council failed to take a vote after three councilors, Ewa Dzwierzynski, Jill Lawler, and Steven Ferrandi, raised concerns about the amount of review that had gone into the process of bringing the proposal forward.
Lawler and Ferrandi both had questions about what the bond referendum, if approved by voters in November, would mean for town finances.
“I would love to be able to do something with affordable housing,” Lawler said. “We just don’t know what the impact would be for the town. … We need to understand what it is we are voting for before we put it to a question on the ballot.”
Under draft legislation included on Monday’s agenda, the money raised from the sale of the bonds could be used to invest in the town’s affordable housing trust fund; acquire land to lease to non-profits and public entities for affordable housing; issue grants for home purchases; and to acquire, preserve or develop affordable housing, among other expenditures.
Council President Dzwierzynski, who signaled support for the idea of an affordable housing bond referendum, said she wanted to hold a work session on the proposal first and criticized the way Councilor Susan Cicilline-Buonanno had brought the resolution to the council.
“You brought it as an item without getting approval to work with legal counsel, so the process wasn’t followed,” Dzwierzynski told Cicilline-Buonanno, who is the sister of former U.S. Rep. David Cicilline.
“When we engage with legal counsel, we need the approval of the council,” Dzwierzynski said. “I know Councilor Cicilline-Buonanno comes from a family of lawyers, so we know that lawyers do not work for free.”
“I don’t need a lecture on how I need to do things,” Cicilline-Buonanno said, as she made a motion to continue the item to a later meeting, which passed unanimously, 5-0.
During discussions, Councilor Deborah Kopech also expressed support for sending the referendum request to the General Assembly.
The decision to continue the resolution to a later meeting came after hearing public comment overwhelmingly in support of the resolution.
“We want to keep families in the town. We want to see our small businesses thrive, and solving the housing crisis is going to do this,” Nick Edwards of the Narragansett Affordable Housing Collaborative Trust said during the time for public comment. “If not now, when?”
When it became apparent that the town council would not approve the resolution on the bond referendum, Edwards shouted from the audience that the voters should decide the issue.
“And we will let them decide,” Dzwierzynski said. “Mr. Edwards, don’t be concerned because I’m on board with it.”
In March, a report commissioned by the town found that Narragansett’s housing crisis is largely driven by demand for rental units from college students at the University of Rhode Island, higher incomes among residents, and the popularity of short-term summer rentals at the expense of year-round housing.
The study done by the group Crane Associates recommended implementing tax incentives to encourage property owners to convert vacation rentals into year-round housing, making zoning changes to help develop underutilized areas of town, and entering discussions with URI and a developer about building housing that could be rented to students and full-time residents at a subsidized rate.
On the subject of housing, Narragansett has also drawn the ire of Rhode Island House Speaker Joseph Shekarchi because of the town’s resistance to elements of housing legislation passed into law last year to encourage homebuilding.
“They just don’t like any housing in Narragansett,” Shekarchi said in an interview last year. “They’ve made it harder on everybody.”
Officials in Narragansett and other towns have said the changes favor developers while taking control away from municipalities.
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