I wish I’d made it to more of these sessions — and Tuesday night’s meeting, the only one I was at, devolved into a free-for-all just after I arrived. The (almost) consensus seems that residences don’t make much sense on the waterfront, and I tend to agree with this. Residences can be built anywhere, while water-dependent industry and public uses can, by definition, only be built on the water. And people in high-end condos are likely to agitate against industry and public use immediately adjacent to their ritzy digs. A mixed-use zone that disallows residences strikes me as a reasonable compromise between the competing factions.

Part of the problem with this dynamic, and many analogues, is that the city’s interests don’t clearly align with those of the state: While the ‘ working waterfront‘ provides thousands of jobs (once spin-off is accounted for) the city doesn’t seen any direct money from sales or income taxes there — all of that revenue goes to the state. If the Providence’s coffers saw a direct cut of the economic activity that takes place within the city’s borders, it’d have a much greater incentive to encourage the development of industry.

Anyway, here’s Dan’s take on it:

PROVIDENCE — The four-day symposium to debate the future of the Providence waterfront ended last night with one clear feeling voiced by most of the 200 participants: residences do not belong along the waterfront.

At the same time, there was some acknowledgement that a mixed-use zone is possible on the Allens Avenue waterfront, replacing the current industrial zoning. The question is how to accomplish that.

Mayor David N. Cicilline, who supports mixed-use zoning on the waterfront, convened the charette to assess whether the current zoning should be changed as the city rewrites its Comprehensive Plan, the backbone of its zoning and planning law.

A new documentary, about the RI budget predicament:

Here’s Working RI’s new radio spot on the budget crisis.

There’s at least one class of Rhode Islanders that’s not touched by the austerity measures being pushed through the State House.

The R.I. state seal consists of two key design elements: an anchor, that heavy thing you throw overboard in a last desperate attempt to stabilize a foundering ship; and the word ‘Hope’, as in “I hope there’s someone at the helm who knows what the hell he’s doing before we run this thing onto the rocks”. The cover story of yesterday’s ProJo reveals how carefully the Governor is spending taxpayer money in his administration while asking others to tighten their belts. Amanda Milkovits (complete disclosure, she’s a friend) does a masterful job of explaining just how Rhode Island’s adjutant general, Maj. Gen. Robert T. Bray seems to be collecting paychecks from both the state and federal governments for a job he basically sucks at when he even bothers to show up. Remember this?

STATE RECORDS show that Bray has taken only one sick day through the end of 2007. It was Dec. 13, the day a snowstorm crippled Rhode Island and left 100 Providence schoolchildren stranded on buses for hours. The outcry over the poor response prompted Governor Carcieri, who was in Iraq at the time, to say Bray should have taken the lead in communications. Asked about his whereabouts during the storm, Bray said, “I was in an advisory role.” He did not say he had called in sick. That was revealed later by Robert J. Warren, the state EMA’s executive director, whom Carcieri and Bray fired on Dec. 18.

After the snowstorm, Carcieri said he wanted Bray to lead the state’s response to an emergency when the governor is away.

The response from the RI National Guard for various documents pursuant to the Journal’s request, filed under the Freedom of Information Act, “was slow and incomplete”. We are a nation of laws, Governor, or don’t Republicans subscribe to that quaint notion any more.

Singleton’s a smart guy — and so I have to assume that he recognizes the following, pretty obvious points:

His editorial addresses only income taxes, ignoring that the income tax makes up only a portion of the total package of taxes that people pay — In fact, it only funds about 10% of the total revenues of state and local governments in RI.

On the whole, taxes in Rhode Island are regressive, meaning poorer people pay a greater percentage of their income than do wealthier people. The lowest-earning 20% of the population pays 13% of its income in taxes, while the wealthiest 1% pays only 6% of its income in taxes. (There’s more info up on OSA’s site.)

Fair tax structures are progressive, with people paying a higher percentage as income rises. The stats that Singleton cites simply demonstrate that RI’s income tax, when taken alone, is progressive — and this is the point of those who are advocating for the structural reforms that Singleton decries: A shift towards progressive income taxes, and away from regressive property taxes, would yield a reduction in taxes for most Rhode Islanders, even if the same total amount of money were colleceted.