Don’t you wish the alt-right folks felt as threatened by assault weapons as they do by children’s books?

In the News

  • Jonathan Daly-LaBelle, who ran for representative in the state senate last year, wrote a letter to the editor about the need for affordable housing

  • Similarly, the Sun wrote about the path towards a permanent housing committee

  • The RI General Assembly is considering bills related to gun regulation and specifically a ban on assault weapons

  • Senator Gu has almost reached her goal of 800 letters to Governor McKee to support commuter rail in Westerly! Click here to add your voice. (It takes less than five minutes! The forms are all pre-filled.)

Town Council

March 17 (agenda)

Huge idea: what if we made Main Street less prone to flooding, and also maybe less ugly? I recommend looking through the website - it’s a super interesting project, the planning for which has been ongoing for some years now.

This is really awesome: the office of lieutenant governor Sabina Matos has identified that small businesses in the state are disappearing as owners retire and choose to close down operations rather than selling the business (the presenter called this a “succession crisis” and, more humorously, the “silver tsunami”). The state wants to make it easier for employees to keep their workplaces open by facilitating access to capital and business-management skills.

Public hearing will be on April 7th! If you care about the future of housing here in town (increasingly dire! don’t go on zillow!), it would be worthwhile to show up and have your voice heard.

Truthfully, I don’t know if a permanent housing committee is going to be the solution - I don’t have an opinion one way or another - but it certainly couldn’t hurt having five smart people planning for a more sustainable future, especially for the next generation of families. (I think us millennials have just given up.)

School Committee

March 19 (agenda)

You gotta love the school committee for being quick and to the point. The high school students performed a song from their Hadestown production. I think this was the first meeting for Joe Jackson, who took Kristi Walston’s seat, and just in time to equate access to age-appropriate books to the trans agenda. (Has the trans agenda been literacy this whole time???)

Other Boards and Committees

* almost all of these meetings focused on the school budget.

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