Town Manager Report for the week ending February 13, 2026
On Monday Director Civetti and I met with our auditors CLA and its principal Steve Gross to review the audit that was recently completed for the Town and School as we prepare to present the results to the Town Council on Tuesday. The Director and I also met with Superintendent Cowart and Director DeVerna to review the updated 5-year budget plan and begin to put together a deficit reduction plan that both the School Committee and Town Council must approve prior to it being sent to the Auditor General and the Office of Municipal Finance by the end of the month.
On Tuesday I attended the RI League of Cities and Towns Executive Board meeting held in Warwick that brings all of the Chief Executives from every city and town together. At the meeting was former Congressman David Cicilline of the R.I. Foundation and Professor Nora Gordon from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University who presented their findings of the Blue Ribbon Commission Recommendations for School Funding in RI. The full report is over 60 pages long and reviews the current school funding formula for all municipalities and what they believe can be changed to improve it. In summary the full plan when implemented over a couple of years as proposed will increase the state’s share of school aid to an additional $300m with Coventry seeing around a $16m decrease. The report and accompanying legislation will be sent to the General Assembly this session for discussion and hopefully passage.
We had our regularly scheduled Council meeting which began with an Executive Session update on the Johnson’s Pond litigation by our attorney Mr. Eskey. The case continues to proceed on both state and federal court. A few of the agenda items was the approval to purchase a new front-line police SUV and a new Animal Control van. The Council also approved a design build contract with Fuss and O’Neill and C. Brito construction for $725k to design, engineer, and construct the necessary upgrades to the aging Woodland Manor Pump Station utilizing grant funding from the RI Infrastructure Bank. We also had a presentation from GZA, the contractor utilized by the Redevelopment Agency, who gave an excellent overview of where we started with the need to gain public access to Johnson’s Pond and where we are today only months away from a complete development plan. They will be holding their 2nd public meeting in late February early March so please keep an eye open for that. Most importantly our CLA audit presentation showed the Town in great financial shape with a Town surplus of $2m and School surplus of $1.3m this year. We also have a fund balance (rainy day) of $19m. The presentation included a 5 year look back by Mr. Civetti which highlighted how far we have come over the last few years bringing accountability and transparency.