EDITORIAL: Newport Needs to Decide What It Wants to Be — Just Pretty or Something Better
Friday, September 27, 2019
Newport is physically one of the most beautiful small cities in the world, but under the extraordinary veneer is a city with complex issues and tremendous poverty.
The percentage of children living in poverty in Newport is 21%. In Portsmouth, it is just 5%.
The schools are terrible. No, really terrible. And, the schools are among the worst-performing in a state that is among the worst-performing.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTNewport’s middle school test results are abysmal — right there with the worst schools in Providence. At Thompson Middle School, just 20% of the students are meeting or exceeding expectations. Expectations don’t get you into Harvard or even URI.
Many of Newport’s middle class have chosen to live in Middletown, Portsmouth and beyond.
The exodus has only fueled the purchase of middle-class homes in Newport in areas like the Point and other neighborhoods by out-of-staters.
Walk the streets of the Point on a weekday night in the winter and it will be hard to find any lights on, as the neighborhood has now transformed into a seasonal neighborhood. This is happening more and more in neighborhoods across the city.
Newport’s housing is unaffordable for the middle class and the taxes are beginning to spiral.
One of the opportunities to expand the tax base has been to transform the dismal North End of the city from strip malls and one of the greatest eyesores in Rhode Island — the Newport Grand property — into an innovation complex to support more business growth, but now due to the City Council’s proposed moratorium, multiple developments may be scrapped.
The proposal to convert the dilapidated Newport Grand property from its feeble decaying edifice into a $100 million development would generate critical jobs, new hotel rooms, workspace, and more than $1.5 million in new tax revenues.
The City Council has decided to block the development. The Newport County Chamber of Commerce stated before the Council that the adoption of the City Council’s ordinance is “anti-business.”
The City Council seems oblivious to the poverty and poor-performing schools and seems impotent to lead. Hit ‘Pause for Newport’ is the mantra of the pro-moratorium clan.
Close your eyes and maybe when the city ‘restarts’ the poverty will be gone and the schools will have reformed, if that it is even a priority.
