EXCLUSIVE: Councilwoman Says Taveras Broke Promise on Pool
Thursday, October 24, 2013
A Providence city councilwoman is questioning the credibility of the Taveras administration after she says it broke a promise to replace a pool closed two years ago with a water park and instead used the money set aside for the work to pay down city debts.
Councilwoman Sabina Matos says she is now rethinking her support for Mayor Angel Taveras two years after the closure of the Joslin Recreation Center pool in her ward.
She says her experience calls into question his commitment to replace the Davey Lopes pool with a water park. “How much faith can we have that will happen?” Matos said, D-Ward 15, said. “How can the community trust that the Davey Lopes [pool] will be replaced if Joslin hasn’t been replaced?”
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTCity ran out of funds for pool repair
Matos said she found out that the Joslin pool, at 17 Hyatt Street in Olneyville, was slated for closure after she took office in 2011. Matos said she was told the pool was in need of repairs and that there was not enough money for them. The cost of repairs would have been prohibitive, according to Councilman Michael Correia, whose ward borders the recreation center.
Correia blames the city for failing to maintain its infrastructure over the years. “For some reason … we never invested in infrastructure,” Correia said. “That’s why everything is falling apart.”
Matos said the administration promised to replace the pool with a water park.
In a June 20, 2011 letter, Beth Charlebois, the director of neighborhood parks and recreation services, told Matos that the city had “worked out an alternative plan to provide water play opportunities and other activities at Joslin Park.” Although the letter does not specify it, Matos said she had been assured the city planned a water park.
Matos saw an opportunity reinvent the center.
She cobbled together a coalition of community organizations and neighborhood groups—including the Olneyville Housing Corporation, Meeting Street, and the Rhode Island chapter of the Local Initiatives Support Coalition. They went to work on brainstorming ideas for a complete makeover of the 3.7-acre site that included a new soccer court, remodeled gym, new playground, and a water park, according to an October 2012 master plan commissioned by the Olneyville Housing Corporation.
Matos committed $130,000 from a $240,000 discretionary fund that had been created for her ward using proceeds from a bond issued by the city over a decade ago.
But city officials had something different in mind for the money. Last fall, Matos caught wind of a plan to use it to pay off city debts. She complained to City Council President Michael Solomon. “I told them I had a plan for the money. You cannot take it,” Matos recalled. “The money was already committed to the neighborhood.”
Solomon told her the administration had promised to replace the funds, Matos said.
City sank pool funds into debt service
But when she went looking for the money one year later, it was gone.
“It is true that at the time we agreed with the council that if there were projects that could be done quickly we would find a way to pay for them. However, the key was projects must be done quickly. It has now been nearly a year. We also made it very clear that this would not extend beyond the fiscal year. With the end of the fiscal year, that window has closed,” Michael D’Amico, the city administration director and acting chief of staff for Taveras, told Matos in a Sept. 20 e-mail.
That was news to Matos. “Nobody told me about that deadline,” Matos said. “Nobody.”
The deadline was all the more surprising given that the city had otherwise given every indication that it was on board with the project. The city parks and recreation department had formally gone out to bid for the project and it had not deployed an inflatable slide at the Joslin park because it had anticipated that the site would be under construction during the summer, according to Matos.
If the city really had needed to unburden itself of the replacement funds by the end of the 2013 fiscal year, the money easily could have been transferred over to the Olneyville Housing Corporation by June 30, Matos said.
In fact, she had been trying to get to the money months before then, according to e-mails and other documents she provided to GoLocalProv. She first asked for it at the beginning of the year, in a Feb. 12 e-mail to the Providence Council Chief of Staff Jake Bissaillon.
Her request was passed on to the administration. Months went by. Finally, after going out to bid this summer, Matos could wait no longer, appealing directly to D’Amico in a Sept. 17 e-mail. In his response, D’Amico said the funds had been sitting unused in her discretionary account for well over a decade. He said city attorneys had told officials it needed to be spent on debt payments.
Matos, who took office just two years ago, says it was wrong to blame her for what happened on her predecessor’s watch.
But, for Matos, it’s a moot point since the city had already promised to replace the old funds—something she now suspects was never done. “To my knowledge, they took the money and never replaced it,” she said.
Not only was the $130,000 no longer available. But the entire $240,000 in the Ward 15 discretionary account had been emptied out to pay for city debts, according to Matos. She said the funding for the project—which had a total bill of $1.6 million to $3.5 million—had been contingent on the seed money from her. “So, basically, the whole project fell apart,” Matos said.
“I’m not asking for money. I had the money and they took it away,” Matos said.
Bissaillion and Solomon declined to comment. (Bissaillon would only say that Solomon was still awaiting information on the matter.)
Taveras spokesman David Ortiz refused to respond to a request for comment. The Taveras administration has previously reprimanded the director of the Davey Lopes Recreation Center for speaking to the media and issued a gag order barring staff at the center from talking to reporters.
Councilwoman rethinks support for Taveras
Matos said she remains perplexed by the pushback she is getting from the Taveras administration over her plans for the Joslin Recreation Center. “I cannot see how they cannot see this was something that was going to benefit the … neighborhood,” Matos said. “To me it’s a no-brainer. I don’t know why it’s so hard for them to understand it.”
In an interview, Matos described herself as an early supporter of Taveras, saying she even shared campaign office space with him in 2010. When she was briefly weighing a run for mayor, she told reporters that she would run only if Taveras wasn’t in the race—presumably because he would instead be seeking the governor’s office. Given her past support for him, Matos said she would have expected much more attention to her queries from the administration.
“I’m disappointed,” she said.
But is she rethinking her support for Taveras? “As of right now, yes,” Matos said yesterday.
Questioning the mayor on Davey Lopes
Matos’ story has added to the concerns of those who have opposed the closure of the Davey Lopes pool in the South Side of Providence.
“How could I allow the Mayor to cement the Davey Lopes pool if he hasn’t kept his word with the Joslin pool to build his spray stations,” said Councilman Davian Sanchez, who represents the neighborhoods surrounding Davey Lopes.
A local neighborhood activist agrees. “It gives me huge concern about the children’s future in Providence and their future in Rhode Island,” said Leah Williams Metts, a mother of four who lives in the lower South Side of Providence and works as a marketing director.
The closure of the pool, Williams Metts said, only adds to her concerns about the future of children in her neighborhood—a school system that she said is failing kids, teenage pregnancy, drug use, and a rising crime rate that she said led to a murder on her street and a shooting on her doorstep earlier this year.
“I am deeply saddened about this,” Williams Metts said.
Stephen Beale can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @bealenews
Related Slideshow: Timeline of the Davey Lopes Recreation Center Pool Controversy
The controversy surrounding the Joslin Recreation Center Pool closure is just the latest city pool issue involving the Taveras administration. The pool at the Davey Lopes Recreation Center has been a highly contested issue since its closure in July of 2013.
Related Articles
- NEW: Sanchez Says Taveras Threatened to Cement Pool Over Politics
- New: Rhode Island State Rep Williams Calls for Mayor to Open Pool
- GoLocal Looks At Providence’s Public Pools
- Providence City Council Members Weigh in on Davey Lopes Pool
- In Case You Missed It: Secret City Report Made Case for Pools
- Providence Pool Demolition Costs Nearly as Much as Rehab
- In Case You Missed It: Taveras Closes Pool
- Providence Youth Outraged at Lack of Pools in Heat Wave
- LISTEN- Providence Pool Demolition Costs Nearly as Much as Rehab
- South Providence Pool Reopens After 7 Years
- LISTEN- Taveras Cracks Down on Providence Employees Speaking About Pools
- Taveras Admin’s Decision to Close Pool Called Political and Racist
- NEW: Letter to ACLU Claims Pool Closing Violates City Charter
- Taveras Cracks Down on Providence Employees Speaking About Pools
