City lawyers up for next round with RISE
Prep school seeks to relocate, councilors say it’s violation of zoning ordinance
WOONSOCKET — The City Council voted 4-2 Thursday to hire the North Scituate law firm Gorham & Gorham to take legal action against RISE Prep Mayoral Academy in attempts to prevent the facility from relocating to 30 Cumberland St. – a move councilors say would represent a violation of the zoning ordinance.
The move paves the way for the council’s third lawsuit against RISE Prep since 2015, including an unresolved zoning dispute focusing on the school’s existing location at 1 Social St. In that case, the council made a similar argument to the litigation now proposed, namely, that the zoning ordinance prohibits schools for young children in commercial zones for safety reasons.
Technically still pending, the latter suit was abandoned for financial reasons after Superior Court Judge Michael Silverstein ruled in favor of RISE in the council’s first suit, which challenged the validity of its charter from the Rhode Island Department of Education.
“That suit was left dormant after Silverstein’s ruling,” said Councilman James Cournoyer. “It’s a separate issue. That’s a C1 zone, now they’re going into a C2 zone, which is an even more intensive commercial use. They’re both wrong. But two wrongs don’t make a right.”
Cournoyer said the council has approved an engagement letter to hire the law firm’s Nick Gorham for $150 per hour, with no specified ceiling.
Council President Dan Gendron, Vice President Jon Brien, Councilwoman Denise Sierra and Cournoy- er voted in favor of a resolution authoring the council to hire the firm, while Councilman Richard Fagnant and Councilman Christopher Beauchamp – a member of RISE Prep’s governing body – voted against it.
Councilors had been contemplating the move since early July, after Cournoyer received a copy of a written opinion from Zoning
Official Carl Johnson declaring that RISE Prep could move into 30 Cumberland St. – the former Blockbuster Building in the Social District – without any oversight from the zoning board. Johnson declared a mayoral academy a “municipal use,” which means the school would have an automatic right to move into the building, regardless of the zone.
Cournoyer, however, strongly disagrees. He says RISE Prep is a private, nonprofit educational institution that functions as an arm of state government, and that the city has no control over it whatsoever, even though Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt is the chairperson of its board of directors.
The mayor, who has long
defended charter schools and mayoral academies as public institutions that offer parents an alternative to traditional public schools, was harshly critical of the council’s action.
“Four members of the City Council voted to waste taxpayer money by authorizing the hiring of an outside attorney to file a lawsuit, in direct conflict with the Planning and Zoning Departments’ position on a zoning matter within the city,” she said in a written statement.
But Cournoyer says the zoning ordinance is “crystal clear” on the issue.
“It prohibits nonprofit educational institutions serving young children in a commercial zone,” he said. “And with good reason. They don’t want young children in commercial zones to protect their safety.”
In the words of the zoning ordinance, “nonprofit educational institutions serving young children, including nursery schools, pre-schools, kindergartens, elementary schools and middle schools” are deemed “not permitted.” Generally, the zoning board doesn’t have any discretion to allow uses singled out as not permitted, which means officials couldn’t lawfully vote in favor of such a use even if they were personally in favor of it or thought it was an overall benefit to the city.
While state law seems to indicate that charter schools and mayoral academies are public schools, Cournoyer says “that doesn’t mean they are a public use. It’s a state use.”
City Solicitor John DeSimone has advised the council against initiating litigation based on Johnson’s letter, raising questions about whether a mere opinion can be challenged.
But Cournoyer says Gorham is expected to file an action in Superior Court “within a few days” in order to compel RISE Prep to end its efforts to relocate to 30 Cumberland St. Among other things, the city has already issued RISE Prep permits to renovate the building. RISE Prep voted to offer the former owners, Seven Hills of Rhode Island, up to $3.25 million for the four-story, brick and glass office building.
Councilman Fagnant said he’s opposed to putting a school in the building because it means the city will forfeit the opportunity to generate tax revenue from a piece of prime commercial real estate. But Fagnant says he’s even more leery of wasting taxpayers money on yet another lawsuit against RISE Prep – none of which have been successful so far.
“I voted against it because there’s no telling how much money will be spent,” said Fagnant. “I don’t feel we should be spending taxpayers’ money when we already got a ruling form the zoning officials that the school is permissible in that area. We have to rely on officials to make these determinations.”
Fagnant said he doesn’t think city officials should be spending money “suing ourselves. That’s what it boils down to, doesn’t it?”
Cournoyer says that RISE Prep – at one point, anyway – acknowledged in writing that an elementary school could not operate at 30 Cumberland St. without some level of oversight from the zoning board. In an October 2017 “Stage 1” application to RIDE for permission to convert the building into a new home for RISE Prep, school officials wrote that even though there are already a number of schools in C1 and C2 zones in the city, “they do require a use variance.”
The documents included a fully filled-out application for a use variance for RISE Prep at 30 Cumberland St. – an application that Johnson’s opinion apparently rendered moot, at least in RISE Prep’s view.
Founded in 2015, RISE Prep was conceived as a K-8 school, with a plan for adding one grade per year until achieving full enrollment. The school is on track to add Grade 3 for the first time in just a few days, with students from the three communities it serves, Woonsocket, Burrillville and North Smithfield.