Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt: Keep city moving in right direction
As Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt campaigns for a third term, her pitch to constituents is simple: A vote for her is a vote to keep the city moving in the right direction.
Under her leadership, the mayor says, great strides have been made toward righting the city’s fiscal ship, improving infrastructure and invigorating the business climate.
“Let’s not stop now” says Baldelli-Hunt. “There is still much work to be done. Let’s continue developing our downtown, particularly our Main Street.”
A former state lawmaker who took office in 2013 with the city in the maw of bankruptcy, Baldelli-Hunt rattles off a long list of accomplishments during a recent interview: Tax rates have come down; the city’s bond rating has risen from junk status to A; the city’s rebuilt several dozen roads without borrowing; a new World War II Park has risen from a weed-strewn lot; and dozens of architectural eyesores have been demolished, including the one she calls “the poster child of blight,” the former municipal incinerator on Cumberland Hill Road.
Despite the boast-worthy string of achievements, however, Baldelli-Hunt is entangled in the most adversarial political battle of her career as she faces off against former City Council President Albert G. Brien. While he paints her as a stubborn political loner who is unwilling to compromise with others, she has responded with searing attacks portraying Brien as a serial financial failure who can’t
manage his own household, let alone a $140 million municipal budget.
Though she softened her tone during recent public appearances, Baldelli-Hunt is unapologetic for the blitz, dismissing the notion that she had engaged in negative campaigning.
“It’s important for people to know the real candidate that’s running,” the mayor says. “Facts are facts. Facts aren’t negative. Negative is when something is untruthful.”
As for the marquee issue of Brien’s campaign – the oft-repeated assertion that she butts heads and engenders conflict with the City Council and other groups – Baldelli-Hunt says it’s “a fabricated issue” that Brien whipped up to justify an otherwise idea-less candidacy. Sure, the mayor allows, there have been conflicts with some members of the council – a majority, in fact – but the mayor says the ruling bloc of the legislative body has its own political motives for sowing discord with the administration, fostering an atmosphere of hostility that has driven even some of is own colleagues, like Councilman Christopher Beauchamp, away from public service.
Emphasis on political partnerships
Were she truly the friendless solo pilot that Brien claims, she would have been unable to amass the political resume that she has in five years, says the mayor. She points to her strong ties to the General Assembly, Gov. Gina Raimondo and her own team of directors as examples of the kinds of positive relationships voters can continue to bank on to keep the city moving forward.
“I have a partnership with them. Government is a partnership,” said the mayor. “No matter who the Speaker of the House is, Brien criticizes. No matter who the Senate president is, he criticizes. He criticizes them no matter who they are.”
She says all the ammunition Brien has invested in creating an unflattering portrait of her as an isolated political figure has distracted some voters from the core deficit of his candidacy, which is to articulate a vision for the future.
“I’m still waiting for Al Brien to say what his plan is,” she says. “I can tell you what my plan is...The only thing I’ve heard him say, he’s go- ing to cut the number of firefighters. There’s more things to being mayor than cutting firefighters.”
Brien has found an ally in businessman Albert G. Beauparlant, an early candidate for mayor who withdrew, and drops his name often as a potential investor for future projects. Beauparlant has pitched a grandiose vision for a $400 million “Heritage Canal District,” but Baldelli-Hunt says that’s not a plan – it’s pie in the sky. By contrast, she says, she has worked with Gov. Raimondo to land the Northern Rhode Island Higher Education Center, a job-training partnership that includes CVS Health, Fidelity Investments, Amica and others, modeled after the Westerly Higher Education Center. The latter resulted in the creation of about 3,000 jobs, many of them at Electric Boat.
New development planned
Moreover, Baldelli-Hunt says it’s looking increasingly likely that NRIHED will be located downtown – a boon for Main Street – but not the only one. Recently, the state announced that the city has won an $80,000 grant to redevelop Aly’s Pub as a site for the riverboat Explorer, a cornerstone of the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council’s marketing campaign for the region. Also, new owners will resurrect the long-vacant Vintage Restaurant under a new name by mid-2019, and she’s optimistic that at least one new brewpub, perhaps two, will set up shop in the area.
New segments of the Blackstone Valley Bikeway are beginning to converge in the downtown area, and Baldelli-Hunt says she is lobbying Raimondo for a stepped-up construction schedule for the final segments of the project, including a new roundabout at Bernon Street and the Truman Bypass. And the Boston Surface Rail Company reports continued progress toward its goal of establishing a Worcester-Woonsocket-Providence commuter rail loop sometime in 2020.
Reaching for a metaphor to describe Main Street’s emerging potential, Baldelli-Hunt says it’s “like a rosebud that’s just beginning to bloom.”
“We have a lot percolating in the Main Street area and I’m going to stay very diligent in moving these projects forward,” she said. “These aren’t things that are wishes or dreams. These are things that are in the works. They’re the result of hard work and this is what we’re doing.”
Across town, Baldelli-Hunt says she continues talking to the new owners of Walnut Hill Plaza about locating a cinema and a supermarket – still a priority for her – in the shopping plaza.
Brien – and a few council candidates, too – have complained that Baldelli-Hunt hasn’t been aggressive enough in shrinking the commercial tax rate – at $36.19 per $1,000, one of the highest in the state. There is broad consensus that it serves as a disincentive for business investment, and Baldelli-Hunt doesn’t disagree. But she says the complaints overlook the fact that the effective commercial tax rate has dropped 11 percent since she took office in 2013. Similarly, residential rates have dipped 34 percent – a stellar achievement, she says.
The administration often boasts about the fiscal turnaround that has taken place on Baldelli-Hunt’s watch, but Brien has tried to take the wind out of the mayor’s sails on that score, too. The history he tells is that the mayor owes the Budget Commission much of the credit for the newfound slack in the budget, a situation that resulted from the passage of a $2.5 million supplemental tax in 2012 – the very tax the mayor could have supplied as a state lawmaker. Her ‘no’ vote on the issue, in fact, helped usher in the Budget Commission.
Baldelli-Hunt says the flaw in Brien’s analysis is that it fails to account for the local political dynamics that drove her, and other state lawmakers, to act. They opposed the supplemental tax because the members of the council at the time – Brien included – didn’t already have in place a comprehensive recovery plan. The state put a Budget Com- mission in charge to develop such a plan.
Statehouse experience
A lifelong city resident, Baldelli-Hunt, 56, of 304 Prospect St., served in the House of Representatives from 2007-2013, before she was elected mayor. While local elections are non-partisan, Baldelli-Hunt is a longtime Democrat, though she often describes herself – as did her uncle, former Mayor Charles Baldelli – as a fiscal conservative.
Before becoming mayor, Baldelli-Hunt worked as an independent real estate developer, but she was previously employed by the U.S. Postal Service and was once the president of the local chapter of the postal workers union. She and her husband, Edward Hunt, a retired math teacher and former baseball coach at Lincoln High School, have three sons, Gary, Victor and Sam.
Even if Cranston Mayor Allan Fung, a Republican, gets elected governor, Baldelli-Hunt says she’d still be effective at City Hall.
“On the radio last week he was just saying he had a good working relationship with me,” she said. “I am a mayor who wants to work in cooperation with anyone who truly believes in what’s in the best interest of the city of Woonsocket and its taxpayers.”