Yes on Question 4
By Colleen Cronin / ecoRI News staff
Since 2000, every Green Bond put before Ocean State voters
has passed breezily and, drilling down on the municipal level, the initiatives
aimed at increasing open space and promoting green programs have enjoyed
comfortable approval in each of Rhode Island’s 39 cities and towns.
Providence and New Shorham lead the state, with average
support in this century for the Green Bond reaching about 82% and 78%,
respectively, according to Rhode Island election results.
Even in Foster and Glocester, the communities with the
lowest average support, approval ratings were about 62% and 61%, respectively.
Green bonds frequently appear on the statewide ballot and help finance a range of programs and projects that vary from bond to bond. Money for the conservation of open space and farmland are often included.
This year, however, the Rhode Island Land Trust Council and
other groups had to advocate for
open space, farmland, and habitat restoration apportionments of the bond,
totaling $13 million, which were not originally included in
Gov. Daniel McKee’s draft Green Bond proposal laid out in January.
For the past few years, The Nature Conservancy in Rhode
Island has surveyed prospective voters to see which environmental issues matter
the most to them and what they may want to see the state address, according to
its climate program manager, Angela Tuoni. The data helps TNC and other
organizations lobby the governor and General Assembly for certain initiatives
to be included.
“The things we see very consistently are widespread, I would
even say, enthusiastic support for the green bonds,” Tuoni said. The approval
for the Green Bond is about 69% statewide since 2000.
Clean water and forest protection often rank high on
people’s lists. There’s also been an increasing interest in flooding issues and
climate resiliency, as the impact of climate change has
started to hit the state harder and more frequently. (The 2024 Green Bond includes
$10 million for a municipal resilience program and $2 million for coastal
resilience.)
“The bond has sort of something for everyone in it,” Tuoni
said. “Clean air, clean water, green space protection really does benefit all
Rhode Islanders.”
Kate Sayles, executive director of the Rhode
Island Land Trust Council, said she thinks the success of the Green
Bond around the state, even in places squarely within the state’s urban core,
can partly be attributed to the small size and interconnectedness of Rhode
Island.
In addition to Providence, the cities of Central Falls and
Newport also see some of the highest approval ratings for the Green Bond. Since
2000, their average support has been about 78% and 77%, respectively.
Although much of the open space conserved by Green Bond
funding lies outside the state’s urban core, Salyes said city dwellers still
value that it’s helping to keep their drinking water cleaner or increasing
access to nature in Rhode Island in general.
“I think that people that live in Providence, or Woonsocket,
or in urban areas, feel just as passionately as everybody else about having
access to clean air and clean water and open spaces and local food,” said
Sayles, all initiatives supported by Green Bond measures.
The money from the bonds also allows Rhode Island to
capitalize on federal funding that requires a state match.
“By investing state money in conservation and the
environment and municipal resilience and brownfields, we are able to unlock and
access a whole bunch of additional federal and philanthropic funds to do that
work,” she said.
Without the state funding, those federal funds can get left
behind, and according to the Rhode Island Department of Environmental
Management, for $1 the state spends on open space, the federal government
matches $3.
Although open space is often a big part of Green Bond
funding, Sayles noted other green issues are getting added each year.
“We’re seeing brownfields and municipal resilience and
recreation grants also included in these bond issues,” she said, “which are
really highly important to urban communities as well as they are to suburban
and rural.”
For example, the 2022 Green Bond funded the
renovation of the Jenks Park playground in Central Falls.
State Sen. John Acosta, a Democrat from District 16
representing Central Falls and Pawtucket, said the bond has been a way to
rehabilitate areas sometimes neglected after Rhode Island’s industrial period
while also capitalizing on how to make those spaces greener.
“The funds are useful in terms of retrofitting these sites,”
he said.
Projects like Jenks Park “encourage people to be outside,”
Acosta added, when communities like Central Falls have “limited options in
terms of our green space.”
In this year’s Green Bond, there is $5 million each for
recreation and brownfield remediation.
In total, the bond includes $53 million for different
initiatives. In addition to the funding for conservation, brownfields,
recreation, and climate resiliency, the bond also includes $3 million to repair
the Newport Cliff Walk and $15 million to improve Quonset’s Port of Davisville.
The bond will be Question 4 on
the ballot this year. In-person early voting starts Oct. 16 and Election Day is
Nov. 5. Applications to vote by mail must be received by Oct. 15 and mail
ballots have to be in by 8 p.m. on Election Day.