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South Kingstown councilors begin new‑term goal‑setting; housing, high school and zoning top priorities
Summary
Councilors held an extended work‑session discussion on priorities for the new term, identifying affordable housing, the high‑school project, zoning review, repurposing vacant town buildings, and exploring a homestead tax exemption as leading items for further work and quarterly monitoring.
Council members spent a large portion of the Feb. 24 meeting discussing shared goals and objectives for the new term. The session was framed as an initial prioritization and asked members to converge on a common list to guide work sessions and quarterly progress reporting.
Town Manager Jim O’Neil (introduced in the meeting simply as “Jim”) asked members to prioritize the items they each had submitted and to agree on a short list of three to five top objectives that the council could measure with quarterly updates: “It’s gonna take at least 2 meetings, maybe even 3, to really formalize the goals and objectives so that it’s just not a paper tiger,” he said.
Councilors repeatedly named affordable housing and the high‑school project among their top priorities. Council Member Bergner said she and others saw overlap among many agenda items and urged the council to “zoom out a little bit and put zoning as a comprehensive issue that we need to land‑use that we need to look at.”
Other frequently mentioned topics included identifying and moving forward with redevelopment of three vacant town properties, studying a homestead tax exemption and its fiscal implications, strengthening boards and commissions, and improving public communications (including the possibility of a regular council newsletter and special‑topic meetings). One councilor recommended scheduling focused special meetings for major issues — for instance, high‑school or affordable‑housing sessions held at times convenient for public participation — rather than stretching regular meetings late into the evening.
Council members said they wanted to avoid siloed decision‑making and emphasized the interrelationship among zoning, homestead exemptions and short‑term‑rental data. “We need good data in order to come up with a homestead exemption that doesn’t … put us in a budget problem,” one member said.
Members requested that town staff return with a consolidated listing of proposed goals and suggested metrics so the council could prioritize and assign timelines. The manager said staff would prepare a prioritized list and recommended metrics for monitoring progress and bring the list back at upcoming work sessions.
No formal votes were taken; councilors described the Feb. 24 session as the first of multiple meetings to refine and formalize goals and reporting metrics for the term.
