Town Manager Report for the week ending October 16, 2026
The Parks and Recreation Halloween Spooktacular with Trunk O’ Treat is cancelled for tonight due to inclement weather. Please join us tomorrow night, Saturday October 17 from 600pm-800pm, at the Town Hall Annex to enjoy spooky activities, food trucks, trunk or treat, and a haunted hose. Wear a costume, bring a flashlight, and a big bag for all of your treats.
On Tuesday I attended the RI League of Cities and Towns Board meeting at their new location in downtown Providence behind the State House. This new space will allow municipalities a place to park, meet, and engage with their local delegation of legislatures of the House and Senate when important local bills are being debated and testified on. We look forward to our continued partnership with the League and its Board of Directors including Executive Director Randy Rossi.
On Tuesday night we had an agenda filled Council meeting that covered a plethora of issues including the latest discussion on the upcoming referendum question 7 regarding whether the residents of Coventry are in support of or not of a Municipal Fire Department that will combine the four current Districts into one Municipal Department. This is a non-binding resolution to gauge the interest of the electorate on this topic. If it is yes, the Council will then ask the General Assembly to pass enabling legislation to support all that is needed to move forward. Once the General Assembly passes the enabling legislation there will be another referendum, this one binding, in the late spring/ early summer on whether the electorate wants to create a Municipal Fire Department. Regarding the timing of getting all of these moving parts coordinated to establish the department, that looks like July 1, 2028 at the earliest.
As residents begin to look for information to make an informed decision the Municipal Fire Commission has put the summary of its study written in December 2025 on the Town website, along with the estimated budget projection, and a series of slides that summarizes statistics of each district along with what a Municipal Fire Department would look like. Please go to the Towns website coventryri.gov for all the information that has been sourced from all four districts.
On Tuesday the Council passed a new contract for our hard-working Council 94 Town workers who come to work each day to serve the residents and businesses owners of Coventry to the best of their ability. They are the glue that holds the Town together whether it’s our DPW and Parks and Recreations team, our dedicated Town Hall workers, our police dispatchers and ACO’s, and all the other dedicated employees.