Town Manager Report for the week ending July 18, 2025
On Tuesday Assistant Town Manager Maria Broadbent and I met with Kim Korioth and Georgia Young from DEM to discuss municipal resiliency and open space grants and opportunities that the Town may possibly have interest in. We discussed some of our current projects at Briarpoint when it comes to stormwater collection and some of the other stormwater concerns in western Coventry on Maple Valley Rd with culvert and dam work.
We also had our monthly joint meeting on the Community Learning Center project through the Governor’s Capital Projects Fund with the Pandemic Recovery Office to check in on our progress and instruct them on any issues we are experiencing during this construction phase. We advised them there have been some change orders approved for an increase in costs due to the timing of the bid process and the point of actually procuring the materials. We are navigating that demand as we move to final completion in October.
On Wednesday we had a special council Town Council meeting to discuss litigation in the Soscia Holdings case. It was continued to our next Council meeting scheduled for Tuesday July 22, 2025 at 600.
Also, in Council Chambers on Wednesday the Central Coventry Fire Department had a promotional ceremony for 3 officers. We congratulate Lt. Default, Lt. McAloon, and Lt. Dougan and wish them continued luck and success in these new roles.
On Thursday we had our Due Diligence meeting with RIHEBC, PFM, our attorneys, and bond team relative to finalizing the exhaustive paperwork in order to put the $25m in school bonds out to the public for sale in the next couple of weeks. Everything is on schedule and we have a few minor updates to make next week. The funds for all of the school projects including$1.2m for the high school sewer (total project $4.5m) should be available in mid-August.
The Town and School also had our monthly meeting with the Auditor General, the Division of Municipal Finance, and our auditors CLA to update them on the final filings for our FY 24 audit which is complete. We also advised them we are starting our FY 25 audit in 2 weeks and are currently working on our corrective action plan and deficit reduction plan to address the cumulative $5.8m school shortfall.