1. Higher Education Facilities Bond Measure — $275 million
This bond would use $165 million to create an integrated health building at the URI campus, open to the public, which would also be used for labs and clinics by URI students in health care fields. URI has schools of nursing and for medical technologists. URI is also engaged in a long-term process to launch a medical school, for which a medical building would most likely eventually be useful, although no specific connection has been stated.
$60 million would be allocated to create a Workforce Innovation Center at the CCRI Warwick Campus, to serve as a regional hub for career and technical education for both CCRI students as well as students in high schools that are heavily connected to CCRI.
The final $50 million would be used to renovate the Career Development Center at RIC, where staff connect with RIC students and alumni to search for career opportunities and discuss “next steps.” Other parts of this building have been recently renovated.
Whether this is a worthwhile bond issue depends on how you feel about higher education and job training. These measures respond to a widely anticipated refocusing of higher education – already starting – in which trades and practical, specialized skills with earning potential will be preferred over general education and humanities degrees, and it positions RI institutions to better prepare for that shift. Around the Motif office, we give this one a 7 out of 10 – it’s a good set of investments to prepare RI for upcoming educational needs, but there is also an argument that higher-ed institutions should be able to self-fund these initiatives.
2. Housing Development Bond Measure – $120 million
This bond will fund the construction and development of affordable and accessible housing. RI is in the midst of a housing crisis.. At least $25 million of this $120 million must be used for increasing production of housing intended for homeownership. $10 million of this amount may be used to support a public housing program. The other 85 million will be used for either of these things. This bond has a disturbing lack of public detail – who decides where the other $85 million would go, for example. But the crisis is real, and real talent is leaving the state because of housing affordability. If this increases supply it should, in theory, lower prices. We gave this one a 7 out of 10 – much needed, but major points off for vagueness.
3. RI Economic and Infrastructure Development Bond Measure — $100 million
$55 million of this bond will go towards site development in the Quonset Business Park. $2.5 billion has already been invested through Quonset Business Park and it has helped create jobs for many Rhode Islanders, as well as housing..
The other $45 million of this bond would be invested in industries such as RI’s growing life science, ocean tech, and defense industries. This bond will support new industrial sites dedicated to these sectors. Quonset is undeniably an economic engine for the state and a very productive port that’s often overlooked or unmentioned in local press and consciousness. It deserves public support, but the information on plans for supporting life sciences and how that $45 million would be disseminated are frustratingly vague at this point.
If approved, the $45 million portion will support investments in facilities, infrastructure, and projects that help growing industries expand and create jobs. Specific dollar amounts have not been assigned to individual projects yet, but the bond identifies growth industries (such as ocean technology, life sciences, and defense) where RI has advantages. We give this one a 6 out of 10 – we’d still vote for it. Investment in Quansett has been a good decision for the state in the past.
4. RI Environment and Watershed Protection and Development Bond Measure – $55 million
These funds would go towards Narragansett Bay, state watershed restoration, plus renovation and emergency repair for agricultural and marine infrastructure projects, as well as other recreational infrastructure, including numerous small park, and trail renovations. Environmental preservation is emotionally easy to defer – for decades, it’s taken a back seat in prioritization, and that’s gotten us, as a nation and as a planet, in quite a pickle. It makes sense to borrow from the future to do what we can to shore up that future – we give this a 9 out of 10.
5. RI Historical Center and Cultural Grants Bond Measure – $50 million
This bond will fund cultural and historical projects in the state, including a new Rhode Island State History Center, which will display the state’s historic documents and artifacts. The current state archives have no permanent exhibit area for these documents and struggle to store them safely. This State History Center would serve as their exhibit area in order to keep them preserved. $5 million of this amount will also provide grants to fund improvements to public historic sites, museums, and cultural art centers. Maybe a permanent upgrade to the RI Music Hall of Fame, or a home for the RI Film Museum? It’s unspecified what exactly those millions would be used to improve, but there are certainly plenty of reasonable candidates. History unpreserved becomes even more expensive to later restore, so if we want to keep our state’s historical objects viable, this seems like a good idea, even if some of those funding propositions may be a bit bloated. We scored this a 7 out of 10.
RI has a long history of approving pretty much all bond issues. They all seem like good ideas at the time, and structured debt really is the American way. As you can see, although we rated them differently, these all scored above 5/10, so Motif is no exception to this RI tendency, and would probably vote for all the bond issues, if it were a person.