RI Question 2

[RhowdyRam02]

For all of the Rhode Islanders here, before you come to Kingston Election Day for the game against Bryant, make sure you go to the polls and vote yes on question 2. Question 2 is a $70 million bond question, with $45 million going to the URI Narragansett Bay Campus. We've already been selected to be the home port for a $100 million vessel from the National Science Foundation in 2021 to replace the R/V Endeavor, and this bond will really keep us tops in ocean research. The bond will:

Construct a 20,000-square-foot Ocean Technology building to serve as a hub for scientific innovation, discovery, and collaboration.

Serve as a catalyst for workforce development by providing opportunities for public-private endeavors relating to ocean science and exploration.

Upgrade GSO’s pier and infrastructure to accommodate a new state-of-the-art, internationally recognized research vessel from the National Science Foundation valued at more than $100 million.

Provide cutting-edge technology upgrades at GSO’s facilities to train the next generation of students in marine sciences.

Construct a marine operations facility for maintenance of GSO’s assets.

Information on the bond can be found here:
https://web.uri.edu/gso/news/2018-bond/

Information on the new research boat can be found here:
https://today.uri.edu/news/uri-led-cons ... -endeavor/

Information about voting can be found here:
https://vote.sos.ri.gov/

[NYGFan_Section208]

Is it still going to be a public beach with a little bit of parking, or does that go away?

[RhowdyRam02]

That's a good question I don't have an answer for

[RF1]

Based on past history, this bond question faces an uphill fight in towns such as Foster, Gloucester, Burrillville, Coventry, Tiverton, North Smithfield, and Woonsocket. These towns traditionally do not support bonds for higher education. The $125M engineering building question four years ago lost in Foster and barely passed in the other places.

[TruePoint]

Based on past history, this bond question faces an uphill fight in towns such as Foster, Gloucester, Burrillville, Coventry, Tiverton, North Smithfield, and Woonsocket. These towns traditionally do not support bonds for higher education. The $125M engineering building question four years ago lost in Foster and barely passed in the other places.

So in RI, like everywhere else, the rural dullards - who are a net drain on resources because of low tax revenues and high dependence on government support - stand in opposition to progress out of some misinformed and misguided sense of austerity, and continue to be the reason we cannot have nice things as a society.

Cool. Cool.

[RhowdyRam02]

In fairness, URI does a pretty bad job of doing outreach in the northern part of the state

[RF1]

Based on past history, this bond question faces an uphill fight in towns such as Foster, Gloucester, Burrillville, Coventry, Tiverton, North Smithfield, and Woonsocket. These towns traditionally do not support bonds for higher education. The $125M engineering building question four years ago lost in Foster and barely passed in the other places.

So in RI, like everywhere else, the rural dullards - who are a net drain on resources because of low tax revenues and high dependence on government support - stand in opposition to progress out of some misinformed and misguided sense of austerity, and continue to be the reason we cannot have nice things as a society.

Cool. Cool.

It may have more to do with the education level of voters in those towns.

[TruePoint]

Goes without saying

[UCH21377]

Based on past history, this bond question faces an uphill fight in towns such as Foster, Gloucester, Burrillville, Coventry, Tiverton, North Smithfield, and Woonsocket. These towns traditionally do not support bonds for higher education. The $125M engineering building question four years ago lost in Foster and barely passed in the other places.

So in RI, like everywhere else, the rural dullards - who are a net drain on resources because of low tax revenues and high dependence on government support - stand in opposition to progress out of some misinformed and misguided sense of austerity, and continue to be the reason we cannot have nice things as a society.

Cool. Cool.

Easy TP. Let’s not make generalizations

[NYGFan_Section208]

What about that beach? That's the $70M question.
Dashed out there a bunch of times at lunch this summer. Don't want to lose that.

[TruePoint]

What about that beach? That's the $70M question.
Dashed out there a bunch of times at lunch this summer. Don't want to lose that.

Lots of beaches

[rhodyruckus]

Millions of beaches, beaches for me. Millions of beaches, beaches for free? (Sorry, just heard that blast from the past song the other day.)

To get back to the issue at hand, I was an engineering student not in Ocean Engineering and never really got over to the Bay Campus during my studies which is a regret. This upgrade in facilities will encourage more students from other disciplines to incorporate ocean studies into their curriculum. I mean this is the ocean state and with a Bay-front campus why not take full advantage?

[NYGFan_Section208]

Definitely a lot of beaches around here. But, that beach is about 6 minutes from my house, which makes it perfect for a lunch time dip in the summer. Really the only one close enough to do that. Will likely vote no as I can't see them building all that stuff and keeping the beach and parking lot as accessible as it is now.

[RhowdyRam02]

I'm flabbergasted. You will likely vote no to necessary improvements that will help the University and will help the entire world understand our oceans better because it might make lunch time beach trips 2 or 3 months during the year more inconvenient? Please contact someone at the University to find out what changes to the campus will take place before you cast that vote.

[steviep123]

Definitely a lot of beaches around here. But, that beach is about 6 minutes from my house, which makes it perfect for a lunch time dip in the summer. Really the only one close enough to do that. Will likely vote no as I can't see them building all that stuff and keeping the beach and parking lot as accessible as it is now.

NYGFan, while I do appreciate having this beach right near you and it's great to have, before voting no, I agree with RR02 - try to find out if it will indeed affect this beach before blindly voting no. Or at least ask yourself this, if it passes and it does not affect your beach, will that make you happy? If the answer is yes, then please see what affects this will have on the beach before being a solid no. My 2 cents.

[RhowdyRam02]

They have a Facebook page, vote yes on 2 RI, they typically respond to private messages within an hour. On the bottom of this page they have a contact form where you can request more information:

https://voteyeson2ri.com/

[NYGFan_Section208]

Reasonable.... thanks for the website, just sent https://voteyeson2ri.com/ a message/question (am not on FB). Thanks!

[RhowdyRam02]

https://web.uri.edu/capitalprojects/fil ... -Vol-1.pdf

According to the map on page 5 of the PDF and page 97 it appears public beach access is maintained and new parking will be created if this project follows the master plan from 2 years ago. Not sure how that compares to what is in place now

[Taylor Swift]

Based on past history, this bond question faces an uphill fight in towns such as Foster, Gloucester, Burrillville, Coventry, Tiverton, North Smithfield, and Woonsocket. These towns traditionally do not support bonds for higher education. The $125M engineering building question four years ago lost in Foster and barely passed in the other places.

So in RI, like everywhere else, the rural dullards - who are a net drain on resources because of low tax revenues and high dependence on government support - stand in opposition to progress out of some misinformed and misguided sense of austerity, and continue to be the reason we cannot have nice things as a society.

Cool. Cool.

Yes. THIS!

Unfortunately, there's also Bond Question #1 for $250mil in school upgrades. This is passing cities and towns mismanagement of money onto the state taxpayer. NO on #1, YES on #2 for me.

[RF1]

R.I. conservative group urges defeat of spending measures
http://digital.olivesoftware.com/Olive/ ... 1018024006


Re Question 2:

Question 2 would borrow $70 million to build state college facilities, including $45 million for the University of Rhode Island’s Bay Campus in Narragansett and $25 million for Rhode Island College’s Horace Mann Hall.

The Freedom Center calls the proposed spending “non-vital” and “mostly benefits” graduates who “end up leaving the state in search of meaningful work.”



While URI's School of Oceanography attracts students from all over that may end up working outside RI, RIC is by far mostly attended by RI residents that remain in state after graduation. The Horace Mann Hall building actually houses their teachers college which produces the majority of teachers in RI's elementary and secondary schools.

[TruePoint]

Conservatives: still bad and dumb human beings.

[Seawrightspostgame]

Conservatives: still bad and dumb human beings.

Strong take. Some of your best work.

[NYGFan_Section208]

R.I. conservative group urges defeat of spending measures
http://digital.olivesoftware.com/Olive/ ... 1018024006


Re Question 2:

Question 2 would borrow $70 million to build state college facilities, including $45 million for the University of Rhode Island’s Bay Campus in Narragansett and $25 million for Rhode Island College’s Horace Mann Hall.

The Freedom Center calls the proposed spending “non-vital” and “mostly benefits” graduates who “end up leaving the state in search of meaningful work.”



While URI's School of Oceanography attracts students from all over that may end up working outside RI, RIC is by far mostly attended by RI residents that remain in state after graduation. The Horace Mann Hall building actually houses their teachers college which produces the majority of teachers in RI's elementary and secondary schools.

What am I missing? Isn't that what most good universities do? You can't be nationally renowned if no one ever leaves, can you?

[Taylor Swift]

"Everyone who goes to URI must stay in RI."?

I don't have a ProJo login and refuse to pay them any sort of money, so I cannot read the article other than the blurb RF1 posted above. I will agree that people DO in fact leave the state in search of meaningful work. The economy here is complete garbage no matter what the DLT spews out as their monthly unemployment number.

[TruePoint]

One way to improve the economy in the state is to invest in educating and training Rhode Islanders so that more of them start successful businesses and there are more skilled workers to make RI a competitive market for high end employers. One way to make that investment is put resources into institutions that have as their mission to educate and train Rhode Islanders.

It is an infuriating failure of basic reasoning and strategic forward thinking to look at the current state of things in RI and conclude that any spending on affordable higher education is a waste because URI students tend to leave the state after graduation. They leave the state because there are no jobs here, and the way to fix that is to change the conditions that make it that way (I know this from personal experience - I grew up in RI and would love to live there, but my job quite literally doesn’t exist there so I have to live and work elsewhere).

People didn’t like my calling conservatives bad and dumb people, but taking this particular position on this specific issue is the result of either the basic misunderstanding I mentioned above (aka dumb) or extreme selfishness (which in my mind definitely qualifies as bad, but is also dumb).

[Taylor Swift]

The state seems to be investing in manufacturing and blue-collar type jobs (this is VERY clear in Gina's re-election commercials). Not ones that require a four-year degree. I've actually had conversations with the Governor's Office regarding this. Gina is apparently still trying to "fix this", but she's had four years to do this and I do not see it. What happens with the larger corporate entities in RI is they'll say: we're going to hire 200 more employees, but that's over the course of 10 years, and it also depends on if we get this contract...

It is in fact extremely infuriating.

[RF1]

Question 2 passes with just under 60% of the statewide vote.

[Rhody74]

Question 2 won, along with the other referenda.

[RF1]

Based on past history, this bond question faces an uphill fight in towns such as Foster, Gloucester, Burrillville, Coventry, Tiverton, North Smithfield, and Woonsocket. These towns traditionally do not support bonds for higher education. The $125M engineering building question four years ago lost in Foster and barely passed in the other places.

Question 2 won with 59.4% of the statewide vote. It however was defeated in 11 of the 39 RI communities. Many of these towns once again followed their recent pattern of tepid support for higher ed bonds. A notable exception from the past was Woonsocket which supported the bond (55.8%) this election cycle.

Interestingly, Question 1, which was for elementary and secondary education, easily passed in all communities across the state.

Towns where the bond question 2 failed:

Question 2 Support by %:
Burrillville 43.6
Coventry 46.6
Foster 44.5
Gloucester 44.1
Hopkinton 47.4
N Smithfield 48.2
Richmond 47.0
Scituate 48.7
Smithfield 41.7
Tiverton 49.6
W Greenwich 47.2



Source:
http://digital.olivesoftware.com/Olive/ ... 1018024006

[Rhodymob05]

I voted yes on it, but the interest rates will skyrocket these costs. Heres to hopefully investing in something valuable for this state, which Politically speaking, LOVES the status quo.

[Taylor Swift]

Question 1 being passed really concerns me as far as what will happen with local property taxes, etc. Like there isn't enough to worry about already.

[Rhody74]

I voted for 1, but I worry how school boards regularly delay maintenance to save money in the short term only to have to borrow money to make up for it later.

[Taylor Swift]

I voted for 1, but I worry how school boards regularly delay maintenance to save money in the short term only to have to borrow money to make up for it later.

I can confidently say that this will be a (you know what)show.

[UCH21377]

One way to improve the economy in the state is to invest in educating and training Rhode Islanders so that more of them start successful businesses and there are more skilled workers to make RI a competitive market for high end employers. One way to make that investment is put resources into institutions that have as their mission to educate and train Rhode Islanders.

It is an infuriating failure of basic reasoning and strategic forward thinking to look at the current state of things in RI and conclude that any spending on affordable higher education is a waste because URI students tend to leave the state after graduation. They leave the state because there are no jobs here, and the way to fix that is to change the conditions that make it that way (I know this from personal experience - I grew up in RI and would love to live there, but my job quite literally doesn’t exist there so I have to live and work elsewhere).

People didn’t like my calling conservatives bad and dumb people, but taking this particular position on this specific issue is the result of either the basic misunderstanding I mentioned above (aka dumb) or extreme selfishness (which in my mind definitely qualifies as bad, but is also dumb).