The Providential Gardener

What do You Think about What the 2010 Candidates for Governor Say about Rhode Island's Environment?

Let Your Voice Be Heard!

Comment on the Gubernatorial Candidates' Remarks about RI's Environment!

Rhode Island's environment is greatly impacted by political decisions and budget constraints, and of course with the economy in its present sluggish state and not enough revenue coming in, the priorities the next governor sets are of the utmost importance. Rhode Islanders who see that our environment is really at the heart of things ~ that responsibly attending to environmental matters is necessary for our continuing to live in this place and essential to our health and well being ~ will want to listen to the candidate's views and express their concerns as comments on the YouTube videos of the recent environmental debate.

We need a governor, legislative leadership, and local news media -- in fact the whole population of the state -- to grasp the systemic nature of the problems we face. We need to reframe our problems in order to develop viable long-term solutions. The central problem for human beings is not "the economy" which is an abstraction focused on money, but on flesh and blood, our lives. Our bodies are part of the environment, not separate from it. The beating heart of the matter for each of us is being alive, having a living,* living our full length of days, and living fully ~ not so many [millions of] dollar bills here or there. When we rearrange our thinking and make human life central rather than money, budgets, and deficits, the fog can lift and we can begin to see our way toward a vibrant society for all Rhode Islanders.

Open Space Conservation Bonds Approved

The Providential Gardener is pleased to publish this report from the Rhode Island Land Trust:

2008 Election Results:
 
Rhode Island Voters Approve Open Space Conservation Bonds!
 
With 97% of the votes counted, 68% approve Question 2 providing the state with 
$2.5 million in bond funding for farmland protection and open space conservation. 
 
Voters in urban communities were especially strong supporters:
79.1 % City of Providence - 2nd highest approval rate after Block Island
73.8 % Central Falls
78.9% Newport
The Highest voter approval was 82.4 % in New Shoreham.
 
Local Land Conservation Bonds  were also Approved
Middletown $2 million passed by  68%
Glocester $500,000  passed by 53.8%

HOPE, Rhode Island!

There is a line in an obscure Bob Dylan song [from the soundtrack of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood] ~ "HOPE may vanish, but it never dies." For me, hope has been doing a vanishing act in recent years, but today, I feel it's powerful presence.

Despite the depressing declines in recent years, I couldn't forget about HOPE, though. Living in Rhode Island, we are never far from HOPE ~ HOPE Street ~ Mount HOPE ~ Mount HOPE Bay ~ HOPE, RI ~ HOPE High School ~ HOPE Webbing.... HOPE leaps out at us at every turn. HOPE is the state motto. HOPE is the only word on our state flag. And HOPE has been on the Seal of the Colony (and then the Seal of the State) since the 1660s.

Why is HOPE Rhode Island's motto? The best answer is from a ri.gov website:

Origins of the Seal of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations

There is no official documentation from the time when Rhode Island first adopted the word "HOPE" on its Seal and flag that explains why this word was chosen. The Rhode Island General Assembly first adopted a Seal for the colony containing an anchor with the word "HOPE" above it on May 4, 1664.  The most coherent explanation as to the use of "HOPE" comes from the historical notes of Howard M. Chapin published in Illustrations Of The Seals, Arms And Flags Of Rhode Island, printed by the Rhode Island Historical Society in 1930. On pages 4 and 5, Mr. Chapin wrote that the words and emblems on the Seal were probably inspired by the biblical phrase "HOPE we have as an anchor of the soul", contained in Hebrews, Chapter 6, verses 18 and 19.

 Our president-elect used the word HOPE seven times in his acceptance speech. HOPE has been a major theme of Barak Obama's campaign. So now it's time to "seize the HOPE set before us" and get down to the hard work of tending our garden of Rhode Island, building a green economy with productive industries and high-paying jobs,developing renewable energy capabilities, insisting on meaningful education for our children so they can support themselves and be successful, envisioning a booming economy and a budget surplus.

Wherever you go in Rhode Island, you'll probably see the word HOPE in your travels. You'll see the state flag, and remember it says HOPE.

Let's not let HOPE vanish again!

The 2008 $2.5 Million Open Space Bonds Question ~ Yes, it's a Bad Economy, But Vote YES Anyway

 Of course the Providential Gardener supports the Open Space and Recreational bonds issue, even though our economy is in a bad way. It's not possible for me to oppose it!  I hope you'll join me in voting YES on Question 2 next week.

On November 4, 2008, Rhode Islanders will vote on two statewide questions ~

#1 is Transportation funding and #2 is for Open Space and Recreational Development funding. The Providence Journal endorsed the first and opposed the second in an editorial on October 16. The reason Projo gave for supporting the $87 million transportation bonds issue was that it enables Rhode Island to get matching funds, and they felt that the additional $2.5 million open space issue was more than Rhode Island could afford given the current economic situation. Apparently the Projo editors didn't realize that if the $2.5 million for open space and recreational development bonds is not approved, Rhode Island would also lose matching federal and private funds.

The RI Secretary of State website gives background and information about the two bond issues. I'm mainly concerned with the second one (although there is more than $3.6 million for public transit busses in the transportation bond issue) Here's what #2 will do:

Approval and issuance of these bonds will provide funds to the Department of Environmental Management to purchase, or otherwise permanently protect through the purchase of title to, development rights, conservation easements and public recreation easements, greenways and other open space, recreation lands, agriculture lands, forested lands and state parks.

The $2.5 million will be spent between July 2009 and June 2011, and the value to the state, the "useful life" will be "in perpetuity," or as we mortals say, forever, longer than any of us will live to see.

The background on this bond issue is that during the spring 2008 legislative session, the governor originally proposed $5 million, and land trusts and other conservation groups lobbied hard for upping the bond issue to $15 million. For a while in June, it seemed that the open space bond issue was dead, but at the last moment, the legislature approved $2.5 million to put the question on the November ballot and to continue the conservation program rather than ending this effort all together. The importance of this bond issued was outlined on May 7, 2008, in a post on our sister website, What Grows On in Rhode Island News Blog.

The Providential Gardener supports the Open Space Bond this November 4, and joins many other Rhode Islanders in urging you to vote YES. Rhode Islanders have a long history of supporting land conservation bonds ~ more than 70% of us supported open space bonds in 2000 and 2004. The main argument against it this year is the economy and our desire to see that every Rhode Islander has enough to eat, a safe, warm home, and a job, but $2.5 milllion is an investment in our future with everlasting consequences. Remember, though, that it's hard to make money by farming. We love our farmers' markets, we're enthusiastically supporting local agriculture, and we love our beautiful state. We're already sacrificing the other $2.5 million to $12.5 million that we would have approved if we were in a thriving economy and if the legislature had not cut the governor's original proposal and resisted the pleas of conservation groups to increase the governor's proposal. This is the least we can do, to approve this $2.5 million, especially when the transportation bond issue is more than 35 times its size and is also needed for our badly deteriorating bridges and infrastructure ($80 mil), commuter rail ($3.57 mil), and busses ($3.67mil).

The bonds bring in many millions of matching funds and it's short-sighted not to pass them no matter what our current economic problems are.

For more comments on this issue see a recent Forbes article about Rhode Island, an article in the South County Independent, and The Nature Conservancy website.

Farmland and Open Space Protection Funding Bond Referendum

Since local farming and preservation of open space is such a popular cause in Rhode Island and previous bond issues have been overwhelmingly approved, I've posted the RI Land Trust Council's views and supporting information in their entirety on What Grows On in Rhode Island. If this is something you value, please see RI Land Trust Council President Rupert Friday's full appeal on the What Grows On in Rhode Island News Blog.