Join the Cranston Republican City Committee today!

Volunteer to share our commitment of fiscal responsibility and good government!

Contribute to help us get our message out to everyone!

OUR MISSION

The Cranston Republican City Committee (The Committee) is a volunteer organization actively engaged in the process of ensuring that the City of Cranston’s government operates ethically, effectively and efficiently. The Committee is committed to recruiting and supporting local candidates who share in the Cranston Republican City Committee’s desire to do what is in the best interest of the City.

OUR PRINCIPLES

1. Cranston taxpayers pay high taxes at the local, state and federal level. Our goal is to lower taxes in order to grow the economy.

2. To control government spending, compensation and benefit packages for all public employees must be affordable to Cranston’s taxpayers both now and in the future as these employees retire. The taxpayers of Cranston cannot afford health and retirement packages for public employees that are not comparable to the private sector.

3. Management rights in the public sector must be strengthened and cannot be negotiated away as part of any labor negotiating process. Strengthening management rights allows government to operate more efficiently.

4. All federal and state mandates should be fully funded by the federal or state government that issued the mandate. Any federal or state mandate that is not fully funded must be rescinded.

5. To bring more accountability to our educational system, the Cranston School Committee must be subject to the control of the City’s taxing authority (the Cranston City Council) or the Cranston School Committee must have its own taxing authority.

In the Providence Journal of July 20, Mayor Michael T. Napolitano broke another promise. His administration originally promised to fix the Natick Avenue bridge within two weeks of the April storm. Three months later the bridge is still closed, and the city does not have the $1 million to fix the bridge. The Napolitano administration is either incompetent or misleading the public once again. If Mayor Napolitano and a narrow 5-3 majority on the City Council could approve spending $750,000 on artificial turf at Cranston Stadium (with no definitive plan to increase stadium fees), maybe they could find the money in the capital budget to do a bridge repair. (ProJo 5/11/07). In particular, maybe Ward 4 Councilwoman Maria Bucci would like to reconsider her vote and spend the money on fixing a bridge in the ward she represents rather than spending money on artificial turf.

Also, the City Council has at least $680,000 in a contingency fund; maybe some of this money could be used for bridge repair (ProJo 6/27/07). Maybe Mayor Napolitano and the City Council can identify some of those short-term savings from the firefighters contract, which was recently approved, to help repair the bridge. (ProJo 6/21/07). There are many areas in the city budget where savings could be found, which could be used to repair the bridge, such as: the city payment to the union pension for the No. 2 staff member in the Napolitano administration (ProJo 6/26/07); not increasing the mayor’s staff, as Mayor Napolitano originally promised (ProJo 6/20/07); the savings in legal costs, in particular from firing respected labor lawyer Vincent Ragosta (Projo 2/13/07); the hospitalization buybacks given to the mayor himself and his administrative staff as a bonus for not taking city health insurance; and lastly, the expenses for renovating the mayor’s office after his supposedly health-threatening allergy attack. (ProJo 1/9/07)

More importantly, if the city does not have the money to pay for simple bridge repair, where is it going to get the get the money to pay the schools millions of dollars if the schools are successful in their upcoming lawsuit for school aid after Mayor Napolitano proposed to level fund the schools (ProJo 4/12/07 and 7/18/07). Is Mayor Napolitano going to continue to underfund the police and fire pension by approximately $1 million? Is he going to raise taxes again? Will he dip into the rainy-day fund as he promised he would not do? (ProJo 1/3/07).

If Cranston taxpayers believe anything coming from the Napolitano administration these days, as the old saying goes, I got a bridge to sell you … and it’s in as bad a shape as the one on Natick Avenue!

Bruce P. Saccoccio