Measured Results For Specific Projects
Easton’s Beach: Planning for a Resilient Future
Easton’s Beach in Newport, Rhode Island presented one of the most consequential infrastructure and resiliency challenges I managed as City Manager. Years of coastal exposure and increasingly damaging storm events had left major beach facilities deteriorated and vulnerable, and earlier studies had focused largely on replacing failing structures. Following the demolition of the structurally compromised Snack Bar and portions of the Carousel building in 2024, I worked with our Public Services team, Beach Commission, City Council and a multidisciplinary consultant team led by DBVW Architects, Fuss & O’Neill and Woods Hole Group to broaden the question: rather than simply rebuilding what had been there before, what should Newport’s public beach look like for the next generation, and what investments could reasonably withstand the conditions we know the site will face? We launched a second-phase resiliency and facilities planning effort that combined coastal engineering and storm modeling with an extensive public process—including listening sessions, surveys, site walks, workshops and design exercises—to develop alternatives for beach nourishment, dunes, public amenities, parking and the remaining structures. At the same time, I made Easton’s Beach a major component of the City’s infrastructure financing strategy, securing $11.2 million in local bond authorization for design and construction and positioning those funds to serve as leverage for outside resiliency grants. Although the City ultimately was not invited to submit the approximately $10 million National Fish & Wildlife Foundation grant application we had hoped would substantially augment that investment, the City entered the next phase with significant local funding already committed and a technically informed plan shaped by community input. The consultant team completed its final resiliency and facilities plan in 2026, the Beach Commission advanced its recommendation to the City Council, and the project has since progressed into schematic design—moving Newport from years of reacting to deterioration and storm damage toward a deliberate, long-term strategy for protecting and reinvesting in one of the City’s most important public assets.
Cliff Walk: From Emergency Repair to Long-Term Resilience
Newport, Rhode Island’s 3.5-mile Cliff Walk is both an internationally recognized historic attraction and a critical component of the City’s tourism economy, but its location atop an exposed and constantly changing coastal bluff also makes it one of our most vulnerable public assets. After approximately 20 feet of the walkway suddenly collapsed into Easton Bay in March 2022, followed by another significant failure that December, the City began what became a multi-year effort to reopen the closed section between Narragansett Avenue and Webster Street. When I became City Manager in July 2024, the engineering work was underway, but the project still faced two formidable challenges: assembling the capital necessary to undertake an unusually difficult repair from the top of the cliff, and navigating a complex web of federal environmental review, historic-preservation requirements, private-property access agreements and state and federal coastal permits. I worked with our Public Services, Planning, Finance and legal teams, engineering consultants, RIDOT and federal and state partners to keep those parallel tracks moving, ultimately assembling a $22.75 million capital stack that combined an $11 million Federal Highway Administration PROTECT grant, $5 million in Congressionally Directed Spending, $3 million from Rhode Island’s Green Bond program, and $3.75 million from Newport’s 2024 Infrastructure Bond, portions of which would provide the local matches necessary to leverage the outside funding. During my tenure, we also advanced the project through the National Environmental Policy Act process and applications to the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council, Department of Environmental Management and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The CRMC review proved particularly complicated, with regulators generally supportive of restoring and stabilizing the public Cliff Walk but raising concerns about one portion of the proposed shoreline stabilization adjacent to private property. Rather than view the collapse solely as a repair project, however, I also wanted Newport to change the way it managed the Cliff Walk itself. Drawing on my Navy and oceanography background, I asked how we could better understand changes occurring in the cliff face before they became catastrophic failures. One of my first hires as City Manager was Newport’s Director of Resilience and Sustainability, and together we developed a partnership with the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography’s COASTL laboratory to use drones and LiDAR to establish a geologic baseline and periodically monitor subtle changes in the cliff face. That scientific component helped unlock philanthropic support from the van Beuren Charitable Foundation for both URI’s monitoring work and a broader City resilience and long-term management plan. At the same time, we continued improving the portions of the Walk that remained open, advancing approximately $1 million in Ørsted-funded walkway repairs and planning replacement public restrooms at Forty Steps. Since my departure, the City Council has formally advanced the federal PROTECT grant agreement while the permitting process continues. The result is a project that I believe should ultimately accomplish much more than repairing two failed sections of walkway: it establishes the funding, scientific monitoring and management framework necessary to help Newport preserve the Cliff Walk as a public resource for generations to come..
RIDOT Coordination: Turning Local Priorities into State Action
Some of the most important transportation corridors in Newport, Rhode Island are controlled not by the City, but by the Rhode Island Department of Transportation, which means that responding to resident concerns or carrying out City Council transportation policies often requires sustained advocacy and cooperation rather than a simple municipal work order. As City Manager, I made developing a productive working relationship with RIDOT a priority, maintaining regular communication with its leadership, engineers and project staff to advance a series of pedestrian, traffic-safety and quality-of-life improvements across the City. That relationship was particularly important as Newport worked through the final impacts of RIDOT’s major Pell Bridge Approaches project in the North End. When the City Council directed that the upper portion of Bridge Street become one-way toward Thames Street, for example, the change could not effectively occur until RIDOT modified pavement markings and signal operations at the state-controlled intersection of America’s Cup Avenue and Gladys Carr Bolhouse Road/Bridge Street. I coordinated with RIDOT to get that work authorized and completed, allowing my administration to immediately bring forward the ordinance change necessary to implement the Council’s policy. I similarly worked with RIDOT on pedestrian-safety concerns at the heavily traveled Bannister’s Wharf crosswalk on America’s Cup Avenue, where the Council sought accelerated signal and visibility improvements, and on longstanding neighborhood concerns along Admiral Kalbfus Road. After residents and the Council objected to a proposed relocation of the eastbound stop bar and continued to raise concerns about heavy trucks using this residential state highway, I worked directly with RIDOT engineering staff to preserve the existing stop-bar location while pursuing additional truck-route signage and state GIS mapping changes intended to steer Class 7 and larger trucks toward the more appropriate Coddington Highway route after the State Traffic Commission declined to impose an outright restriction. Our coordination extended beyond pavement and signals to the appearance and livability of the North End as well. I worked with RIDOT and City staff to establish Council-approved shared-maintenance arrangements for landscaping and the new dog park created through the Pell Bridge project, positioning the City and State to undertake substantial tree and shrub planting around the Halsey Street terminus and Prescott Hall neighborhood, the City Yard, the reconstructed rotary and J.T. Connell Highway. Individually, these were relatively modest interventions compared with Newport’s major capital projects, but collectively they illustrate an important part of municipal executive leadership: recognizing when the City does not control the asset, building relationships with the agency that does, and persistently translating the priorities of residents and elected officials into tangible improvements on the ground.
Resilience & Sustainability Trust: Exploring a Permanent Funding Model
Newport faces extraordinary long term costs associated with coastal resilience, aging infrastructure and climate adaptation, and Fire Chief and Emergency Management Director Harp Donnelly brought forward an innovative question: rather than continually addressing those needs through individual grants, bonds and annual capital appropriations, could Newport establish a dedicated funding mechanism that would build resources for resilience over time? I believed the idea deserved serious exploration and worked with Chief Donnelly, our Resilience and Sustainability leadership and members of the City Council to help move the concept from an interesting proposal toward a structured examination of its feasibility. The timing was particularly appropriate as Newport was simultaneously confronting major investments in the Cliff Walk, shoreline protection, stormwater management and other climate-vulnerable infrastructure. That groundwork ultimately helped lead to the City Council’s creation of an Ad Hoc Resilience and Sustainability Fund Steering Committee in March 2026, charged with examining potential funding mechanisms and determining whether a dedicated resilience fund could work for Newport. The initiative remained exploratory when I left the City, and I think that distinction is important: our accomplishment was not declaring that we already knew the right financing mechanism, but recognizing a promising idea, assembling the right expertise around it, and creating a disciplined public process to determine whether it could become a financially and legally viable tool for future generations.
Stormwater Utility: Aligning Infrastructure Costs with Their Cause
Newport faces substantial long term stormwater needs, from maintaining miles of aging drainage infrastructure to addressing recurrent flooding, water quality and the effects of a changing coastal environment. Yet the City’s existing rate structure embeds stormwater costs within its wastewater charge, meaning those costs are largely allocated according to how much water a customer uses rather than how much runoff a property actually generates. The City Council and I believed we needed to examine whether there was a fairer and more sustainable way to fund that increasingly important municipal service. In 2024, my administration initiated a comprehensive water and wastewater rate study that grew to include evaluation of a dedicated stormwater utility and rate structure. Working with our Utilities Department and outside rate consultants, we began developing an approach that would separate stormwater costs from wastewater consumption and instead allocate them according to impervious surface—roofs, driveways, parking lots and other hard surfaces that actually generate runoff. Just as importantly, we built public engagement into the process rather than treating a significant change in utility billing as a purely technical exercise, using workshops and community feedback to examine affordability, fairness and the impacts on different types of properties. By the time I left Newport, the study had progressed from concept to a detailed rate framework based on Equivalent Residential Units, with the City evaluating how credits for private stormwater improvements and other protections could encourage property owners to help reduce runoff as well as pay their appropriate share of system costs. The ultimate rate structure remained a decision for the City Council following completion of the study and public process, but I was proud to help move Newport toward a more transparent principle for financing stormwater infrastructure: where practical, the cost of managing runoff should be connected to the property characteristics that create it rather than an unrelated measure of how much water happens to come through the meter.
Public Communications: Building Capacity for Transparency & Engagement
Good local government depends not only on doing the work, but on giving residents practical ways to understand what their government is doing, why decisions are being made and how they can participate. When I became City Manager, Newport’s Communications Department consisted of a single employee despite an increasingly complex portfolio of capital projects, policy initiatives and public-engagement efforts. I made strengthening that function an organizational priority, ultimately expanding the department from one employee to three and using that additional capacity to fundamentally broaden how the City communicated with its residents. We established The Current, a weekly email newsletter providing timely updates on City government and community issues, and Wavelengths, a quarterly print publication designed to reach residents who might not regularly follow municipal websites, social media or email. We also reinvigorated the City’s “Engage Newport” platform as a centralized source for deeper information about major projects and initiatives, giving residents a place to follow project timelines, review documents, learn about upcoming decisions and engagement opportunities, and communicate with the staff actually managing the work. Together, these efforts created a communications system operating at several levels: immediate digital updates for residents who wanted to stay current, a recurring print product capable of reaching a broader audience, and detailed project-specific information for people who wanted to engage more deeply. For me, expanding the Communications Department was therefore not about promoting City government; it was about building the institutional capacity for City government to explain itself. As Newport undertook increasingly consequential work involving infrastructure, resilience, transportation, housing and neighborhood change, I believed residents deserved communication that was regular, accessible and substantive enough to let them understand—and participate in—the work their government was doing.
Recreation Investment: Chafee Splash Pad & Murphy Field
One of my priorities was to make sure Newport aggressively pursued outside funding for quality-of-life investments as well as its larger infrastructure needs. In 2025, my administration developed and submitted two applications to the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management’s Outdoor Recreation Grant program targeting needs identified through the City’s parks planning and community-engagement processes. The larger request focused on the John Chafee Recreation Area, where a public splash pad had emerged as the most requested new recreational amenity during community workshops. Rather than treat it as a standalone feature, we developed the proposal as a broader improvement to the recreation complex, incorporating restrooms, shade, ADA-accessible connections, landscaping and green stormwater features that would also benefit users of the adjacent skate park and basketball court. That effort resulted in a $500,000 RIDEM award accepted by the City Council in May 2026. At the same time, we pursued additional RIDEM funding for Murphy Field as part of the City’s response to a growing shortage of safe youth practice space following the loss of other playing fields available to Newport families. Together, the applications reflected an approach I tried to bring to capital planning throughout my tenure: listen to what residents say is missing, connect those priorities to adopted parks and recreation plans, and then actively pursue state and federal resources that can turn community aspirations into projects without placing the entire financial burden on local taxpayers.
North End Redevelopment: Turning Newly Available Land into a Long-Term Community Asset
The completion of the Pell Bridge realignment presented Newport, Rhode Island with a rare opportunity: more than 20 acres of former state highway property in the North End could become available for redevelopment in an area the City had spent years planning to reconnect, revitalize and diversify economically. As City Manager of Newport, I viewed the disposition of those parcels not simply as a real-estate transaction, but as an opportunity to advance the broader goals established through the North End Urban Plan and subsequent City policies—including economic development, workforce housing, improved connectivity and resilience. When RIDOT offered the bridge realignment parcels to Newport, I worked with our Planning, Finance and legal teams to evaluate the opportunity and support the City Council as it considered acquisition. Recognizing that responsible negotiation required an independent understanding of value, my administration initiated the appraisal process and, following Council direction in early 2026, selected a consultant to perform a second appraisal review so that differences in valuation could be reconciled before negotiating a purchase-and-sale agreement. My objective was to preserve Newport's ability to use portions of the property strategically for stormwater and resiliency improvements while ultimately returning appropriate land to productive use through redevelopment consistent with the community's long-term vision for the North End. At the same time, I maintained direct dialogue with the Carpionato Group regarding its neighboring former Newport Grand/Jai Alai property, a roughly 23-acre privately owned site whose redevelopment could substantially influence whether that vision succeeds. Those conversations required balancing legitimate private-development economics—including significant infrastructure and environmental remediation costs—with Newport's adopted planning objectives and its need for housing attainable to the local workforce. Rather than treating either property in isolation, I approached the RIDOT parcels, the Carpionato site and the surrounding public infrastructure as interconnected pieces of the same neighborhood. The work was still underway when I left Newport, with the City's second appraisal subsequently completed and staff positioned to reconcile valuations and pursue acquisition consistent with Council direction. The larger objective, however, remained constant: use an extraordinary, once-in-a-generation change in Newport's physical landscape to create a more resilient, connected and economically productive North End while ensuring that public investment and private development ultimately serve the community vision established for it.
Rogers High School: Replacing Misinformation with Environmental Science
Construction of Newport, Rhode Island’s new Rogers High School generated a substantial stockpile of excavated soil on a site with a complicated environmental history, including portions of a former municipal disposal area dating back decades. By the time I became City Manager, the pile had become both an environmental management issue and a significant source of public concern, with descriptions of a “toxic dirt pile” and assumptions that tens of thousands of cubic yards would inevitably have to be excavated and transported off Aquidneck Island at enormous public expense. I believed the City needed to separate legitimate environmental concerns from speculation and let the science determine the appropriate remedy. Working with our environmental consultant, VHB, and the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, my administration advanced a comprehensive Site Investigation using soil borings, test pits, groundwater monitoring wells and soil-gas sampling to characterize conditions not simply within the stockpile, but across the former Harrison Avenue disposal site. The investigation confirmed historic contamination that requires responsible management—including elevated concentrations of lead and other constituents in certain locations—but it did not support the assumption that the entire stockpile required wholesale removal. Instead, the consultant evaluated alternatives ranging from complete excavation and off-site disposal to targeted remediation and recommended an approach centered on addressing areas with the highest lead concentrations, grading and capping appropriate material on site, maintaining protective surface barriers, monitoring groundwater and establishing an Environmental Land Use Restriction governing future disturbance. I worked to communicate that distinction publicly: acknowledging the contamination we actually found without overstating the environmental risk or committing taxpayers to an extraordinarily expensive remedy before RIDEM completed its regulatory review. Subsequent trenching associated with preservation of the former Newport Area Career and Technical Center building confirmed a limited area of lead impacted soil that required off-site disposal, and the City continued working with RIDEM on additional delineation necessary to define that area before a final site-wide remedy could be approved. At the same time, I wanted the community involved in determining what this property could become once the environmental work was resolved, and my staff began preparing a public engagement process to help shape its future use. The objective throughout was straightforward: follow the environmental evidence, remediate what genuinely requires remediation, avoid unnecessary public expense where material can safely remain under an approved regulatory remedy, and ultimately return a highly visible piece of public property to productive community use.
Florence Gray Community Learning Center: Regional Cooperation in Action
The Florence Gray Community Learning Center offered Newport and neighboring Middletown an opportunity to demonstrate what municipal cooperation can accomplish when communities look beyond jurisdictional boundaries and focus instead on the residents they collectively serve. Working together, Newport and Middletown successfully secured more than $7.5 million through Rhode Island’s federal pandemic recovery funding to transform the Florence Gray Center in Newport’s North End into a modern regional community learning center. Newport agreed to serve as the lead municipality and grant administrator, and as City Manager I oversaw our role in moving the project from funding award through design, procurement and construction while coordinating with Middletown, the Newport Housing Authority, the Boys & Girls Clubs of Newport County, the State’s Pandemic Recovery Office and the organizations that would ultimately provide services within the building. During my tenure as City Manager, I brought a succession of project actions before the City Council—including owner’s representative, architectural and engineering, environmental, construction management, and furniture, fixtures and equipment contracts—to keep an unusually complex, federally funded renovation moving within its grant requirements and schedule. The approximately 15,700 square foot project will breathe new life into the center and its previously vacant Gallagher Wing, creating seven classrooms, two computer labs, four multipurpose rooms, a telemedicine room and substantially improved spaces for organizations serving residents of both communities. As construction progressed, the project also reached the milestone necessary to unlock an additional $95,000 programming grant, helping ensure that our investment was not simply in a building, but in the services and opportunities that would fill it. By the time I left Newport, construction was approximately three-quarters complete and advancing toward completion, with the City and its partners already preparing for programming and re-occupancy. For me, Florence Gray exemplifies one of the most important opportunities available to local government: neighboring communities do not need to duplicate every facility or service within their own borders. By pooling resources, sharing responsibility and using Newport’s administrative capacity to manage a major grant on behalf of a broader partnership, we were able to convert outside funding into a community asset designed to serve residents across municipal lines.
Former Navy Hospital: Unlocking a Long-Stranded Waterfront Asset
Few properties better illustrate both the opportunity and frustration of Newport, Rhode Island’s North End than the former Navy Hospital, a roughly ten-acre waterfront site that the Navy declared surplus through the Base Realignment and Closure process but that remained in federal ownership more than fifteen years later. When I became City Manager of Newport, I saw resolving that impasse as essential to realizing Newport’s long term vision for the North End: opening additional waterfront to the public while creating opportunities for ocean economy, technology, research and other employment-generating uses that could diversify a local economy heavily dependent on tourism and hospitality. I initially worked through local Naval Station leadership, our congressional delegation, federal environmental regulators and specialized legal counsel to restart a disposition process that had repeatedly stalled, and by late 2024 we had succeeded in bringing the necessary federal parties back into active discussions. The City Council subsequently began considering potential acquisition of the property, while my administration worked through the environmental, historic preservation and conveyance questions that would determine what a transaction could actually look like. Progress was frustratingly slow, and a Navy letter of intent received in May 2026 outlined potential conveyance pathways and timelines without providing the firm commitments I believed Newport needed. I therefore began a more direct dialogue with senior Navy leadership, including the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy, Installations and Environment, while continuing to coordinate closely with Senator Jack Reed’s office and our legal team. By the time I left Newport, those conversations had become increasingly productive around either a negotiated sale or an alternative federal conveyance mechanism that could better advance public purposes. We had also substantially resolved the environmental status question with EPA Region 1, leaving treatment of the site’s historic World War I-era buildings as a principal remaining issue in discussions with the Rhode Island Historical Preservation & Heritage Commission. At the same time, I recommended that Newport protect its interests through its own land use authority rather than simply wait for Washington: because existing zoning could make a hotel the economically highest and best use of the property, my administration proposed zoning changes intended to preserve the site for uses more consistent with the North End Urban Plan’s goals for economic diversification, innovation and public waterfront access. My approach was therefore two-track—negotiate persistently with the federal government to finally unlock a long stranded public asset while using the tools available to the City to ensure that, whenever the property changed hands, its future would reflect Newport’s community vision rather than be determined solely by its immediate real estate value.
Safe Streets and Roads for All: Building a Regional Transportation Partnership
Transportation on Aquidneck Island is inherently regional: residents routinely cross municipal boundaries as they travel among Newport, Middletown and Portsmouth, and many of the Island’s most important corridors connect all three communities. Recognizing that reality, the three municipalities worked together to pursue a major implementation grant through the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Safe Streets and Roads for All program, ultimately securing $19.25 million in federal funding for roadway, sidewalk, bicycle and pedestrian safety improvements across Aquidneck Island. As City Manager, my role extended beyond Newport’s individual projects. Newport agreed to serve as the fiscal and administrative lead for the regional award, requiring my team to build an implementation structure capable of managing a significant federal grant on behalf of three separate municipal governments. We developed fiscal agency memoranda of agreement with Middletown and Portsmouth, worked through legal and matching fund requirements, and conducted a detailed RASIC analysis to define who would be responsible, accountable, supporting, informed and consulted as individual projects moved from federal award through design, procurement and construction. Within Newport, I also worked with our Planning and Development team and City Council to connect the grant to transportation priorities the community had already established through the Keep Newport Moving Transportation Master Plan and the City’s Vision Zero commitment, including improvements to Narragansett Avenue that would help close an important gap in Newport’s pedestrian and bicycle network. The regional award was publicly announced in Newport in June 2026 with members of Rhode Island’s congressional delegation and representatives of all three communities, marking an important transition from years of transportation planning to implementation. The administrative framework we established also positioned Newport to respond when circumstances subsequently changed: after my departure, Middletown and Portsmouth reduced the portions of the award they intended to pursue because of local matching and project considerations, creating an opportunity for Newport to accept millions of dollars in additional federal funding and expand the scope of its own safety investments. The project illustrates both the potential and the complexity of regional municipal cooperation—communities can compete more effectively for transformative federal resources when they work together, but someone must also build the financial, legal and organizational structure necessary to turn a shared award into projects on the ground.
Wastewater Infrastructure & Regional Stormwater Management: Managing Urgent Risk While Pursuing Long-Term Accountability
Municipal infrastructure rarely fails according to the timetable in a capital improvement plan. In 2025, inspections of all six primary clarifiers at Newport’s Water Pollution Control Plant produced an unwelcome surprise: equipment we had anticipated could provide another three to five years of service instead showed deterioration suggesting the potential for failure within zero to two years. Because Newport’s treatment plant serves not only the City but also neighboring Middletown and Naval Station Newport, a catastrophic clarifier failure would carry significant financial, operational and environmental consequences well beyond our municipal boundaries. Faced with an unplanned project approaching $25 million, I directed my leadership team to move simultaneously on construction and financing rather than allow uncertainty over the ultimate funding source to delay an urgent infrastructure response. We developed several financing alternatives involving existing City bond proceeds, revenue financing and Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank programs. When the City Council declined my initial recommendation to reallocate previously authorized General Obligation bond funds because members believed those proceeds should remain associated with the projects voters had originally supported, I respected that policy judgment and immediately pivoted to another solution: a $6 million temporary interfund loan from the City’s unassigned General Fund balance to provide the cash flow necessary to keep the project moving while we pursued long term financing through the Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank. My administration worked with the Bank on both Clean Water State Revolving Fund and conduit loan possibilities, preserving multiple financing paths while construction advanced and positioning the City to reimburse its General Fund once permanent financing was secured. At the same time, I continued working with Middletown’s Town Administrator on a separate but closely related issue that had resisted resolution for years: updating the intermunicipal agreement governing stormwater and wet weather flows entering Newport’s wastewater system from Middletown. Rather than allow the issue to drift indefinitely, I maintained it as an active priority throughout my tenure, working with our utilities staff and legal counsel toward an agreement that would more fairly allocate the costs created by wet weather flows while giving Middletown a meaningful financial incentive to reduce inflow and infiltration entering the regional system. By the time I left Newport, the clarifier replacement was underway, permanent financing remained actively in development, and the revised Middletown agreement was in final legal review. Together, the two efforts reflect the approach I brought to utility management: act quickly when infrastructure risk demands it, develop financing alternatives rather than allow a preferred solution to become a bottleneck, and persist with the less visible intergovernmental work necessary to make a regional system financially and environmentally sustainable over the long term.
South End Traffic Study: From Piecemeal Decisions to Network Planning
Traffic management in Newport’s historic neighborhoods is rarely as simple as changing the direction of a street or installing a stop sign: on a tightly interconnected network of narrow streets, solving a problem on one block can simply move it to the next. That became particularly apparent in 2024 when the City Council directed that traffic on Dixon Street be reversed in response to longstanding neighborhood safety concerns. I supported implementing the Council’s decision, but cautioned at the time that changing Dixon Street in isolation could redirect traffic onto nearby Hammond Avenue. When Hammond subsequently became the subject of another Council resolution calling for a traffic study, my Director of Public Safety and I recommended that Newport resist commissioning another isolated analysis and instead use the opportunity to examine the broader network of narrow streets throughout the South End. That approach was consistent with the City’s 2023 Keep Newport MovingTransportation Master Plan, which had established a comprehensive framework for improving safety, circulation and multimodal transportation but which the Council had reasonably pressed the administration to move more aggressively from planning into implementation. My administration secured Council funding for an area traffic study in December 2025 and subsequently conducted a competitive consultant selection process, ultimately engaging Bowman Engineering to undertake the work. We also recognized that when we collected the data mattered: residents were understandably concerned that studying traffic during Newport’s quieter months would fail to capture the conditions they experience during the peak summer tourism season, so the project was structured to include summer traffic counts and analysis. Just as importantly, I wanted neighborhood experience to inform the engineering work, and the study paired quantitative traffic data with four community listening sessions designed to identify safety, circulation and quality-of-life concerns that numbers alone might not reveal. The first listening session had been completed and summer data collection was underway by the time I left Newport. Rather than answer one traffic concern with one isolated intervention, we used the Council’s request as an opportunity to advance a larger piece of Newport’s adopted transportation strategy and establish an evidence-based framework for evaluating future changes across an entire neighborhood. For me, it was an example of how a City Manager can take a specific policy direction from the governing body, implement its intent, and at the same time broaden the administrative response so that the eventual solution addresses the system rather than merely the symptom.
Gateway Center Public Restrooms: Closing a Seasonal Service Gap
Newport, Rhode Island’s Gateway Center is a primary arrival point for downtown visitors, but the public restrooms at its RIPTA-controlled transit facility historically operated only from Memorial Day through October 31—a schedule increasingly out of step with a tourism season that extends well into the spring and holiday months. As City Manager, I worked with RIPTA and Discover Newport to develop a cooperative arrangement that kept the facilities open through November and December, sharing responsibility for the additional cleaning and operating requirements. An unusually warm and busy May in 2025 exposed the other side of the problem, as residents and visitors arrived downtown weeks before the restrooms were scheduled to open. Rather than accept the seasonal gap as someone else’s responsibility, I worked with RIPTA to explore a more durable arrangement under which the City could assume operating and janitorial responsibilities or extend the partnership to provide restroom access beginning May 1. It was a relatively small initiative, but representative of my approach to municipal problem-solving: identify a service that is not meeting the community’s needs, bring the organizations with the ability to fix it together, and work toward a practical solution regardless of whose name is on the facility.
Congressional Advocacy & Lead Service Line Replacement
I viewed Newport’s relationships with Rhode Island’s congressional delegation as an important extension of our capital and infrastructure strategy. Rather than wait for federal opportunities to find us, I encouraged our leadership team to maintain regular communication with the offices of Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse and Congressman Gabe Amo, identify projects that aligned with available federal programs, and compete aggressively for Congressionally Directed Spending. One result was a FY2026 request for approximately $4.5 million to accelerate Newport’s lead service line replacement program. Although Congress ultimately funded $1.092 million of that request, the award provides meaningful outside capital that Newport can target toward eliminating lead exposure at priority locations, including schools and facilities serving young children, while advancing the City’s larger obligation to remove lead service lines throughout the water system. We continued that approach in the FY2027 appropriations cycle, pursuing additional federal support for maintenance and modernization of Newport’s wastewater treatment infrastructure. For me, the larger lesson was that federal advocacy should not be episodic: well-developed relationships with a congressional delegation and its professional staff, combined with a prepared list of well-defined and defensible municipal projects, can continually create opportunities to bring outside resources home to the community.
Henderson Home: Preserving a Human Services Mission by Reconsidering the Model
The Henderson Home for Aged Men represents an unusual municipal responsibility rooted in a historic charitable bequest, but by the time I became City Manager, its aging facility at 14 Clarke Street presented a difficult question: how could Newport preserve the institution’s mission while operating from a building increasingly ill-suited to providing modern residential care? Rather than allow deferred maintenance and operating challenges to continue accumulating, I worked with the Henderson Home Commission and City staff to bring the issue into a broader strategic discussion about what the Home should look like in the future. That meant separating the mission from the building itself and examining several alternatives: making the substantial capital investment necessary to renovate and modernize the existing historic structure; selling the property and acquiring a more appropriate facility elsewhere in Newport; or partnering with an established community housing or service organization capable of carrying the Henderson mission forward through a different operating model. Those alternatives were presented to the City Council in a dedicated workshop in March 2026, allowing elected officials to consider the financial, operational, historic-preservation and human-service implications before committing the City to a particular course. The process was still underway when I left Newport, but I believe the important first step was changing the question from “How do we keep this building operating?” to “What is the most responsible way to preserve William Henderson’s purpose and continue serving aging residents?” Sometimes stewardship of a longstanding institution requires preserving its mission precisely by being willing to reconsider the facility and operating model through which that mission has historically been delivered.
Cruise Ship Fees: Early Intervention in the State Budget
Effective intergovernmental advocacy often begins simply by paying close attention. When the Governor’s proposed FY2027 State budget was released in January 2026, I was reviewing the municipal provisions and immediately identified a proposal with significant implications for Newport: increasing the City’s cruise ship landing and boarding fees by 50 percent, from $10 to $15 per passenger each way, with the additional revenue diverted to help support RIPTA operations. The proposal was particularly concerning because Newport had successfully sought legislative authority to increase the same fees from $3 to $10 only two years earlier, and cruise lines were already making future port-of-call decisions based on the new $20 round-trip passenger charge. I was concerned that another abrupt increase to $30 could undermine Newport’s competitiveness as a cruise destination, disrupt bookings already made under the existing fee structure, and ultimately reduce the municipal revenue and shoulder-season economic activity those visits generate. Because we identified the issue at the beginning of the legislative process, I was able to engage the City’s legislative consultants early, coordinate with City Councilors and other stakeholders, and ensure Newport’s concerns were communicated while the General Assembly was still evaluating the Governor’s proposal. The City Council subsequently adopted a formal resolution opposing the increase, and the cruise industry raised similar concerns during the legislative process. Ultimately, the General Assembly removed the proposal from the adopted State budget, preserving Newport’s existing fee structure. For me, the episode demonstrated the value of maintaining strong legislative relationships and actively monitoring decisions beyond City Hall: sometimes protecting a community’s interests depends on recognizing an issue early enough to influence it rather than reacting after the decision has already been made.
Blizzard of 2026: Preparedness Put into Practice
Emergency management is most effective when relationships, responsibilities and decision-making structures are established before the emergency begins. Approximately eighteen months before the Blizzard of 2026, as City Manager participated with Newport’s emergency management team in a tabletop exercise built around a major winter storm—an exercise that proved remarkably prescient when more than 34 inches of wet, heavy snow fell on Newport over February 22–23, accompanied by blizzard conditions and damaging winds. As City Manager, I helped lead the City’s preparation, response and recovery through a continuously staffed Emergency Operations Center that brought police, fire, EMS, public works, utilities, information technology and executive leadership together around a common operating picture. Many of the challenges we had previously worked through on paper suddenly became real: we pre-arranged lodging so essential employees who lived outside Newport could remain available despite travel restrictions; coordinated closely with the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency through WebEOC; aligned City and school closures; tracked storm-related expenditures for potential federal reimbursement; and maintained continuous communication with residents and the City Council as conditions evolved neighborhood by neighborhood. Once the storm passed, the challenge shifted from emergency response to an enormous logistical recovery effort. Newport’s narrow historic streets, dense on-street parking and extraordinary volume of heavy snow meant that conventional plowing alone was insufficient, requiring physical snow removal while we competed with communities across the region for specialized outside equipment. Through coordination with RIEMA, RIDOT and mutual-aid resources, we brought in additional equipment—including rotary plows and dump trucks—to attack major corridors while Newport’s own Public Services crews concentrated on neighborhood streets. Throughout the recovery, I worked closely with our communications team to explain priorities, set realistic expectations and keep residents and Council members informed as access was restored across the City. The storm tested virtually every component of our emergency management organization, but it also demonstrated the value of preparation: the procedures, relationships and expectations we had established through training allowed our team to respond calmly to a generational event and move Newport from emergency operations toward normalcy within days. For me, the experience reinforced a lesson I carried from my Navy career into municipal management: crisis leadership begins long before the crisis arrives.
Building Inspection Services: Maintaining Continuity Through a Critical Vacancy
Newport’s active construction and renovation market creates sustained demand for building permits, plan reviews and inspections, making continuity in the Building Official’s office particularly important to residents, contractors and the local economy. When our Building Official resigned in early 2025, the City faced both a significant existing workload and the challenge of recruiting a permanent replacement from a limited statewide pool of appropriately certified professionals. Rather than allow the vacancy to compound the permitting backlog, my administration engaged 4LEAF to provide interim, on-call building official, plan review and inspection capacity while we conducted the search for a permanent replacement. The arrangement gave the City the flexibility to direct internal alternate building official resources toward the backlog while maintaining time-sensitive and on-call permitting and inspection services during the transition rather than lowering service expectations simply because a difficult-to-fill position was vacant. It was a straightforward management response to a staffing problem, but an important one: when a specialized employee leaves, the community and development industry still need government to function, and my responsibility was to create enough organizational capacity to keep the work moving while we pursued a sustainable permanent solution.
525 Broadway: Balancing Housing Development and Infrastructure Resilience
Newport, Rhode Island’s need for additional year-round workforce housing made the proposed redevelopment of 525 Broadway an opportunity worth facilitating, but adding substantial residential density also required careful attention to the infrastructure impacts of development. As the 38-unit multifamily proposal moved through the City’s review process, I worked with our Planning and Utilities teams to ensure that supporting new housing did not mean accepting avoidable impacts on an already constrained municipal stormwater system. During technical review, the developer initially presented a stormwater design that met State minimum requirements, while City staff pressed for additional capacity consistent with Newport’s own standards. As those negotiations progressed, however, I also believed the City needed to distinguish between infrastructure reasonably attributable to the development and work Newport would eventually have undertaken on its own. We therefore negotiated a cost-sharing solution: the developer agreed to construct the upstream stormwater improvements necessary to support the project, while the City assumed responsibility for the portion beneath the Broadway curb that our Utilities Department already anticipated installing within its five-year capital horizon. To further reduce costs, we reached an agreement allowing City Utilities personnel to perform the excavation and installation themselves, turning the project into an opportunity for hands-on staff training while avoiding contractor expenses. In exchange, the developer understood that municipal crews could occasionally be redirected when storms or other urgent utility needs took precedence. The arrangement ultimately worked, allowing the housing development to advance with substantially improved stormwater infrastructure while fairly allocating costs and building additional capability within the City workforce. For me, it was a good example of constructive development negotiation: set a high standard where the public interest requires it, recognize when government also has an obligation to contribute, and look for creative ways to produce a better result at lower cost for both the public and private parties.
The Newport Elephants: Turning a Temporary Exhibition into a Permanent Community Feature
Not every worthwhile City project involves millions of dollars or years of engineering. Following the enormously popular Great Elephant Migration exhibition in Newport in 2024, Art&Newport approached me with an unexpected offer: the City could keep one—and ultimately two—of the handcrafted elephant sculptures permanently, but we had very little time to decide whether to accept them. I quickly consulted with City Council members, found strong interest in preserving a piece of the exhibition for the community, and brought forward the action necessary for the City to accept the gift before the opportunity expired. Rather than rush the elephants into whatever public space happened to be available, we then worked with the Tree & Open Space Commission to identify an appropriate permanent home, ultimately settling on Aquidneck Park and securing Council approval for the placement. After months in storage, the elephants were installed and quickly became a popular and whimsical addition to the neighborhood. It was a small project compared with many of the initiatives I managed in Newport, but one I particularly enjoyed: recognize a fleeting opportunity, move quickly enough not to lose it, then slow down enough to engage the right people and make the final result something the community could embrace.
Automated Noise Enforcement: From Local Prototype to National Attention
Newport’s automated vehicle noise enforcement program began before my tenure through the advocacy of former City Councilor Mark Aramli, who pushed the City to find a better way to address persistent complaints about excessively loud vehicles. What began as an innovative local prototype evolved into an increasingly sophisticated enforcement tool, and as City Manager I made sure the initiative did not lose momentum as it moved from experimentation toward a sustainable Police Department program. I continued advocating for the technology with our Police leadership while the City worked with a specialized vendor to refine the system, combining acoustic detection with cameras capable of documenting vehicles exceeding Newport’s noise standard. As the technology matured and demonstrated its usefulness, my administration brought the remaining program work before the City Council and ultimately secured approval to purchase an additional automated noise-enforcement unit, expanding the Police Department’s ability to deploy the technology where recurring vehicle-noise problems were occurring. The effort eventually attracted national attention, with The Wall Street Journal featuring Newport in its coverage of the emerging use of noise camera technology by communities around the country. I was pleased to help carry forward an idea that originated with an elected official and turn it into an operational capability for the City—an example of how good municipal innovation can begin with one person’s idea, improve through collaboration among policymakers, staff and private-sector expertise, and ultimately become part of the organization’s regular toolkit.
Newport Festivals: Institutionalizing Interagency Security Planning
I became City Manager of Newport, Rhode Island immediately before the 2024 Folk and Jazz Festivals, two internationally recognized events that bring large crowds to Fort Adams State Park and require close coordination among a private event operator, municipal public safety agencies and the State of Rhode Island. After that first festival season, Newport Festivals Foundation leadership asked me to meet over coffee to discuss ways the City, the Foundation and the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management could improve coordination before the following year. I saw an opportunity to move festival preparation from an arrangement that relied heavily on informal and event-specific coordination toward a deliberate, year-round interagency process. Working with Festivals Foundation leadership, Newport’s Police, Fire and emergency-management personnel, and RIDEM stakeholders, we established recurring planning meetings that ultimately evolved into a quarterly cycle, allowing security, emergency response, logistics and agency responsibilities to be discussed well before thousands of attendees arrived at Fort Adams. That advance coordination was particularly important for a large event at an exposed coastal venue where public safety requires consideration of both land- and waterside access amid increasingly sophisticated modern security concerns. By the time I left Newport, what began with a simple conversation had developed into a mature and highly regimented planning process involving the organizations responsible for operating, hosting and protecting the festivals. I particularly valued this initiative because it required no major capital appropriation or new government program—just recognizing that the right people were not communicating as systematically as they could, bringing them together, and turning those relationships into an enduring process that made one of Newport’s signature events better prepared and more secure.