by Ted Rao
Continued from http://agendanation.net/20/yurdin
Like Yurdin, this race marked Ethan Ris’s first run for elective office. A former president of the Brown Democrats, Ris, 23, teaches eleventh and twelfth grade at The Met School in Providence. His political experience includes serving as a U.S. Senate Page as a teenager as well as volunteering full-time on various political campaigns. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Brown with honors in the department of History. Ris entered the council race prior to David Segal’s decision to run for State Representative. He was endorsed by the Ward One Democratic Committee.
Did Brown University bring you to Providence?
Yes. I’m originally from the Washington D.C. area and in 2001 I came here to go to Brown.
And you were with the College Democrats?
I was. I was the president for two years and involved all the way through, and I don’t take sole credit, but when I was a freshman it was a small organization, about ten people who got together and laughed about politics, and we built it up, and now it’s got over a hundred active members, and it’s involved in lobbying, political campaigns and things like that. So I was a part of a group that worked it out.
Is that how you got that photograph of you and Bill Clinton on your website?
(laughs) Yes.
How did you find him?
Bill? Well, he was taking a lot of photographs, but I had met him before and the rap about him…when he’s talking to you, it’s true. It’s like you’re the only person in the room; he’s focused on you, and what you’re doing, and what your story is, and…
And the whole time he’s thinking about what he’s gonna have for lunch (laughs).
Oh, sure! (laughs) Absolutely. But he can pull it off. He’s a very good politician.
One thing I noticed looking at your website, it’s thorough. It doesn’t speak in generalities. You have specific, point-for-point proposals for what you’d like to accomplish as a councilman. The reason I ask is, for example, looking at your transportation proposal, I think that it’s incredibly bold, but I wonder how it’s gonna get paid for. The city doesn’t really have the tax base to support a lot of this change in infrastructure.
A lot of it is reliant on state and federal funding, there’s no question about it. We have an outstanding representative in my opinion in Patrick Kennedy. He sits on the House Appropriations Committee, and has proven himself to be extremely effective in pulling federal money to the state, for issues that local communities step up and ask for. He’s somebody I know, and though he’s somebody who’s been dealing with his personal issues, he’s the type of person I’d feel very comfortable approaching, saying “Look, other states do extremely well with pulling federal appropriations in the highway bill, in the transportation bill, for these grand projects. What can we do to get some of that money?” He’s extremely good at his job, and I think he’d be receptive to Providence, where he’s got so many people in his district.
You stated in a local paper that you’re opposed to on-street overnight parking. There’s pilot programs to enact on-street overnight parking, in kind of a slow, neighborhood by neighborhood fashion throughout the next year. Why do you oppose on street overnight parking?
I oppose it in Fox Point. I think that there are neighborhoods where it makes perfect sense, and if the residents want it, they should absolutely be allowed to have it. In my own neighborhood I don’t want it because, the major issue is, I really think there are too many cars in the city of Providence. I’m not a car owner; I rely on public transportation or my bike and walking to get where I need to go. Young people especially, who are a huge percentage of Fox Point and the East Side, the college students don’t need to own cars. And initiating an on-street overnight parking program will dramatically encourage them to own cars, no matter what restrictions you put on it, no out of state plates, they’ll get them, because they can afford it. They’ll get them if it’s a viable option for them. So I’m thoroughly against that. And a lot of my neighbors say, and I agree with them, that most of the streets in Fox Point are extremely narrow, and in the dead of night, on Arnold Street or Transit Street or Sheldon Street where I live, the idea of a fire truck getting down that street in the dark with cars on either side…it’s not feasible. And it seems extremely dangerous. And frankly, I don’t see the need for it. Obviously, daytime parking is very important for the business community, but overnight not so much.
How would you want to provide an incentive for people to not drive? You talk a lot about RIPTA. How are you gonna get people to not use their cars? Is this something that you think you could change as an office-holder?
Absolutely. There’s a huge cultural bias against taking public transportation. I don’t know if you saw the article in the Journal, but there was a survey across the state about RIPTA, and not only had most people never taken RIPTA, but they never even considered it. It wasn’t an option for them, which troubles me. There’s a huge cultural shift that needs to occur. In talking to people there’s two major concerns, and it’s not the price. The buses aren’t frequent enough and don’t go where people want them to go, and it’s the perception of the ridership. They perceive them as being of a lower class. So the silver bullet here, in my opinion is, if we can convince people, and this is definitely the role of city government, convince the universities to stop subsidizing parking for their students and employees, and instead give them transit passes, you’d dramatically increase ridership, which will pump money into the system and help it grow, and change the ridership. Because…just take Brown. If you had a thousand Brown kids suddenly taking advantage of the program, even if it doesn’t really change anything, ’cuz I ride everyday and it’s not scary people on the bus, but in the mindset of East Siders, well, “there are all these Brown kids riding the bus; maybe I can do it too.” It opens it up, makes it more accessible.
You’re saying that if more Brown kids are riding the bus, it’ll lift the stigma against riding on it?
Yeah, I do. Because the impression is that only poor people ride the bus.
And Brown kids are not poor.
No. They might say they are, but they’re not. And this is not just universities, this is for employers too, who give their employees parking subsidies to park their cars downtown in garages and lots. If they replace them with transit passes, it’ll be much better.
I’m interested in your proposal for a circle line for RIPTA rather than using Kennedy Plaza as a hub, which would decrease riding times and increase efficiency.
Right. Because, one of the other things is, people don’t like the idea of being transported to Kennedy plaza, because again, they’re scared of Kennedy Plaza. It’s not just the confusion of finding out which busing you’re going on. There’s been some well-documented fights that have gone on down there, and people hear about that and get very nervous.People who live here, many of them go downtown, and we’ve got the trolley, but a lot of them need to get to hospitals, especially elderly people, and they say “I would ride the bus, but I’m not gonna transfer to Kennedy Plaza.”
This is what they’ve said to you?
Yes, absolutely. And all the hospitals are on the line that I drew up. Obviously it’s not something that council members can pass, but it’s something that they can advocate for, and…
In the bully pulpit style.
Exactly, and that’s how I view a lot of this. So going to different places, like upper Hope Street, or the West Side, or Olneyville or the PC area, there’s no way to do it; you’ve gotta go to Kennedy Plaza. It’s like the hub and spoke system of the airlines, which worked for a while and served the interests of the few major airlines pretty well, but now is being totally exploded by smaller carriers like Southwest and Jet Blue, so we’re gonna provide direct service, and not make you transfer.
On you’re affordable housing issues, you advocate Brown building more on-campus housing to free up rental units for residents. Now, Brown just agreed with Mayor Cicilline a couple of years ago to start paying taxes to the city of Providence, and I think it’s a pittance. I give him credit for getting something , but…
Right. It’s largely symbolic.
Do you assume that because you went to Brown that you would have more pull with the institution?
I do. We need to encourage them to do this.
How can you be sure that students wouldn’t just want their apartments anyhow?
The university can keep any student they want to on campus. Brown in particular. RISD’s moving in the right direction. They opened up that beautiful new dorm in the Hospital Trust building. Brown’s enrollment grows by fifty or sixty students every year. They haven’t built a new dorm in fifteen years. They incorporated the old Johnson & Wales dorm on Waterman, another two hundred rooms, but it’s a drop in the bucket. So every year there’s fifty to a hundred renting in the neighborhoods, driving up rents. It’s supply and demand. And they can afford it, and rapidly outpace a family that’s trying to live there. Brown certainly is sitting on property now that they haven’t used. There’s the parking lot eyesore that they’ve got on Power Street. There’s been theoretical talk about doing something in the Jewelry District, but there’s been no action on that.
I absolutely agree with the logic in what your saying, but there’s a concern among a lot of residents that Brown has too much of a stranglehold on the real estate market already. Loui’s Diner, for example, is the only spot on the whole Brook/Benevolent quadrant that’s not owned by Brown. The university’s offered them seven figures, and I think they’re not selling on principle. Some joke that when Loui’s goes, so does the East Side.
Sure. And it should stay there. I don’t want Brown to expand; it should simply do more with what it has now. I’m of the opinion that surface parking is like the worst thing. I hate big ugly surface parking lots; there’s the environmental problems with runoff, and it encourages more people to drive. So if Brown can turn some of that into housing, it would bring students in from the neighborhood and stop driving up prices and doing all these things.
This leads to the issue of development. The mayor’s certainly presided over more development than his predecessor. Give me your opinion on the rise of development, and specifically downtown. We all have some sort of opinion on the condos, and whether we have the economy to support such high rents, or whether this is all farmed out to Boston employees.
Absolutely. Just as an aside, my opponent is a commuter from Boston. I think development is a good thing, but rampant development is a really bad thing, there’s no question. I know a lot of people in Olneyville and the West End are very concerned about what’s going on, as are people in Fox Point. When this new highway comes down, there’s gonna be a lot of new land. The key is to identify…there are a lot of places where the residents and merchants need and want development. A good example is the Jewelry District. They have a very active merchants association who want people to live and work there for it to come back to life. And the city, and this is one of my major disagreements with the administration, is not receptive to that, maybe because these developers say “yeah, we don’t want to build it there, we want to build it in Fox Point.”
Buff Chase isn’t interested in the Jewelry District.
Right. And I think he’s a good guy and some of his projects are great, but they (The Jewelry District) want it, and it would make sense there, since you wouldn’t offend cutting up the waterfront like you would here; it’s already urban so it’s not that big of an issue there. Things like the Ship Street Canal project, which hasn’t gotten a lot of traction, I think really deserves a serious look and consideration. So it’s not a question of no development ever, but where to do it, where it would be well-received, and effective.
Are you concerned that we are too reliant on property taxes to fund city services?
Absolutely.
How would we move away from that, since a re-evaluation of the city’s real estate is due in a few years?
I think earlier, actually. Property taxes are the most punitive, regressive tax, besides the tax on food, I guess.
It hits renters specifically.
Absolutely. I’m a renter; I don’t own my own home. So yeah, it definitely hits poor people the most, and yeah, it punishes people for living in the city, which is a bizarre way to do things. It’s really encouraging people to move to Massachusetts or one of our surrounding communities where the taxes are low, disencourages people from owning their own homes, et cetera. How to make up for that is tough.
Do you think that education is the first step, in terms of the correlation between education and income; in terms of natural incentives for companies to want to relocate here and hire for a decent wage on a mass scale?
Oh, god yes. I’m a teacher, how could I not? Just last week I was having a conversation with somebody who was talking about how we’re trying to do all this downtown development and push our arts scene to attract people to come and live here. Well, what if we really turned around our education system, and that was our selling point? Could you imagine the attention and…especially families, that’s what we need more than anything. We need families coming and living here; it would be amazing, there’s no question. I agree with you a hundred percent.
What do you feel the problems are specifically?
I had a long talk with Warren Simmons who’s the director of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown. Really smart guy. And I said “What is it, Dr. Sims? What is the problem with the schools?” It’s all about the central office. There are bad teachers and good teachers, bad principals and good principals; that’s not really the problem. There’s a great superintendent; Donnie Evans does a really good job. But the central office is not set up to support innovation and change and problems. It’s set up to give people jobs, essentially, which is not why we have schools. We have schools to educate kids. So I think that an audit of the central administrative office is in order, not necessarily to go around firing people, but to evaluate the resources we have, and see if they’re being used wisely. If anything we need more funding for the schools, but it’s about developing things that make sense. We have a very different population in our schools today than we had seventy years ago when they were being set up. And from everything from the curriculum that’s taught to the hiring and promotions to the physical layout of the schools…it’s all wrong. Maybe it was right in the forties or whenever it was built, but for today’s kids it’s not working. That’s why the dropout rate is fifty percent. That’s a disgrace.
You’ve worked in the mayor’s office in a fellowship. You’ve spoken publicly about your positive relationship with him. Do you think you’ll be a pro-Cicilline vote, more so than others?
Yeah, more so than David Segal, but do I agree with him on everything? No, I disagree with him on a lot of things. But I think he is a very good mayor. I think he needs to put the brakes on some of the development that’s going on. I think he needs to be more innovative with the schools. I think he should negotiate with the firefighters, and I think the firefighters should negotiate with him. It’s a two-way deal. That whole thing disappoints me. So is he perfect? No. Is he the best mayor in Providence in fifty years? Yes, no question. And I think he needs a council that’s not opposing him simply because he’s the mayor and they’re the council, and it’s their job to oppose him. To be honest, if it comes down to David Cicilline or John Lombardi, I’ll take Cicilline any day.
Well, John Lombardi may very well be your boss soon!
He might! And if I’m there, I’ll work with him. I think he’s a good person, but it seems the council’s concern is protecting themselves and each other, self promotion, pay raises, and that’s not their job. They serve the people.
When you first announced, David Segal was still running, and he had made an issue about the amount of money you’ve raised, since most of it was from out of state.
Right, in my first report, because I had a fundraiser back home. In my next report, like seventy-five percent of it is in Providence, because I had a fundraiser here. You know, it’s fine that he made an issue out of it; it’s his right, but he went through the specific list of donors, and it was deeply offensive. The best example is Linda Daschle, wife of Tom Daschle, who is a family friend and who’s known me forever, and gave me some money because she wanted to support me. It was sort of these Bush/Rove tactics.
Well, I’m sure this is the most in-depth interview you’ll have, considering this is a city council race.
(laughs) Oh, I can already tell that.
(Note: More recently, Yurdin called upon Ris to file delinquent campaign finance reports. In previous reports, Ris listed donations of nearly $4000 from corporate lobbyists, many of whom had previously donated to National Republican Candidates. According to sources, Ris attributed it to being a rookie mistake.)
