Providence City Council Meeting | October 15th 2026

Good evening councilors and welcome to this regular council meeting of the Providence City Council on this Thursday, October 15. Madam clerk, please call the roll.

Council president Miller, present. Deputy majority Whip Vanderbijl? Present. Councilor Davidson? Majority leader Espinal is absent.

Senior deputy majority leader Gonsalves?

Present.

Councilwoman Graves? Deputy majority leader Harris? Present. Councilwoman Peterson? Council president Pro Tempur Pichardo?

Present. Councilor Reyes? Present. Councilwoman Ryan?

Present.

Majority Whip Sanchez is absent. Councilman Taylor is absent. Councilwoman Anna Vargas is absent. Councilman Oscar Vargas? Present.

You have 11 present and four absent.

You have a quorum. Thank you, madam clerk. This evening, the indication will be given by councilor Jill Davidson. Will everyone please rise?

Thank you, madam president, and good evening, everybody. So as we gather for today's Providence City Council meeting, I want to acknowledge and celebrate the members of the public who have joined us today, both here in this room along with everybody who's following this meeting on Zoom, members of the press, City of Providence employees, city council staff members, and of course, my fellow councilors. We're all gathered here today with our best intentions to make Providence a better place for each and every resident. Because our strength is in our collaboration and shared purpose, I'm honored and gratified to be with all of you tonight. The matters in front of us tonight encompass so many issues.

The legacy of our history, investments in our future, the balance of personal security and public safety, roads, bridges, buildings, rivers, and much more. So let's all consider these matters wisely and make the decisions that are best for Providence now and far into the future. Thank you.

Thank you. And tonight's, the pledge of allegiance will be led by councilman John Goncalves.

Thank you. I pledge of allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. Madam clerk, item three.

Motion to waive the reading of item three and move approval.

Second. We have a motion from councilman Anderbaugh and a second from deputy majority leader Harris. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

Any abstentions? The motion passes. Item four.

Motion to waive the reading of items four through 28.

Second. We have a motion on items four through 28. Any discussion? Councilwoman Anderbaugh.

Thank you council president. I'm rising in strong support of item four to ban blocked cameras and license plate readers across the city. And I'm really grateful to you council president and also to Miguel Sanchez or councilman Sanchez who is not with us tonight for your co sponsorship. I just want to share a few quick thoughts and I know this will go to committee and I urge our constituents to please come and share your thoughts during those times. But cameras and other constant surveillance are a direct infringement on our civil rights.

As we've seen in the news, it's been documented cases of ICE using this to track immigrants, punish women for crossing state lines for healthcare, and we've seen in other places flock cameras and other license plate readers used by law enforcement to stalk ex partners and use inappropriately. We don't need to rely on the news though or anecdotes to know that this is problematic. I'm grateful to RIC professor Robin Linde who's also a constituent of mine and her students at RIC who analyzed our actual flock data and presented it at a public meeting of the special committee on the environment resiliency earlier this spring. And we saw millions of searches of flock data, pings in places where we don't have data sharing agreements, millions and millions of searches that just draw so much concern. Flock and supporters of surveillance will say that there are safeguards in place, that we should trust that everything will be okay, that we can have trust in the system, and to me that feels like making policy based on corporate vibes and bad talking points.

We have real data that shows that even a city that means well and that has excellent police force with a really great chief of police, the data is leaky, the data can be accessed, the data can get into the wrong hands. We need to think about the trade offs between our personal safety as as Councilwoman David Seneri said and this constant surveillance. I often... I also want to address the thing that comes up frequently of but what what about how it helped us in the Brown shooting? And I wanna be really clear.

Not a single person was safer because of flock in the Brown shooting. Multiple people died at Brown in my neighborhood in Councilwoman Davidson's neighborhood that evening and then the shooter went on to drive to another state, kill somebody else, and then drive to a third state where he then killed himself. Flock did not prevent any of those murders. It did not make us any more safe. What made us safer that night my friends was an unhoused man named John who lived in the neighborhood and because he's a part of our community recognized that something was wrong and flagged it.

He flagged it on Reddit. He flagged it ahead of time for security. He flagged it so many times. So instead of investing in the types of things that are constantly monitoring us, I ask us to please invest in our community, invest in our people, invest in the things that actually make us safer, that don't just sell our data, our whereabouts, and the whereabouts of our neighbors to a big corporation that benefits from our data and knowledge of us and makes us less safe. Many other cities and towns in Rhode Island have already taken this step.

In this time of fear and federal overreach, Providence needs to stand firm against being a surveillance state and join the rest of our fellow cities and towns in Rhode Island in getting rid of this technology. Thank you so much, madam president.

Thank you, counselor. Further discussion on items four through 28, councilman Gonkovs.

Thank you, madam president. And thank you, councilwoman Andrew Bois for leading the effort. I was very much touched by those remarks, and I've been getting a number of emails from my constituents about this. I want to remind people that back in 2022, it was actually you and I, I think, the council president who introduced a resolution expressing some of our concerns about this technology. And at that time, we were actually circumvented the legislative branch of government as the technology was deployed in spite of some of our objections about some of the civil liberties that we, back then, were very concerned about.

And we know certainly that FLOX technology has helped police recover stolen vehicles or, in the case of the Brown University shooting that happened in Ward 1, helped with that situation and it's helped locate missing people. And I trust that the men and women of our law enforcement and the Providence Police Department do act professionally with this technology and recognize that value. But the usefulness of this tool does not place a surveillance system beyond scrutiny. And these cameras record passing vehicles, every single passing vehicle continuously, including their location and the time they were seen, regardless of whether anyone is suspected of a crime. And as many of you may be aware, FLoC offers drones and additional AI powered tools, and this is only expanding their surveillance network.

I've heard from several of my constituents, in fact, today that they would like to see me support this ordinance, and that's something that I intend to do. Because being watched is not the same as being safe. And I'm also concerned about the civil liberties. And in fact, what I'm really concerned about is the reinforcing systemic racism. We are not immune to these systems, whether it's artificial intelligence or these systems reinforcing that systemic racism.

And we are a community that is diverse. As my colleague mentioned, we're certainly concerned about ICE in our city, and I think about a city that's disproportionately black and brown. We've seen this time and time again where surveillance systems are actually used to harm those very communities. And so I intend to support this legislation, and we need to certainly have oversight and accountability. We want safety for all the members of our community.

There's no question about that. But residents, especially law abiding citizens in our community, should not have to surrender their privacy simply to travel throughout our city. So I just wanna thank you for your efforts on this, councilwoman Anderbois. And I do hope that our city and the residents of our city will support us in this effort, and I hope that each and every one of you will support this as well. Thank you, madam president.

Thank you, councilor. Further discussion items four through 28. Proton Bugiardo.

Thank you, madam president. I just wanted to rise as as the chairman of the committee on hope and to say that this issue will be coming before the Committee of Hope. And I ask people to weigh in on this issue when we have the notice... Notification to ensure that we hear your voice. Because we all know when policies like these are offered, we all know how technology is encroaching on our families and our data and our way of life.

And while we can hear from different sources that certain things are good for you, certain things are bad for you, but we need the public's input. We need the data. Just recently, you start hearing about the issue of AI, how AI in the beginning was the most important thing that we're going to have in our in this century coming up. Now all the founders and all the intellectuals are saying, hold on one second. Maybe we should slow down and stop on this AI.

But the AI movement has been now the the the, as they say, the rabbit is out of the box. And so it's hard to put it back. This is an opportunity for us as a city to ensure that we hear from people, but also for us as a city and as a state to really get a handle on this technology that eventually and will continue to encroach in our our private lives. So we look forward to hearing from you and all the people in the city of Providence. Thank you.

Thank you, chairman. Further discussion? Hearing none. All in favor? Any opposed?

Any abstentions? The motion passes. Madam clerk, please refer item four to the committee on hope, five to the committee on public works, six to the special committee on environment and resiliency, seven through 22 to the special committee on ways and means at '23 and '28 to 23 to 28 to the committee on public works. So noted. Item 29.

Motion to... Madam president.

Counselor Andrew Watt.

Not usually in this role. Motion to waive the reading of items twenty nine and thirty and pass for the first time on a roll call vote.

Second madam president.

We have a motion and a second. Discussion? Super quick. Councilwoman.

Very quick just explanation for 30 and I am grateful to everyone who's gonna vote yes, is all of you, thank you so much in advance for that. This really is super simple. It just clarifies, just in case folks didn't get a chance to read it, it really just clarifies you're not allowed to park within a certain distance from a crosswalk or an intersection. That was already the law. It was state law our local cops and parking enforcement officers couldn't enforce it because it was not in city ordinance allowing our parking enforcement officers to enforce it, so we were not.

And so now we can and it will be safer for everyone. I also just want to shout out Councilwoman Davidson for number 29. This is a really important ordinance and it was also the first one she wrote. And so I just wanna shout her out for how amazing she is for this great ordinance.

Councilwoman.

Thank you. Yeah. This was... It... It's funny.

It's what the first thing I did, and I'm so glad that we're actually able to vote on it tonight. Very briefly, this ordinance aligns city building regulations with those that are already in place in the state to ensure that when we build in a flood plain or in flood prone areas, we have... We mandate that devices such as sump pumps, sewage ejectors, and other appurtenances must be part of the building so that the so that the construction that is happening will no... Will not later be... Will be protected from flood, from sewage backups, from the basics.

I mean, this is sort of like a basic nuts and bolts thing, but we didn't have it. And even before I was sworn in, I heard from constituents who were dealing with some pretty horrible issues due to flooding and our sort of challenge and failing sewer system. So this felt like a basic thing. I was surprised we didn't have it and grateful to work with the policy staff to make it happen and grateful to all of you for supporting it. Thanks.

Thank you, councilor. Further discussion on 29 or 30? Councilman Harris? No. Okay.