Rhode Island voters approve all four bond questions totaling over $343 million

A site rendering for the new Tomaquag Museum to be built on the 18 acres in Kingston of land owned by the University of Rhode Island. A $2 million portion of the arts and cultural bond approved by voters will go toward the museum project set to break ground next year. (www.tomaquagmuseum.org/)

Rhode Islanders approved a slate of four bond initiatives, totaling about $343 million, at the polls Tuesday, according to unofficial preliminary results from the state Board of Elections.

Voters were more than willing to pony up funds for an assortment of statewide projects involving housing, the green economy, higher education and the arts industry.

Support for state-level bonds is a well-worn motif in Rhode Island, and the last time a ballot measure faced defeat was in 2006, when a $4 million bond for upgrades to Fort Adams State Park floundered. But local enthusiasm can be choosier, like in the 2023 special election, when North Kingstown and Smithfield voters a pair of bonds related to capital improvement for schools.

In each bond issue, a yes vote meant approval of the spending. Three bonds passed overwhelmingly with more than 60% of the vote, while two devoted to higher education and the arts still cracked the 50% mark but had destractors.

Here are the details on each bond measure at midnight after mail ballots were counted, with 98% of polling places reporting:

RIC and URI see big bucks for capital improvement under Question 2

Voters greenlit a $160.5 million investment in state-of-the-art facilities at both the University of Rhode Island (URI) and Rhode Island College (RIC) with 59.6% in favor and 40.4% opposed.

But the cutting edge does not come cheap: The higher education package is the priciest bond of the bunch, and its estimated interest of $97 million exceeds the entire cost of other bond questions. The total cost with interest is nearly $258 million.

URI's share of $87.5 million will fund a biomedical sciences building, hoping to further enhance the university's already-strong research activity. The university is especially interested in prioritizing the prevention and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, ALS and other central nervous system illnesses or age-related conditions.

Over at RIC, Whipple Hall will see a $73 million renovation as it's remade into a new home for the Institute of Cybersecurity & Emerging Technologies at Rhode Island College. Since opening last year, the institute has attracted about 400 students across various computer science disciplines. With the bond funding, the institute will see major tech and facility upgrades to its computer labs and data centers, as well as new spaces for hands-on cyber threat simulations.

While RIC and URI often battle quietly for higher enrollment, with RIC's subsidized Hope scholarship poaching some students from URI, the schools' presidents teamed up to gather support for Question 2. Marc Parlange at URI and RIC's Jack Warner co-wrote an editorial for the Boston Globe, arguing "The Higher Education Bond doesn't just open new doors for opportunities at URI and RIC, it will position our state as a leader in key sectors of the global and regional economy. Biomedical sciences and cybersecurity represent good-paying jobs, economic prosperity, and better health outcomes for our state."

Question 3 hopes to relieve exhausted housing market with more supply (eventually)

Not one Rhode Island community remains affordable for a median household income of $107,452, according to an analysis of 2023 home sales and census data recently published by HousingWorks RI . The lack of housing stock, especially newer homes, is matched by a population outgrowing Rhode Island's selection of largely older homes.

The dearth of affordable housing may have influenced the 65.5% of voters giving the go-ahead to a $120 million housing bond, the biggest in the state's history. Opposed were 34.5%. The funds will be spread across six initiatives, headlined by $80 million for affordable housing projects, including up to $10 million reserved for public housing construction. Construction to stimulate homeownership will claim $20 million, and another $10 million will be directed toward community efforts for purchasing and redeveloping properties.

The bond also designates $5 million to repurpose existing homes into more affordable options, $4 million for physical infrastructure to assist development efforts, and $1 million for planning at the municipal level via strategies like rezoning.

Melina Lodge, executive director of the Housing Network of Rhode Island and Homes RI, extolled the bond's passage in a statement Tuesday night.

"Safe, stable, and affordable housing is fundamental to the health and physical, social, and economic well-being of individuals, families, municipalities, and our state as a whole," Lodge wrote. "Today's vote brings us one step closer to ensuring that all Rhode Islanders have a place to call home that they can afford."

The total cost of the bond with its $72 million interest will be around $193 million. Projects funded by this bond will launch around 2026, and could extend through to 2030, with a minimum useful life of 30 years anticipated for completed units.

It's easy being green, Question 4 affirms

Over 270,000 voters approved a $53 million bond meant to jolt the state's green economy while almost 138,000 voted no. The 67.2% who said yes means nine environmental projects spanning both land and sea will soon take off. With roughly $32 million of interest factored in, the projects' total cost is expected to be around $85 million. About 32.8% of voters were opposed.

The diverse to-do — from cleaning up "brownfields," or toxic former industrial sites, to repairinging Newport's popular Cliff Walk — is meant to promote a "clean, green Rhode Island," according to the Say Yes on 4 website. But the heftiest piece in the collection, comprising nearly a third of the entire funding, is the Port of Davisville's $15 million share, which advocates have framed as a win for offshore wind infrastructure.

"The people of Rhode Island have spoken, and they are ready to invest in our ports and our clean energy future," said Rhode Island Ports Coalition President Gavin Black told Rhode Island Current in an email Tuesday night. "Funding from the Green Bond will prepare Quonset's Port of Davisville – and Rhode Island – to serve as a key offshore wind hub for years to come, serving the rapidly growing offshore wind industry in the North Atlantic. This investment will also create new, high-paying jobs and help the state to meet its climate goals."

The money would be used to upgrade berthing space, access roads and cargo areas. But the port's outsized piece did raise some critical eyebrows, with calling the bond a means of cloaking business interests in eco-friendly attire. Voter support for Davisville isn't new; this is the third time in a decade that Rhode Island's only public port has secured voter-approved financing. In 2016, $50 million for Davisville as part of a $70 million bond. In 2021, another $20 million was OK'd by 59% of voters.

Beyond Davisville, the bond will fund:

Modest arts and culture bond sees success with Question 5

Arts advocates may have faced defeat during the 2024 legislative session when they failed to rouse enough support for an $18 million funding package that would have benefited numerous organizations statewide. But voters threw the arts sector a lifeline, just like they did in 2014 and 2021, and OK'd a $10 million investment in a trio of organizations representative of the state's culture industry.

About 56.1% of voters were in favor of a $10 million investment in a trio of organizations representative of the state's culture industry plus matching capital grants aimed at preserving, renovating and improving cultural and performance centers statewide. These capital grants can't be used for operating expenses. About 43.9% of voters were opposed.

With interest included, the bond's total cost is about $16 million.

Recent precedents for voter support of artsy ballot initiatives can be found in 2014 and 2021, when 60% of voters backed $30 million and $7 million, respectively. This year's bond is less intricate than others listed on the ballot, and has four beneficiaries, some of them identical to those who benefitted from bonds past:

The Tomaquag Museum's Executive Director Lorén M. Spears said in an interview Monday that the bond funding will help the museum mature into its new space, estimated to cost about $18 million overall and a drastic upgrade from the museum's present-day, "very hidden" location in rural Exeter.

"Sometimes people even get confused and think it's a driveway," Spears said about the museum's current entrance.

Set to break ground next year, the redesigned Tomaquag will feature a cafe with Indigenous cuisine, outdoor exhibits, a steel longhouse designed in collaboration with Native artists and Providence's The Steel Yard, and a more accessible research archive and reading room. An 1840s canoe will decorate one of the museum's entryway galleries, welcoming visitors to the new space. Bus route access, a first for the museum, will make the new location "more readily accessible," Spears said.

"We had someone that just took an Uber to Tomaquag last week," Spears said. "I'm sure that wasn't inexpensive, and it certainly wasn't super convenient. So that's a challenge that we have now. There's no way to get to the current Tomaquag Museum without a car."

Ahead of Election Day, Spears said, "I'm always optimistic. That's my personality. But I don't count chickens until they're hatched."

Kate Liberman, executive director at Trinity Rep, said Monday afternoon she was also feeling rosy about the bond's prospects. "We're feeling very positive right now," she said. "This is a small bond from a small group of arts and culture organizations. So we have no advanced polling information. But what we've been hearing within the community is very positive."

Friends of Adrian Hall, a group attempting to stop the proposed Trinity expansion as they argue it would affect an adjacent skate park, also signaled their support of Question 5.

"Our group's position on Question 5 is that the Tomaquag Museum is the state's most important cultural institution, so we're going to be voting yes," said William Cornwall of the Friends in an interview Monday afternoon. "We don't think that they [Tomaquag Museum] should be punished for the hypocrisy of another institution that they didn't choose to share a ballot question with."

Liberman called the idea that the park would be changed by Trinity's proposed 12,000-square-foot expansion "unfortunate misinformation... that the skate park would either be going away or be shrinking or losing access."

"But in fact, the intent of the city and Trinity Rep is to actually expand the park and offer better access and better lighting to it, both day and night, with a pedestrian walkway and nighttime lights," Liberman said.

"They're still trying to impose a plan that takes up about over 2,000 square feet that would have otherwise been public space," Cornwall said.