To the Editor:

The Providence Journal Op-Ed page of May 4 draws attention to the recent Cranston public employee pension legislation supported by both the mayor and the City Council members, Republicans as well as Democrats. The legislation reduces promised payments to a defined few retirees with the reasonable expectation of significant improvement in the overall financial stability of the pension fund for the benefit of many, many more of Cranston’s public safety employees. “Kudos for Cranston” reads the Pro-Jo editorial tag line.

But Cranston’s City Council is also most deserving of kudos for another recent legislative enactment. On Thursday, May 2, the Cranston City Council unanimously rejected a proposed housing development in western Cranston that would have jammed l92 apartments into a semi-rural neighborhood with a rich historic heritage sprinkled with single-family homes.

The 9-0 council vote to defeat this housing proposal is very closely akin to the council’s efforts to strengthen Cranston’s pension fund. In the first instance, the council recognized the need to pass a measure to buttress a financially ailing pension fund for all public safety employees, which unfortunately will impose short-term consequences upon a few. This measure will benefit all of the taxpayers and residents of Cranston.

In the case of the housing development – named The Lodges at Phenix Glen – the City Council recognized the economic distress that this proposal would have imposed on Cranston’s municipal services and the overwhelming impact it would have had on the quality of life for all of the residents of western Cranston and the obvious and ultimate negative impact this would have on the neighborhood’s property values with consequent reduction in property taxes needed to support all of the city’s municipal services.

Kudos to the Cranston City Council for its exercise of common sense – for looking under the hood – and recognizing the obvious; not blindly succumbing to the grandiose promises of the developer (based on its unreliable and faulty data) that, by all reasonable standards of measure, would have been unachievable even under the most optimum of economic conditions.

All of the residents and taxpayers in Cranston benefited from our City Council’s vote to reject this seriously flawed proposed housing development. In the end, as all public policy issues should, the will of the people ultimately prevailed.

Fred E. Joslyn Jr.

Cranston