Water Tanks, Flooding and Door to Door Sales Dominate Council Meeting

By Cynthia Drummond

October 22nd 2025

RICHMOND – Town Council members approved an application for a state grant for water tank mixers at Tuesday’s meeting.

Interim Town Administrator Erin Liese received council approval to apply to the Rhode Island Department of Health for a grant for the mixers, which will be installed in the town’s drinking water tanks.

This follows a precautionary boil water advisory issued on Sept. 9 for customers in Richmond and Hopkinton who are on the Richmond water system. The advisory was lifted on Sept. 15.

Mixers are considered to be essential to maintaining the quality of water stored in tanks, because they keep the water from becoming stagnant. It is not clear why they had not already been installed.

The funds, up to $100,000, will be allocated to the health department by the Rhode Island Infrastructure bank.

“We were selected, through Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank, for water tank mixers,” Liese told the council. “I know we’ve talked about water and there was some earlier discussions about the tank mixers.”

Liese said it was important to submit an application soon, “because it’s based on funding on how much they have left over.”

Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention

The council heard a presentation from Pare Corporation engineer Matt Bellisle regarding flood mitigation alternatives.

Pare was engaged by the Natural Resources Conservation Service to study the Wood-Pawcatuck watershed, which includes 15 cities and towns, including Richmond. Funding would be part of the federal PL-566 Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention program.

Outreach efforts have included a few public meetings, and more recently, presentations to towns.

Bellisle described four options, which ranged from doing nothing, to building and maintaining protection systems.

“This is a very comprehensive study,” he said. “We looked at the entire watershed. … We’ve looked at alternatives, and now, we’re in the process of evaluating the benefits of the alternatives that we’ve prepared and the cost of those impacts.”

The  Options

The first “no action” solution is leaving everything the way it is.

The second, non-structural solution involves floodproofing individual buildings and other structures. This would include elevating some structures and relocating others.

The structural solutions include building levies and flood barriers, which the town would have to maintain.

“Primarily, the area of concern is down in the KG Ranch [Road] area at the bend in the river,” Bellisle said. “So, we looked at can we create a levy that is simple, doesn’t require any regular operation.”

The final alternative would involve building four levies.

“This requires four roadway closures, … and what that means is before the storm gets to any type of flood level, you need to, or your DPW needs to install a barricade,” Bellisle said.

Bellisle concluded his presentation with an unanticipated request that the council choose its preferred alternatives at the Tuesday meeting.

“We’re asking you at this time to say which of those four options would you most likely be interested in and want to see advanced design if this project is authorized to move forward,” he said. “This decision tonight does not commit any funds to the project.”

Councilor Dan Madnick said he didn’t feel that residents had been sufficiently engaged in the process.

“I have a real hard time making a decision for residents that aren’t able to speak about these options,” he said.

Council President Samantha Wilcox said a more concerted effort should be made to reach residents of flood-prone neighborhoods like KG Ranch Road, some of whom do not use computers.

“When it comes to getting public input and public feedback from this session, especially when it’s so targeted, it’s not like you’re looking for all of Richmond, you’re looking at one neighborhood here, I would just suggest, going forward, to take that extra step of doing a mailer just to that neighborhood or leaving something at their door, just to get them to come out, because it’s a lot of varying generations in that neighborhood as well, and not everybody is on the Wood-Pawcatuck website looking for this kind of thing,” she told Bellisle.

After they were informed that they could change their preferences after they had been submitted, council members said they felt comfortable submitting their two choices.

Madnick made a motion, which was approved, to submit the town’s choices of non-structural solutions and also, improvements to roads that are vulnerable to flooding.

Door to Door

Councilor Jim Palmisciano presented a proposal to amend the town’s ordinance pertaining to door-to-door sales, after hearing from residents who have privacy and safety concerns.

“I’m specifically looking to change the way we approach door-to-door sales, people coming to a residence uninvited,” he said.

The amendment would prohibit commercial door-to-door sales and prospecting.

Wilcox said she was glad to see the topic on the agenda,

but council Vice President Mark Reynolds said he could not support the changes.

“I would be opposed to prohibiting freedom of speech. I also think it’s unconstitutional to single out one area of speech and prohibit it and allow others,” he said. “You talk about the privacy and public safety, we have Amazon and UPS and FEDEx going on to people’s property every day.”

Reynolds also noted that the prohibition might create an “underground” network of door-to-door salespeople who are not registered with the town.

Palmisciano repeated his original assertion that residents wanted the council to do something to reduce the numbers of salespeople.

“The residents of Richmond are saying ‘you need to do something different,’ and I don’t know what that is,” he said.

Palmisciano made a motion to ask Town Solicitor Chris Zangari to draft the ordinance amendments. The motion passed, with Reynolds and council member Jeffrey Dinsmore opposed.

Other business

The council, with Dinsmore opposed, voted to continue the discussion of forming a municipal Climate Resiliency Commission to the Nov. 4 meeting.

Members also agreed to continue the discussion, to a future meeting, of a policy for the use of town property by outside entities.

Councilors thanked the Recreation Commission for organizing the town’s first Fall Festival, which took place on Oct. 19.

“I would just like to extend a huge thanks to the Recreation Commission for a very successful first annual Fall Festival,” Liese said. “I’d also like to thank staff who supported that – DPW, the police detail, our former Public Works Director, Fire Chief Scott Barber, Kate Schimmel in Human Services. They really put together an excellent event.”