Mayor Angel Taveras' approval rating has risen by 13 percent since last year, according to a poll conducted Sept. 13-22 by the Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions. This increase comes despite an overwhelming sense of pessimism about the city's fiscal situation - 81.8 percent of respondents said Providence's economy is "not so good" or "poor." The poll sampled 425 voters from the pool of registered Providence voters.
Voters placed Taveras' job approval rating at 60 percent, with only 8 percent of respondents saying that he is doing a "poor" job.
Associate Professor of Political Science Wendy Schiller said this trend could be attributed to voters' abilities to disassociate Taveras' term from the city's fiscal problems. Voters instead view Taveras as a strong force who was able to negotiate tough agreements with unions and the University in order to reduce the structural deficit he inherited when he took office, she added.
"The mayor is off to a great start, and it has been recognized by the voters," said Maureen Moakley, professor of political science at the University of Rhode Island. "They admire his transparency and they are willing to go with anything else that he recommends."
But despite Taveras' efforts to reduce the $110 million structural deficit earlier this year, over 85 percent of voters still said the city currently faces serious budget problems, and almost 39 percent of voters said the city is more likely to face "periods of widespread unemployment" in the coming years than "continuous good times."
Considering Providence's recent financial woes, "it seems perfectly logical that very few people are expecting good times, certainly in the short term," Moakley said.
"I'm just surprised, in fact, that 31 percent of people think they are going to have good times," she added. "That seems like an unrealistic option."
An August 2012 report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics placed Rhode Island's unemployment rate as the second highest in the country at 10.7 percent. In Providence, the rate is even higher, with almost 13 percent of residents unable to find unemployment. But when these statistics were released last month, they were hailed as improvements in the state's long and arduous economic recovery process.
"Economic development is on everyone's minds these days in Rhode Island, for obvious reasons," wrote David Ortiz, press secretary for Mayor Angel Taveras, in an email to The Herald. "As with the national recovery, Providence's recovery is slow. But we are headed in the right direction."
The Taveras administration is looking to expedite Providence's economic recovery by investing in infrastructure development - through measures like adding a $40 million roads bond to the Nov. 6 ballot and installing cargo cranes in the Port of Providence - to attract businesses and investment to the city, Ortiz added.
When voters were asked about the problem of unfunded pension liabilities in the state, 48.5 percent said they supported the elimination of cost-of-living-adjustments in municipal pension plans - a strategy Taveras used earlier this year to reduce Providence's budget deficit. Only 20.5 percent of voters said they were dissatisfied with the agreement reached between the mayor and unions that suspended COLAs and moved retirees onto Medicare.
"People understand that (municipal pension plans) are completely unsustainable," Moakley said. She added that when the country is in the midst of a recession, voters would like to see retirees making concessions.
Among services rendered by the city, voters were most dissatisfied with the public school system. About 40 percent of respondents indicated they were not happy with the state of the schools in their neighborhood.
Facing challenges common to urban school districts - such as chronic absenteeism and startling degrees of underperformance relative to state proficiency levels - the Taveras administration has worked to develop charter schools and facilitate a coalition between the district and teachers' unions since coming into office, Ortiz wrote.
But Schiller said Taveras - whose mayoral campaign focused heavily on the importance of education reform - must first resolve the city's financial problems before moving on to any other issues.
"Once he gets that house in order, he can make marginal changes - provide opportunities for people who want their children to get a good education in the Providence school system," she said.
