Thanks to our hosts at the Barrington Public Library, Deborah Barchi, Director, and Lauri Burke, Adult Programs Librarian, for their assistance announcing and providing refreshments for our September 24 Dialogue. About 20 residents attended the meeting, all of whom talked spiritedly about their town.
Many people commented that Barrington is a good place to live. It has a beautiful setting and a somewhat rural character that comes from its mixture of waterfront and open space landscapes. Some felt, however, that it is a commuter or bedroom community serving a population that works in Providence and even Boston. A number of participants said that Barrington seems to have a large percentage of high income, short-term residents who are on career paths that keep them "on the move." While some people said their neighborhoods were cohesive, others felt they lived in tract developments with little common life among the relatively transient residents.
A "downtown" is hard to define. There is no common or public green space near Barrington’s municipal offices, library, senior center, and main commercial activities. School activities provide a kind of unifying "identity" for students but in fact the school system is regional and not town-based. Some participants wondered if young people would want or could afford to stay in Barrington, given its high housing costs and few employment opportunities other than in retail activities. Several people expressed concern about the town’s lack of affordable housing and its zoning restrictions on multi-family and multi-unit dwellings. They asked, "Are we 'zoning out' the possibility of developing a more diverse town population or attracting a more varied economic base?" When several people suggested that the town government seems to discourage effective citizen participation, members of the group began to discuss the issue of civic involvement on the individual level. These topics could be the basis of the $1000 Fund for Community Engagement grant project—a humanities-based, publicly accessible program—that would reach out to Barrington’s various community, cultural, and age groups.
We had planned the first FCE meeting for Wednesday, December 18, at 7 p.m. at the Barrington Public Library’s Gallery but are rescheduling for the early new year. The holidays and end of year activities caught up with all of us. In the meantime, RICH is keeping in touch with participants by e-mail, “snail mail,’ and phone to keep the momentum of the Dialogue going.
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for Community Engagement After each of Rhode Island's 39 cities and towns participates in the Dialogues Program, The Rhode Island Council for the Humanities (RICH) offers it a one-time Fund for Community Engagement (FCE) award of up to $1,000. The Fund for Community Engagement grant gives each community an opportunity to address--through a public humanities project--issues raised during the Dialogue meeting. Please use the highlighted link here to access the guidelines for Fund for Community Engagement grants. |