- As mayor, we will cancel our existing contract with the for-profit Flock Surveillance Company.

They have shown numerous times that they will violate state law in addition to local data sharing agreements, and that is not a risk that we should be taking.

- It has helped us solve important crimes from the shooting at Brown to a fatal hit and run on North Main Street in the middle of the night with no other witnesses where we would not have been able to bring someone to justice but for the Flock cameras.

- Welcome to one-on-one.

I'm Ian Donnis.

The Democratic race for Mayor of Providence is coming down to the wire.

Brett Smiley says he deserves another term after first winning election in 2022, but he faces an unusually strong challenge from State Representative, David Morales, whose rapid political rise has taken him from first winning a General Assembly seat at age 22, to challenging an incumbent mayor from his own party just six years later.

The primary election ends September 9th.

Both candidates join me to make their final pitches.

We'll start with Mayor Smiley, and a little later, David Morales.

(bright ethereal music) The Mayor of Providence, Brett Smiley, welcome back to "One on One."

- Happy to be here.

- Give me 30 seconds on what is at stake in your primary election with challenger David Morales.

- Over the last four years, the city has made tremendous progress in becoming a safer city, lowest violent crime in 35 years.

We're building thousands of new housing units and we're preparing to take back control of the Providence Public Schools.

In this election, we need to make sure we don't go backwards in public safety.

We need to keep the progress on housing construction.

And we need a leader who's ready and prepared to take over a half a billion dollar budget with 2,000 employees and 20,000 kids who deserve better.

That's what's at stake in this election.

- You started this race with the benefits of incumbency, a huge financial advantage.

If you're doing as good a job as you say you are, why has this become a close race?

- Listen, the voters in Providence always have a choice to decide what's best and what's next for them.

And I've been excited to be on the campaign trail now for months in making my case to our residents and constituents to both talk about the progress that we've made, but also our plans for the future, and what I would focus on in a second term.

And I'm really happy with where we're at right now with just a couple weeks to go.

- Are you surprised by Morales's ascent as a candidate?

- No, I've always respected him.

He's a smart smart legislator who's represented the city for a couple years, but I do think the choice is quite clear.

The experience gap between the two of us is massive.

And some of his policies would clearly take us back to the way things used to be.

And I think voters in Providence want to see us continuing to make positive forward changes in our city.

- Affordability and the cost of living is a key issue this election season, not just in Rhode Island, seemingly everywhere.

But as far as the race for Mayor of Providence, what makes you the better candidate to address that?

- Listen, I hear from my constituents' families in Providence all the time about how difficult choices have become because the cost of everything from groceries to gas has gone up.

Most of those things are outside of the city's control.

We don't control grocery prices.

We don't control gas prices.

We can't really control inflation.

And so what I've tried to do is, in city hall, do everything we can to make life more affordable and then share that progress with constituents.

And so we've made meaningful progress on increasing the discount that we provide to homeowners who are older, for our veterans.

We've made pre-K universal, which means it's free for families who can't afford it.

That helps families save on the cost of childcare.

We provide $5 a week summer camp.

And I have a plan for emergency rental assistance that is being held up for political reasons by my opponent and his allies on the city council.

But we've got a strong track record of showing the many different ways in which we've tried to help Providence families save a little bit of money, acknowledging that many of these other cost pressures and affordability challenges are outside of the city's control, but are still very real for families in the city.

- Mayor Smiley, it was five years ago during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement when David Morales called for defunding the police.

He walked away from that a few months ago.

He says what he meant was that cutting off additional funding for the police.

Your campaign advertising leans very heavily on this line that Morales wants to defund the police.

Why keep doing this if this is no longer his position?

- Well, so he changed his position seemingly recently because he's decided to run for mayor.

But even as recently as two weeks ago, he'd lied about his position.

You referenced that he says he doesn't want to increase police funding, but that's not true.

He also worked really hard to try to scrub his own record and delete old tweets where he called explicitly for actually defunding the police.

He's also a part of a national- - There's some dispute though broadly about whether defunding means stripping any funding or just cutting off new funding for an agency.

If you look it up, it's not really clear which is the correct line.

- Sure, so, that's a question for him to answer and he continues to change his story through this campaign.

He's also propped up and part of a national political movement that very explicitly calls, without the ambiguity that you note, for actually defunding the police, which is the Democratic Socialists platform.

And so, which he's proudly said that he supports the DSA.

And so I think his record is very unclear on this, and it's not at all clear to voters whether he's just saying this right now because he thinks he wants to be mayor, and he's decided this in the last six months.

But for six years, he had a chance as a legislator, as a public figure, to change his public position, and he didn't.

And so I think it's a very important piece of information for voters to know.

And then it's their choice to decide if that impacts their decision or not.

- Mayor Smiley, is Morales right to say that your emphasis on this defunding the police line amounts to fear-mongering by your campaign?

- No, I think certainly I believe my top priority is to keep our city safe.

And I hear regularly from residents and business owners that the most important thing the city can do is to have a safe city.

And so this is a foundational question.

This is something that voters have a right to know of what are our plans to ensure a safe city.

It's a top concern for voters, and that's why it's so much a part of the conversation.

You know, beyond just the concerns about his past support for defunding, he put out a public safety plan about a month ago that lists a hosts of partnerships that we already have.

It talks about programs that we've been running for 20 years.

And yet in his public safety plan, there's no mention of getting illegal guns off the street.

There's no mention of continuing our progress in removing ATVs and dirt bikes.

In fact, the word "crime" only is in his public safety plan once.

And so it's much broader than just his advocacy for defunding the police.

- Let's move on.

- It's total lack of a plan for how to keep this city safe.

- All right.

We'll move on because we're short on time.

You referred you mentioned how Morales self-identifies as a Democratic Socialist.

You have a campaign ad in using video where one of his supporters talked about turning Providence into a laboratory for municipal socialism.

If you recheck Democratic Socialism, why are more American voters supporting it?

- So, every voter, and in Providence, we have a wide range of political views.

And I'm proud to be the mayor for all of them.

The reality is in city hall, and my job as mayor, is to deliver high-quality city services, to have a safe city, to facilitate the building of new housing and to help achieve better educational outcomes for our kids.

Most of these things aren't partisan issues.

They don't fall neatly into the ideological spectrum.

It's about solving problems for families.

And that's how I've tried to govern, and that's what my second term would be about also.

- Mayor Smiley, what is one thing you admire about your opponent?

- So, David has been a great champion of libraries and actually passed a bill about it at the State House around banning books, which is not something we do in Providence, but I'm glad it's now not allowed.

And I appreciate his advocacy for library.

Libraries are critical to our sort of social and community infrastructure, and he deserves praise for that.

- We remember back in 2022 when you campaigned on a back to basics theme of getting the basics right in city government.

Earlier this year in January 2026, you acknowledged the city fell short in responding to a snowstorm that preceded the big February blizzard.

If that was a shortcoming, why should city residents think your administration will do better with snow removal in the future?

- So, we have delivered high-quality services for the last four years.

We are issuing building permits faster than ever.

We've created new supports for small businesses.

Just yesterday, we announced the addition of a 10th rescue or ambulance.

We're now providing faster, better emergency services, EMS, EMT services.

There's no place in City Hall that we haven't improved the way in which we deliver services.

And yes, I have acknowledged the shortcoming to the January storm, but then quickly thereafter, when we got the largest snowfall in the state's history in February, we opened the city in five days, which was a full week faster than the Blizzard of '78 and was really proud of our performance in that storm.

And as in always, whenever there's opportunities for growth or improvement, we learn from those lessons and we'll be better off the next one.

- You mentioned how the Providence schools are coming back to city control.

What is your plan to make more progress for student achievement, and what benchmarks will you use to check whether your plan is proving effective?

- So, the City Council and the Providence School Board and I have been preparing for this moment for years now at this point which is another reason that I don't think we can trust control of our schools to someone without the experience to lead them.

About two weeks ago, I released my cradle to career strategy, which outlines how I'm going to focus my work at PPSD over the next four years.

It starts with continuing our progress in early childhood and showing a plan for 3K, which is three-year-old preschool.

It includes expanding our Eat Play Learn initiative and creating community campuses, which is a networked campus model of schools, libraries, and rec centers, and then more career and private sector and industry partnerships for the career pathways that have been created for our high school students.

The whole plan is online, and I would encourage voters and residents in Providence to read about it.

That provides the framework for the way in which I think I can help most improve educational outcomes across the spectrum, from early childhood education all the way through high school graduation.

- Are you satisfied with the level of pilot payment in lieu of taxes that the city is getting from tax-exempt institutions?

And if not, what will you do to change that?

- So, there's two separate groups here.

There's the colleges and the hospitals.

With respect to the colleges, I'm proud of the agreement that we struck early in my term.

At the time, it was the most generous agreement between colleges and a host community by a variety of metrics.

And it was a good deal.

Now, do I wish they paid more?

Yeah, of course I do.

But it's important to remember, we cannot simply send these people a bill.

They don't have to pay us anything.

It's only through negotiation and relationship that we are able to get payments, and we got payments that were more generous than anywhere else in the country.

Now, the hospitals have had a series of short-term agreements.

They've got their own financial pressures right now.

I do expect them to pay more in the future, but I also know that they need to get their own finances in order.

And so we have settled on a couple short-term agreements while we work on something longer and broader and more generous in the future.

- Just a quick fact check.

The Providence Eye recently reported that in raw dollars, Yale University pays more to New Haven than Brown University pays to Providence, so.

- Right, it's not about raw dollars because that's not a fair comparison.

You know, that would be like comparing salaries in Manhattan and in Providence.

Of course, you make more money in New York because the cost of living's higher.

When it comes to pilot payments, you have to look at it as either a percentage of endowment, a percentage of taxable property, a percentage of what the tax bill would be.

And by any of those metrics it's more than what Yale pays New Haven and the schools in Boston pay.

- Give me 30 seconds on where you are on whether Providence should allow the continued use of Flock or other license plate readers.

- So I think with protections and appropriate safeguards, that license plate readers have made us safer and should remain a tool in the public safety toolbox.

There are many different technologies that are used across the country.

In Providence, we use license plate readers, not anything beyond that.

And it has helped us solve important crimes from the shooting at Brown to a fatal hit-and-run on North Main Street in the middle of the night with no other witnesses where we would not have been able to bring someone to justice but for the Flock cameras.

They have been important.

We also have really rigorous data sharing agreements and legal agreements.

We control the data.

We audit it regularly.

And I'm satisfied with our current agreements on our license plate reader technology.

- The Mayor of Providence, Brett Smiley, thank you so much for joining us.

- Thank you.

(bright ethereal music) - David Morales, candidate for Mayor of Providence.

Welcome back to "One on One."

- Thank you so much for the invitation as always, Ian.

- Give me 30 seconds on what you see at stake in your challenge to Providence Mayor, Brett Smiley.

- Right now, our city's becoming unaffordable for so many working people all across Providence.

When I'm speaking with renters, I'm hearing about their stories, about the fact that they're watching their rent go up $400 to $600 at a time.

When I speak with homeowners, they've had to face two property tax increases in just the last three years.

It is clear, there's so much more that our city can and should be doing to support working people.

I want to continue calling our city home, which is why I support capping rent hikes at 4% a year while at the same time also diversifying revenue in the ways that we're able to make investments in our city.

So what's at stake is the question, can you continue to call Providence home and afford to do so?

- You have a lot of political experience.

You've served in the General Assembly as a State Representative for three terms, but you don't have a whole lot of professional experience.

What do you say to people who question whether you have the qualifications to manage a city like Providence?

- I'm proud of my experience.

I'm the child of a single immigrant mom and a lifelong renter, and I understand a lot of the struggles and hardships that so many working families in Providence today are facing.

And those are the issues that I'm often advocating for.

Making sure that we are protecting working people that are underwise in a position where they can no longer afford to continue calling our city home, making sure our immigrant community is being prioritized and taken care of.

And I've been able to leverage those experiences directly at the State House in order to deliver real results for working people.

And that has been the result of guaranteeing healthcare coverage to every child in our state, regardless of immigration status.

It's been about establishing a program for neighbors in Providence to get their lead pipes replaced for free.

And that all took and required collaboration, not just with fellow legislators, but also state agencies like our General Treasurer's Office, in addition to the Infrastructure Bank.

So I have the experience of working directly within the bureaucracy as well to make sure that we're delivering real, tangible results for our neighbors.

Not to mention, I'm proud of my background when it comes to academics.

I'm the youngest graduate of Brown's MPA program when I got my master's at the age of 20, combined with my own real world experience of having served as an educator, serving as a behavioral specialist at a local middle school, and then thereafter serving as the director of adult education.

And one thing I would just reference as well, Ian, is that being mayor is not a one-person job.

It's also about the team you surround yourself with.

And that is why I will be adamant about having qualified department heads that will ensure that we're delivering the excellent city services that our neighbors deserve, starting with the Department of Public Works, where right now we have an unqualified director, which does not have experience around city services or a degree, which is actually in violation of our city's charter.

So I believe the experience that I bring from a legislative perspective, a lived experience, but also the approach of governing and having qualified staff members will allow us to make sure that we're properly managing our $630 million plus budget while at the same time delivering the quality services our neighbors deserve.

- Affordability and the cost of living are big issues everywhere this election season, including in Providence as you've discussed.

Why are you better than Mayor Smiley, who's served top roles in state government and as mayor?

Why are you better to prepared to address those issues?

- The last four years has failed to deliver for our neighbors in Providence.

Right now, we have watched as rents continue to increase.

Recently, I spoke with a working mom in Lower South Providence who shared with me that the rent for her two bedroom apartment had jumped from $1,400 to $2,000.

And that is the reality and the experience of so many working people across our city.

They're watching themselves get priced out of their neighborhoods.

And for that reason, I will be working directly with our City Council.

So we cap rent hikes on an annual basis.

So our neighbors don't have to worry that their rent's going to go up by more than 4%.

Because unlike the mayor, I will not be vetoing that legislation.

I'll make sure that we're working directly with our legislative partners to deliver.

And I find it insulting that during a time of need, Mayor Smiley chose to veto rent stabilization while he was finishing up construction of his third home out in Tiverton.

And I think it speaks volumes that right now we have a city government that is disconnected with the needs of our neighbors.

And so when we talk about affordability, it's about making sure that we're capping rent hikes in the immediate, but also having a vision on building new housing.

And that's why I'm excited that we're going to adopt a public developer model where we can acquire vacant lots and empty buildings and transform them into what could otherwise be mixed income affordable homes.

- David, during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2021, you called for defunding the Providence Police.

Was it a mistake to make that call?

- So, at 21, as a candidate for state representative, like many neighbors, I felt very frustrated by what we were observing across the country, but also in our backyard where we had cases of police misconduct and there was no layers of accountability.

And so I made a reference to defunding the police, and it is a stance that I have not held or a belief that I've had for the last six years.

You look at my track record as a state representative.

I have voted on six state budgets that have fully funded public safety.

And as mayor, I'm going to make sure all of our neighbors feel safe calling our city home, which is why we're going to have stability within our police and fire department and also take a comprehensive approach to making sure that some of our most vulnerable, including our unhoused neighbors, have the support and services that they need because every neighbor deserves to feel safe, especially when they step outside their home.

- You identify as a Democratic Socialist.

What does that mean to be a Democratic Socialist as you see it?

- To me, Democratic Socialism is based on the basic principles of fairness.

The basic principle that you're not going to find yourself in a position where you get priced out because a corporate landlord wants to raise your rent 20 to 30% at a time.

It's about the basic fairness that every family across Providence will be able to have the reassurance that they can send their child to their neighborhood public school with the reassurance that they're going to receive a quality public education.

It's on the basis of making sure that large corporate entities like Shell Terminal Station near the Port of Providence contribute more to our tax base.

For me, it just draws back to how do we make sure that government is facilitating an environment where there is more fairness in place when it comes to a tax system, when it comes to our schools, and when it comes to housing?

- One of your supporters, Daniel Denver, is being criticized by Mayor Smiley for saying that, calling for Providence to be made into a laboratory for municipal socialism.

Do you stand by that statement?

- So, Providence is not a laboratory of any sort.

What I will say is that I will take a far different approach to governance than what we have seen from Brett Smiley alongside the status quo, because it's failing our neighbors.

Rents have gone up by over 40% since 2020.

It is becoming less affordable to continue calling Providence home.

And for that reason, we need bold action.

We're going to cap rent hikes, we're going to build more affordable homes, and we're going to restructure our property tax system so we demand more from the industrial polluters that operate near the Port of Providence.

- You criticized Mayor Smiley's DPW director a bit early, and you've been critical of the city's response to snowstorms earlier in 2026.

How do we know that you would do a better job with basic city functions like snow removal?

- So, four years ago, Brett Smiley was on the campaign trail promising to make Providence the quote unquote "best run city in America."

And when I speak with neighbors, it is very clear that they do not believe Providence is the best run city in America.

I believe that there is so much more we can do to provide excellent city services to our neighbors, and a lot of that starts with basic communication.

Our neighbors should know when a street sweeper is going to be going down their neighborhood.

We have a mobile alert system that we can better utilize like 311 that can be based on zip codes so we can communicate with neighbors when we're actually going to get around to filling a pothole, to making a sidewalk repair that's been on the waiting list for years.

While at the same time, also making sure that basic city services like snowplowing, in addition to street sweeping, isn't left up to chance or up to trying to figure out when am I next on the list?

Because you have a city government that is prepared to actually meet your needs and communicate with you.

And that's why I will take a lot of pride in appointing qualified department staff, specifically department heads, who are going to help to navigate on how we better serve our neighbors through DPW.

I'll also add that we're going to better utilize our existing funding structures.

Right now, Brett Smiley wants to waste over $4 million in federal infrastructure funding to shift the bike lane on South Water Street.

You can use $4.5 million dollars in federal infrastructure funding to fix up Olneyville Square where we've had far too many accidents.

So there are better opportunities that exist for us to be more mindful of our limited budget while at the same time also communicating with our neighbors.

- David, what is one thing you admire about your opponent?

- I definitely have to say our mutual love for libraries.

I think we both recognize that our libraries within Providence, which serve over nine different neighborhoods, have a lot of value.

And so I appreciate the fact that he has recognized that as a part of some of his past budgets.

- We've heard for many years about how the future of the Providence schools is vital for the state's economy as a whole.

The schools are coming back under city control.

If you are mayor, what would your approach be to improving student performance and what benchmarks would you use to show whether your approach is effective or not?

- We're going to address our ongoing staffing crisis.

It's a shame that right now we have elementary schools with over 300 students, but only one full-time counselor.

We have nearly 40% of English language learners across our schools, yet we don't have enough dual language programs in place.

And so my approach is about making sure that our schools have the actual staff support needed.

So we have more teaching assistants in our classrooms.

We have more multilingual educators in addition to counselors and social workers.

And we're going to kick that off by refining our existing partnerships alongside Family Services of Rhode Island, Tide's Family Services in addition to the Providence Center so we have more counselors readily available to support the needs of our kids.

And we're going to be able to measure success based on literacy rates.

You can tell a lot about a student's respective future based on their reading level in third grade.

There's a lot of investments that we have to make, so we have teaching assistants that are readily available to support our students, especially those, again, that are multilingual learners, in addition to those that are enrolled in individualized education plans that right now are not receiving the one-to-one support that they need.

And all of that is a reflection of whether or not as a city we're willing to make that investment.

- Does the city get enough in payment in lieu of taxes pilot from tax-exempt institutions like hospitals and universities?

And if not, if you were mayor, what would your approach be to changing that?

- We do not receive enough voluntary payments from our four private colleges and universities, because between RISD, PC, Brown and JWU, they're only paying about 8% of what they would otherwise owe in property taxes.

You look at a community like Boston University and the City of Boston, they have a more generous agreement with just one institution.

Same can be said for Yale University and their relationship with the city of New Haven.

My approach is about working with our four private colleges and universities, recognizing that we are in a historic moment where schools are transitioning back to local control for the first time in seven years.

And we need them to be a partner as a part of this process.

I want us to work towards a short-term amendment around our existing pilot agreement.

A short-term amendment between three to five years where there's more voluntary contributions coming in from our private institutions, not for the purposes of increasing the city's budget, but for the purposes of having frontline staff positions like social workers, counselors, and multilingual educators within Providence Public Schools.

And so I'm going to work towards having a restricted receipt account alongside our private universities.

- With about 30 seconds left, tell us where you stand on this hotly debated topic of whether the city should allow license plate readers like Flock.

- As mayor, we will cancel our existing contract with the for-profit Flock Surveillance Company.

They have shown numerous times that they will violate state law in addition to local data sharing agreements, and that is not a risk that we should be taking.

- All right, candidate for Mayor of Providence, David Morales, thank you very much for sitting down with us.

- Thank you as always, Ian.

- Thanks for watching "One on One."

I'm Ian Donnis.

You can find all of our past interviews on the Ocean State Media YouTube channel.

You can also listen to "One on One" wherever you get your podcast.

And if you love Rhode Island politics, sign up to receive my free TGIF column in your inbox every Friday at oceanstatemedia.org/tgif.

We'll see you next week.

(bright ethereal music)