Jill Davidson is running in the special election for Providence City Council, Ward 2

"Our mayors, city officials, and governors will come and go. Guess who stays? We do. Families and kids. We have to be the holders of the vision..."

Jill Davidson is running for the Ward 2 Providence City Council seat recently vacated by Helen Anthony.

Davidson is the Director of Development and Communications for the Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council. Previously, she helped lead the Coalition of Essential Schools, a national network advocating for rigorous student-centered schools. She was a leader in the successful effort to stop the closure of Nathan Bishop Middle School and secure its renovation.

We spoke at the Butcher Shop Cafe & Deli on Elmgrove on Friday morning.

Steve Ahlquist: First question: What made you want to run for city council?

Jill Davidson: I have thought about it since moving to Providence in 2005. I immediately got involved in the fight to save Nathan Bishop and started to think about how the Providence city government works. When Sam Zurier, whom I got to know through that process, became the Ward 2 city council person, that further engaged me. But at that time, my work, husband, and our three children were at a place where I did not have the hours in the day, so I filed it away. This was something I wanted to do, but Helen Anthony took the seat, and I thought she did a terrific job, and there was no need to challenge her. And to be honest, it’s not that I put that ambition away; I became deeply involved with my work here in Providence. I have served on several nonprofit boards. I keep myself busy. So when Helen announced that she would step down, the penny did not immediately drop for me. I didn’t immediately think, “Okay, here’s my chance.”

I was engaged in other ways to make life in Providence better for people. It wasn’t until folks reached out to me, people I respect and care about and who care deeply about Providence, that I decided their request clicked with my vision of how impactful I could be, and I decided to run. The election cycle was already incredibly short, and I decided, perhaps a bit later than some of the other candidates, but we have been able to pull together a robust campaign quickly.

Number two, and even more important, is that over the years, I have gotten deeply involved in issues related to the Providence Public Schools, primarily because my children attended public school for 19 years. I have three sons, three years apart. My oldest started in 2005, my youngest finished in 2024, so I’m just off my tour of duty at PPSD. As much as possible, I’ve been deeply engaged at the school and district level to ensure that parent, family, and community voices were a robust part of the decision-making. That was my aim, and my profession deeply informed that. It is not what I do now, but I have worked in national-level education policy and governance for most of my career. I directed or had leadership positions in several national nonprofits and worked with nationwide networks of schools focused on creating student-centered, community-informed ways of teaching, learning, and running school systems. I know what works. I could take my professional expertise and fuse it with my real, meaningful place as a parent, and over the years, make a meaningful difference - at least until the state takeover. I’ll put a pin in that and come back to it later.

Number 3, I know, from my lived experience, and then reinforced as I’ve been talking to voters, that schools are the primary issue on people’s minds. There are other urgent issues, but schools are critical for everybody in this race.

My husband and I raised our kids in Providence, and we have done so with incredible privilege. We are white, healthy, and dominant language-speaking. I have children who are healthy and doing well. We have the resources we need to live our lives. I have chosen to spend my life working in nonprofits to make schools nationwide better for teaching and learning and for children, families, and the teachers who work with them.

Since 2020, I’ve been the director of development and communications at the Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council, getting deeply engaged in environmental issues, community organizing, and activism in Providence, which was my dream. Because we as a family were open and explicit about how we wanted to contribute, my husband worked in information security. He did well, but a little over a year ago, he lost his job at a Fortune 500 company. Not boo-hoo, we’re okay, we have savings. We are much better off than most folks in Providence, and I’m acutely aware of that. This is not a sob story. That is to say that we spend every day trying to figure out how to pay our kids’ college tuition. It is to say that we are making hard choices right now. Me,

I’d be lying if I didn’t have a moment wondering if I should have become a corporate lawyer. It would solve a lot of problems right now.

Steve Ahlquist: I took the self-employment path, making less money, but doing a job I enjoy rather than a job that made me a lot of money but was a chore.

Jill Davidson: It’s a choice. We might be defining the “missing middle” people keep discussing. We are very lucky. We have stable housing. I can’t emphasize enough how critical that is. And because we chose to buy a big house, back when our kids were little, our kids will always have stable housing. One of them is living with us now because it’s so expensive.

This all deeply informs my understanding of what it is like to live life in this city. It applies to many people in this neighborhood. This is a wealthy neighborhood, and many may be making financial decisions that differ from those I’m making, but many are not. Neighbors I’m talking to in Ward 2 are feeling financial pressures, and I’ve had some emotional, let’s get out the tissues, conversations at the doors of folks who are facing some of the challenges that we are, but more so. It gives me a much more informed perspective on the ways that many people in Providence live their lives and make financial decisions. The person sitting in the council seat needs to understand what life is like for people when you’re making hard decisions like, “Do I buy my kid a new outfit for school, do I pay this medical bill, or do I pay my rent? That’s real for people, every day. It informs my desire to serve.

Steve Ahlquist: I want to discuss schools, the cost of living, healthcare access, and food shortages, which are all impacting people across the city.

Jill Davidson: My philosophy, well before I decided to run, is that Providence and Rhode Island are too small to compromise the life of any person living here. We need everybody. We need to invest in everybody. We need to support everybody and learn what people can give in terms of working, paying taxes, and contributing to their community. If done right, it’s a cycle that lifts everybody, but right now, we’re in a cycle that’s pulling everybody down. My philosophy is that we need to create the greatest good for the greatest number of people as often as we can, and serving on the city council will allow me to put that into action on a larger scale than I’ve had the opportunity to do so far.

Steve Ahlquist: Let’s talk about schools because you indicated that you weren’t so pleased with the takeover. Talk to me a little bit about that.

Jill Davidson: As I mentioned, I always did what I could to support the schools that my own kids attended. That’s where it started. My kids went to Martin Luther King Elementary and Nathan Bishop Middle School, which was open partly because I was part of the task force that kept it open, and Classical High School. At King, I became president of the PTO, and along with Kim Roam, made a structural decision that we needed the school community to make more intentional decisions to ensure that the PTO leadership more closely reflected the demographics of the school community.

King is a wonderful community, and we were able to enact that, but it wasn’t sustainable. Sitting at the table as a decision-making member of the school community doesn’t happen by accident, particularly in Title I districts and districts with systemic transportation challenges. Many families just can’t get to the school because RIPTA can’t get them there, full stop.

There are childcare issues, food insecurity, and parents working two jobs: the list is long. We dealt with some of that by having food, providing childcare, and sometimes setting up carpools to bring folks. We did everything we could, but there were limits. There’s professional support for that. Title One contains some funds to be allocated to parent engagement. It is not always enough to sustain even a halftime job - like a family coordinator - but without professional support and infrastructure, it is too much to ask families to organize themselves independently and have the information, support, and presence they need to be involved. It’s an unfair expectation.

But we did our best. In all three schools, I was a leader in whatever parent/family involvement group because that helped get me a seat at the table, and while I had a seat at the table, I did everything I could to pull new folks in. I appreciate that the district was pretty good about providing translation at meetings. It’s helpful for families who do not speak English at home. I always did everything I could at the school and district level.

This is where the state takeover comes in.

Before the state takeover, there were some consistent structures, especially one called the Parent Advisory Committee (PAC), where PTOs, school groups, or just involved parents could, once a month, sit in a room at 797 Westminster and talk to the superintendent and instructional leaders. Was it robust enough? No. Did it exist? Yes. It was an open meeting, so I would drag as many people as possible. There were other structures. I’ve been able to serve on superintendent selection committees, mayoral advisory committees, and things like that. And again, I would always drag somebody with me.

Steve Ahlquist: Was that under Mayor Jorge Elorza?

Jill Davidson: Yes, under Elorza and prior to the takeover. In 2019, when the state takeover happened, the only voices raised in a systemic way to speak against it were parents, families, students, the coalition of robust student groups, and, to their credit, some Providence City Council members—but not the mayor.

Steve Ahlquist: The mayor was all for it.

Jill Davidson: Yes.

Steve Ahlquist: He was for it because he wanted to break the union. Right after Governor Daniel McKee settled a contract with the Providence Teachers’ Union, Mayor Elorza admitted that the whole point of the takeover was to break the union. I think most people knew that, but he said it out loud.

Jill Davidson: After the state takeover was enacted, all those parent and family engagement mechanisms disappeared. Others were put in place, particularly the Community Advisory Board system, and I served on a couple of those committees. They were largely a closed circle of people talking to each other, with little impact.

Steve Ahlquist: You weren’t being seriously engaged.

Jill Davidson: No, it was very time-consuming, and the impact was minimal. It would be disingenuous to say there was no parent or family engagement, but it was less meaningful than the systems we had prior. Then, of course, everything was exacerbated by COVID. The whole world was a different place. We lost the level of engagement that had been so meaningful to me. All of that was gone.

But my children graduated, and I found other ways to get involved in the city's life. Fortuitously, I started working at the Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council.

Steve Ahlquist: They do great work.

Jill Davidson: I feel lucky to be there. I’m glad that I’m able to make such a meaningful contribution. It’s an incredible organization that has informed me deeply about environmental issues. I bring a ton of expertise to the table, but I’m also learning how a nonprofit can make a difference in Providence, which is deeply interesting and has allowed me to work in a meaningful way with several city council members from Olneyville. We’ve had great relationships.

It’s part of why I feel confident about this campaign. I do not feel I am on one side and the other folks are on another. We have already worked together. Folks in city departments know me because of my involvement. I’ve seen the city council in action in an intimate way. I want to do this and can see myself in that role.

I rely on those relationships to ensure project funding and advocacy. In fact, in the prior budget cycle, the Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council successfully advocated for funding from the City of Providence for the first time. I’m grateful to the mayor and the city council for seeing the value of our work.

Steve Ahlquist: The mayor recently said he wants to contribute more to the nonprofits in response to what’s happening in Washington.

Jill Davidson: That’s an important subject. I have a lot to say about the incursions of Washington, beyond ICE, and much of it concerns funding.

But all of this was in response to the impact of the state takeover. Of course, the impact has been much more draconian, but it’s took a district that had inconsistency at the school level around governance, that was hammered by the implications of No Child Left Behind, high stake standardized testing, and by the large percentage of funding coming from the federal government in the form of Title One funds and the restrictions placed on how that can be spent. There was far less discretionary spending, plus high salaries and pensions. We were already in a tough place in terms of what makes schools work well: site-based autonomy or school-based management.

It’s way more complicated than people would like to make it. I firmly believe that the way to do it is to make firm commitments, at the state level, to a funding formula that is equitable and reviewed, and to have that money flow through cities and towns and have those school districts support autonomy at the school level, with a high degree of accountability. Autonomy has to mean things, like we don’t have a seniority-only placement system. I understand how sensitive a subject this is for unions.

Steve Ahlquist: Making a change is always hard.

Jill Davidson: Absolutely, but the evidence tells me it’s what we must do. Senator Zurier issued a report proposing ways for labor and management to work well together.

Steve Ahlquist: I’ll link to that.

Jill Davidson: It’s fascinating when you dig into it, and I agree with much of what’s in it. I understand the challenge that the seniority piece poses to the union. I also understand that the folks in the union are educators, and educators care about what happens with teaching and learning. The union is well poised to become a robust partner. As the schools return to city control, the city council must assert strong leadership and ensure adequate funding. That’s the most direct responsibility. We also need to ensure that we are one of the main holders of the community’s vision that transcends any mayor or superintendent.

Steve Ahlquist: How do we do that? Because continuity across administrations is difficult. We have Presidents elected, and they establish the No Child Left Behind Act or some other national policy, and then we all have to react to that to keep our federal dollars coming. Also, governors, mayors, legislatures, and school boards have their agendas.

Jill Davidson: It hasn’t happened, but it could. There are a couple of bills in the Senate, one sponsored by Sam Zurier and another sponsored by Tiara Mack, that propose forms of governance where, depending on the conditions, entities that are not the school board, mayor, or city council hold the “vision” and hold that accountability. There’s a lot of detail, and I’d be happy to go into it, but that’s the main idea. It’s an entity that the stakeholders I mentioned are a part of, but the business and nonprofit community, parents, families, and community groups can also participate. Providence has had structures of external accountability in the past. They have not persisted for a variety of reasons.

You may remember the days of the education partnership, which still existed when I came to Providence. There was a lot of that in education here that I found heartening and thoughtful in the mid-2000s when I moved here. Most of those structures are gone. But fundamentally, we need a long-term vision. We need a superintendent who can embrace and advance it. We need a mayor who can embrace and advance it. We need a city council to embrace and advance it - a fundamental agreement on what a meaningful education means.

Steve Ahlquist: I want to put this in my own words: We want to center a “vision,” a set of principles or ideas that the stakeholders you mentioned would work toward and keep centered.

Jill Davidson: Exactly.

Steve Ahlquist: And whenever you deviate from there, an external authority will be empowered to pull you back on course.

Jill Davidson: You hope there’s accountability at the state and city levels. Our mayors, city officials, and governors will come and go. Guess who stays? We do. Families and kids. We have to be the holders of the vision, but I would like to make sure there’s structural authority for that, and do what I can at the city council level to make that happen, and be vocal about what sort of schools we need and to help create the conditions to make that happen.

Part of the reason Massachusetts has had some success, despite having similar demographics in some cities, is that there’s more commitment at the state level. Long ago, DESE, the Massachusetts equivalent of RIDE (Rhode Island Department of Education), and the state legislature committed higher funding and support to districts with more robust plans to support what works in teaching and learning. It’s not a coincidence that Massachusetts has consistently better education outcomes than Rhode Island. It’s because of that long-established level of commitment.

I’m not the first to say this, but there’s a reason we are not going to accomplish what we need to in our schools anywhere in the state, and particularly in Providence, which relies on a higher percentage of federal and state funding than most districts without robust commitment from the state legislature and making sure that the vision is informing what happens at the city level.

Steve Ahlquist: What is the role of the new and untested school board?

Jill Davidson: The school board should have a robust say. I applaud the folks who are serving on the school board. I know a few of them and look forward to working with them. I chose not to be appointed to or run for election for the school board because I have a bigger set of issues than just schools. Although passionate about schools, I care about more than just schools. When the mayor appointed the school board, I went through the interview process once, but in time, I clarified my opinion about appointed school boards. I fundamentally feel they are undemocratic and didn’t want to participate, so I chose not to.

Steve Ahlquist: How do you feel about the half-elected/half-appointed system?

Jill Davidson: It’s a step in the right direction. It builds an inherent tension, and I want to see how they will resolve that.

Steve Ahlquist: I worry that the mayor, having the opportunity to choose his appointees after the election, means that he can blunt the effect of the election by putting in people he knows will object to the direction the voters chose. He can counterbalance the elected school board members and nullify the change voters want. It’s not necessarily what’s happening now, but it’s something that could happen. The other thing is, why do you have 10 people? The school board almost immediately hit a five-five impasse. The board could use a tie-breaking vote.

Jill Davidson: Structurally, we need to do more work, but serving on the school board is hard. You need to know a ton. I don’t feel I have the expertise, and I have helped past school boards by bringing in national experts to talk with them about, for instance, how school-based autonomy works. I understand how hard it is. We need to ensure that we are investing in our school board so they can make the hard budgetary policy decisions they need to make. I have a lot of faith in school boards, and I want to see ours work. I will do everything I can at the city council level, too.

Steve Ahlquist: I always want things to work.

Jill Davidson: We are in a moment of change because of the hybrid system. We’ll see if it’s the change we need. Also, because the schools are coming back to the district, they will have a more meaningful say than they have in some time.

Steve Ahlquist: Theoretically, we’re getting the schools back next year, ahead of the election. Governor McKee wants at least incremental improvements to claim the takeover worked, although I’m not sure any of the benchmarks for success we established have been reached.

What does a return to local control look like?

Jill Davidson: I just want to preface this by saying that the school takeover and handback represent a critical moment for Providence. Sometimes I forget to say, because it’s so ingrained in me, that without the school system that we can count on serving most kids well, we will never be able to move forward as a city, full stop. I don’t have to explain why, but it echoes what I talk to people about when I knock on doors. Whether people have chosen to send their children to public school or not, they are deeply concerned about the quality of the public schools, and for good reason. I strongly resist raising charter caps. Charter schools are doing what they’re doing - I’m not going to unwrite history - we could spend an hour on why charter schools can sometimes do some good and sometimes not do some good, but we’re going to put that aside from now.

Without our schools serving most kids well, we will always be trapped in a cycle of the most engaged families finding a way out if they don’t think the schools serve their kids. I’ve said this to folks since I moved to Providence: “You are the parent.” Sometimes I encounter folks who are anxious about “You sent your kids to public school and I didn’t. Are you judging me?” And the first thing I say is, “You’re the parent. I made the right decision for my kids. You have to make the right decision for your kids.”

The point is that we need a system called the Providence Public Schools, where most families, ideally all families, can find a school to support their kids well. And that has got to be in the public system because there’s no other way to do it. Without that, we’re always going to have people peeling off. We’re going to have a lack of faith in the city. It dampens the interest of businesses in moving here. I don’t have the data, but we know there is a phenomenon of young families moving to Providence and then leaving, or moving to Providence, feeling like they “can’t” use the Providence Public Schools. We’ve got to shift, and we’ve got to solve it.

Steve Ahlquist: I see it. Young people start their careers in Providence, but when it’s time to send their kids to school, they look to move to Bristol or Lincoln to avoid our public schools.

Jill Davidson: If you assume, from neighborhood gossip, that this school won’t serve your kid well, you’re doing your child a disservice. Visit the school. If you spend time in the school and decide it’s not the right fit for your kid, good for you. You’re being a responsible parent.

Steve Ahlquist: We spent a lot of time on education, so I want to move faster. I want to hit on housing. What is your take on housing?

Jill Davidson: First, I’m grateful to the other people in this race for sharing information with you and other venues. None of us can be experts in everything. Jeff has shared some insightful thinking about the role of the law in this. Dave has shared deep insights into our structural housing challenges. Matt has shared an inspirational vision for our schools. If elected, I hope to work with everybody. We’re all in this together, and I will rely on their expertise.

That said, I have my own take on housing challenges, and they’re to some extent informed by personal experience. As I mentioned, my kid can’t afford an apartment in Providence. If he follows an economic trajectory similar to my husband’s and mine, he will never be able to afford a house here.

My sister and her husband’s kids are grown. She told me, “We would love to move to a city. We love Providence.” They came just for a casual weekend hangout, and we looked at some open houses. They’re in a lovely house in a suburb of Connecticut, which could barely translate into a house in Providence or any neighborhood. That’s nuts. That opened my eyes.

The first place was where I spent most of my young adult life in San Francisco, and I loved it. When our oldest kid, who’s now 25, was four, right before he was going to start kindergarten, I just thought, “I’m either going to become a Californian, or we’re going to move back. I always intended to move back, but the main reason, besides that intention, was the increasing unaffordability and inaccessibility of San Francisco housing. The same cycle I see happening out here happened there.

We didn’t want to live in a city where our children wouldn’t have peers from a wide range of economic backgrounds, and I didn’t want to live in a city that forced out the people who had worked there and had been there for generations. Here in Rhode Island, I can help do something about it.

That said, I know the elephant in the room is rent stabilization.

I appreciated the city council’s housing crisis report. It was a bit short on recommendations, but that’s fine. It provides direction. We need to build more housing, but that will take time. The current comprehensive plan does not necessarily support robust zoning in Ward 2. We have talented folks, like Dave, who will help lead the way. Build, build, build—as long as we adhere to design standards, which is important. It’s not fussy; it’s important. Right?

Steve Ahlquist: Well, it depends on who you talk to, but yeah.

Jill Davidson: It’s part of what makes Providence a special place.

Steve Ahlquist: I feel that art is not optional.

Jill Davidson: I agree. That’s another reason I moved back to Providence. I wanted to be part of art. But building our way out of this crisis will take time. We need some form of rent stabilization to make it possible for people to have any level of control over their already inflated housing budgets. I don’t see any other way around it. When you read the city task force report carefully, it offers a set of thoughtful recommendations for implementing rent stabilization that include variances when things like the tax rate change. Some people are very focused on the 4% cap, which is supposed to parallel the legal requirements for tax rates. There is a stipulation in that list that would deal with the circumstance we just had, of raising tax rates to deal with budgetary crises. It goes without saying that we don’t want to have a punitive policy on owner-occupied units. I understand the challenges people have pointed to - it could have a depressing effect on building. We will have to work through that. A challenge doesn’t mean you don’t do it. A challenge means you solve the problem. I need us all on the same page.

Steve Ahlquist: Some places have done this where it has not depressed building.

Jill Davidson: Rent stabilization is not to reduce rent. People get a little confused about this. It is an opportunity to plan your life and have a sense that there will be some level of stability, so it’s not chaos every year. As we implement this, we must also work with incredible focus on the building side and ensure we’re building efficiently and thoughtfully.

It’s important to me that we work with developers who build with quality, so we’re not kicking the can down the line, and in 25 years, my kids will be solving this problem.

Steve Ahlquist: We do that whenever we allow a new building that runs on gas.

Jill Davidson: There you go.

Steve Ahlquist: And we haven’t even gotten to all the environmental stuff, which we’ll do next because we’re running out of time.

Jill Davidson: I strongly support increasing density and expanding housing in all kinds of creative and meaningful ways.

Steve Ahlquist: Does that include a public developer?

Jill Davidson: I would love to see it. I want to see a plan for it, but I love the idea of social housing. Last summer, I was lucky to see examples of that in action in Europe, and I thought it was incredible. It is absolutely the direction we need to go in, but we have a crisis, and we need to deal with that.

Steve Ahlquist: I know. We have people on the street suffering. Honestly, it’s so bad.

Jill Davidson: The lack of housing leads to more people on the street, and it’s unconscionable.

Steve Ahlquist: People who have fallen into this are people like you and me. It’s not because of a moral failing.

Jill Davidson: I know we’re tight on time, so I want to talk a bit about the Trump of it all.

Steve Ahlquist: Let’s do it.

Jill Davidson: I’ve heard the other candidates in this race and many others want to make sure we enforce Providence’s commitment not to support ICE. Full stop. I am glad to live in a city that has those commitments, and I want to see those commitments upheld and enforced. As a city council member, I’ll be carefully looking at that and making sure that I’m doing everything I can to support it.

However, Trump’s negative impacts on Providence go way beyond ICE. When we look at the impact of threatened and actual funding cuts, how they are or could be hitting the city is devastating. For example, during the summer, the administration threatened to withhold over $30 billion nationwide in K-12 funding. That translated into $17 million for Rhode Island, much of which was slated for Providence and other urban areas. It would’ve been devastating to Providence, but it was restored. We’re fortunate to have a strong congressional delegation and Peter Neronha fighting for us, thank God. But the specter of cuts is always there now.

In the last fiscal year, the $78 million in federal funds was 15.4% of the total school budget, a huge amount of money that, if lost, would require cutting essential services that most immediately affect underserved students. Stop. That’s number one. Number two is the potential impact on nonprofits, the healthcare sector, and universities, which comprise a huge percentage of our workforce combined. Brown University, as is the State of Rhode Island, is one of the biggest employers, a huge percentage of people whose livelihoods are dependent, in large part, on federal funding. Our whole economy is at risk with these shenanigans. We, at the Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council, are no different. We rely on various forms of federal funding, and we have spent much of this year, since Trump came into office, fighting hard to find ways to sustain that funding.

We were the lead plaintiff in a case brought against the United States Department of Agriculture, where we represented a class of 32 other nonprofits to restore funding to a program called Our Forest. That is the name of the federal program, but it is not our name for it. It’s an urban reforesting program also designed as a workforce development program. It’s super cool, and it totally fits what we do. We won the grant in partnership with other organizations in Providence, like the Providence Neighborhood Tree Planting Program.

Steve Ahlquist: Who I love.

Jill Davidson: They’re awesome. We do a ton of work with them, and that’s an example of the kind of partnerships we have across the city. The money was yanked away, and through the United Way, which has set up the nonprofit alliance, we could escalate our concern to the national level. We benefitted from pro bono representation here in Rhode Island - Miriam Weizenbaum and some other folks - and pro bono representation on the national level from Democracy Forward. We brought the case here in Rhode Island, we won, and funding has been restored, at least for now. We are doing our best to take this three-year program and do it as quickly as possible while we can. Other funding we lost.

I want to emphasize that the United Way and the Rhode Island Foundation have done quite a bit to help nonprofits impacted by federal funding lawsuits. They can’t wave a magic wand and restore all the money, but those systems and awareness exist. Not all nonprofits have been so fortunate. There are cuts in services and layoffs happening everywhere, and echoes at the universities and in healthcare. So when we talk about the impact of Trump on Providence, it absolutely includes ICE, but it also includes the livelihoods of many people.

I would like to be at the forefront of creating visibility and activating anybody I can to ensure that we’re working collaboratively with the state of Rhode Island to keep our hands on that funding as much as possible. The economic future of our city depends upon it, full stop.

Steve Ahlquist: Look at Revolution Wind as an example. As a city and state, we have invested a large amount of money in training programs for an industry that Trump is doing his level best to destroy.

It’s a crime against humanity.

Jill Davidson: That’s why I changed fields, by the way. Not that I didn’t love working in education, but climate change is what was keeping me up at night. I also wanted the opportunity to work in Providence. I had been commuting to Boston for way too many years.

Steve Ahlquist: As a person, climate change is so big. When I first started journalism, I wondered what I could do about the climate. I started to find local fights and local issues.

Jill Davidson: The Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council is an environmental organization. We’re focused on the health of the Woonasquatucket River and the land around it, both in Providence and five other municipalities comprising the watershed. Eighty percent of the work we’ve done is in Olneyville. What we do has a huge impact on the climate. We don’t necessarily focus on fossil fuels; what we do is make sure that downtown Providence doesn’t flood.

We are working in deep collaboration with the city to do that. We don’t do it alone. The beauty of my organization is that we form partnerships to get things done. As a nonprofit, we can identify funding municipalities can’t always secure independently. We can identify partnerships and bring folks together to fix and change some problems. And the environmental impacts are massive. Managing stormwater and dealing with flooding is a critical issue throughout the state. Where the Woonasquatucket and Moshassuck Rivers meet is a vulnerable point because you can have stormwater coming down the river and a tide coming up the river. We are working like mad with Providence and other municipalities to help them fulfill their stormwater management goals, put in green infrastructure, create safe transportation routes for people, and build alternative transportation. Some people might call them bike planes. Some people don’t love that phrase, but that’s what all the work happening behind the mall is. We call it a linear park. We call it a multi-use off-road path. It really is an opportunity to put in meaningful flood management systems through green infrastructure to better protect our communities.

Steve Ahlquist: Can I get a quick assessment of the work the mayor and the city council are doing? What are your thoughts?

Jill Davidson: I look forward to working with the mayor and everybody else on the City Council. Mayor Smiley has negotiated a difficult budget situation this year with a lot of skill. I’m grateful that he’s committed to supporting nonprofits in this city. He’s done a lot of good for a lot of people. The mayor might be in a different place than some members of the city council, maybe even the majority of the city council, but that tension is good. We should not all be in lockstep. That tension and conversation are good, critical, and important.

As I mentioned, I already work with many of the city council members. I know the city council staff and think the world of them. The council members have the city’s best interest at heart, and most, if not all, share my philosophy of doing the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

The mayor and the city council should not think the same or have the same priorities and decisions. That tension, the hard work it takes to hammer out budget priorities, is important for our city. Because we represent different wards, the nature of our city council means we have to come to a consensus, which takes time. Democracy takes time. Sometimes, we want easy solutions. We want diversity of opinion.

Steve Ahlquist: What is your pitch at the doors, as you meet voters?

Jill Davidson: What I do at the doors is I listen first. I place a high priority on that. I usually say, “Hi, I’m Jill Davidson. I’m your neighbor. I’m running for city council. Tell me what’s on your mind.” And a lot of people are ready for me. I love it. But if somebody says, “Tell me about you,” my pitch is that I’ve lived in Providence for 20 years. I moved here by choice. I don’t have family here, but I chose to raise my kids here, and I did that. They all attended the Providence Public Schools. And as they did, I combined my experience of being a parent in the school system with my professional education experience to make a real difference for the city in terms of our schools. Now I want to use my position in the city council to do even more good for even more people and ensure our schools are strong.

I work at the Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council and am deeply engaged with environmental issues. I want to ensure that this ward gets everything needed to help deal with flooding, manage storm water, and manage the increasing climate impacts we’re all experiencing. And I’m not only a doer, I’m a connector. So I have spent my whole life creating conversations that get us to a better place. I’m an excellent listener and good at making decisions, bringing people together, and getting everybody involved in what we’re doing.

The last thing, maybe the most important, is that I’m the only woman in this race.

Steve Ahlquist: I noticed.

Jill Davidson: And that has been important to folks. It’s important to me. I want our ward and our city to be represented by women. One outcome of this race will be whether the city council stays majority women.

Steve Ahlquist: Oh, interesting.

Jill Davidson: When Helen Anthony was on the council, there were eight women and seven men. I believe, fiercely, in making sure that women have political power.

Steve Ahlquist: The General Assembly, I think, is 40% women.

Jill Davidson: And we’ve never had a woman as a mayor. The only way you do it is by electing women.

I’m not claiming that that’s my ambition. It explicitly is not.

Steve Ahlquist: I wasn’t trying to put that on you.

Jill Davidson: I believe in ensuring that women and other folks who have not been represented in places of power have every opportunity to come into that.

Steve Ahlquist: Okay. This was great.

Jill Davidson: Thank you, Steve. This was super fun.