Interviewed soon after taking the job in 1992, Peder Schaefer was asked what it took to be the city’s finance director.

Two weeks ago, soon after Mayor Frank Picozzi announced Schaefer would retire from the job after 50-plus years in government service, the director recalled his answer.

“You need to be persistent,” Schaefer said.

And indeed, persistence underscores Schaefer’s career. He pursues the tiniest of details until he gets answers. It has made for clocklike performance in the delivery of everything from annual budgets to the submission of grants, the sale of bonds and the projection of costs essential to government operations.

Clocklike and determined: “Stick to your guns if your numbers are right,” he said. “You can’t go with the wind.”

It’s not a job Schaefer envisioned as a political science major at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, until he took a course in public administration. He was interested and decided to pursue a graduate degree in public administration, but not before taking a year off being a “ski bum” and then some time on Block Island.

Then he looked at his options and concluded Syracuse was an institution where graduates went into government jobs. Syracuse was the only school to which he applied. It turned out to be the right decision. On weekends he worked the desk at the Holiday Inn at Exit 39 West on the New York Thruway and with spring break of his graduation year he wrote two letters – one to the state budget office and the other to a federal internship program that would have landed him in Washington.

Choice was made easy

Two days later he got a call from state budget director John Murray, who Schaefer remembers as a “brilliant man.” Schaefer was offered a job. It was an “easy decision” that can be credited with keeping Schaefer in Rhode Island rather than launching a career in Washington.

At $10,600 a year, the state job paid $500 more than Washington.

He stayed in the state budget office for 17 years, a job that put him in contact with state officials and naturally the governor’s office. He didn’t always agree with the hierarchy and the game plan when it came to the long-term state costs. That was the case with former Gov. Ed DiPrete’s plan to reduce costs by offering early-retirement incentives – which ended up costing more. “I knew it was bad when it happened,” he said.

He worked for a year as a public finance consultant for the RI League of Cities and Towns, RI Medical Society and Public Education fund and then became the director of research at the League of Cities and Towns.

First Warwick landing

He left the league in 1993 to work for Warwick during the administration of former Gov. Bruce Sundlun. It was through his connections from Providence Country Day School that he knew Lincoln Chafee and Jonathan Stevens.  Chafee and Stevens had been classmates since first grade in Cowesett School.

It was 1992 and Charles Donovan was up for reelection for mayor. It looked to be an easy race for Donovan until a contentious budget hearing and the Democratic Party nomination. Donovan decided to run as an independent rather than face a primary with Michael Brophy thereby setting up a three way race with Chafee, a former councilman, running as a Republican.

At the time the high volume of Warwick’s trash at the landfill, compared to other municipalities was an issue. Why was Warwick generating so much trash? Schaefer researched the matter discovering Truk Away that had the city contract was disposing of commercial refuse along with municipal waste to take advantage of the lower municipal tipping rate.

“That was a big one,” Chafee says of the issue. Another election issue raised by Schaefer, Chafee recalled, was the fact the city hadn’t performed an annual audit as required in several years.

“He was invaluable,” Chafee said of Schaefer’s advice during that campaign and the years that followed as his finance director.

Chafee depended on Schaefer

He characterized Schaefer, who was a couple of years ahead of him at Providence Country Day School, as a “dour Norwegian.” Chafee said the City Council loved him because they could trust him to deliver the “unvarnished truth.”

“I wouldn’t do anything without consulting Peder,” said Chafee.

Following the Chafee administration, Schaefer worked the state Department of Administration as chief of the office of municipal affairs. It wasn’t long before he was back with Chafee, who had been appointed to complete the term of his late father, U.S. Sen. John Chafee. But Schaefer didn’t go to Washington. He worked as chief budget analyst for the state budget office chief in the Division of Municipal Finance, had an 11-year run as assistant director of the Rhode Island League of Cities and Towns and then returned to Warwick as finance director in 2021.

Chafee had a role in bringing Schaefer back to Warwick. Picozzi was in his campaign office following the 2020 election cleaning things out when Chafee dropped in unannounced. Picozzi was still putting his team together with the position of finance director a big hole. Off the cuff and not knowing where Schaefer had landed, Picozzi said he wished he had a Peder Schaefer.

Chafee said he would call him, and the link was made.

“It’s a huge loss,” Picozzi said recently of Schaefer’s departure. He credited Schaefer for building the financial framework to address a rapidly deteriorating fleet of sanitation trucks and aging fire apparatus and police cruisers. Much of the COVID money that flowed into the city went into capital costs rather than operating costs that would have resulted in structural deficits once the federal money dried up.

Working through the city budget

Schaefer will stay on three days a week to help with the city’s FY 2026 budget,

Picozzi noted that Schaefer is leaving the city with a $35.5-million fund balance plus a $3-million surplus for the last year.

“He has so much knowledge … he’s so respected in the state,” Picozzi said.

Looking back at his first stint as Warwick finance director, Schaefer credits then-Ward 5 Councilman Carlo Pisaturo with the forward thinking of a $130-million sewer bond. Pisaturo reasoned that as the sewer system was built, fewer would vote for sewers since they had them. While the bond wasn’t sufficient to completely build out the system, it enabled sewer extensions along the waterfront that would have become problematic as the state looked to enforce clean water regulations.

It was through his city job that Schaefer met his future wife, Elizabeth Rau. Rau was a Providence Journal reporter covering Warwick and a regular at City Hall meetings and press conferences. They crossed paths professionally, but it was not until they were both waiting outside an Ethics Commission that they got to know each other.

“We started talking and three years later there were two kids,” he says with a laugh.

Daunting city numbers

Oddly, Schaefer doesn’t think of himself as an accountant, although he is a numbers guy. And the numbers right now look daunting with upcoming school bonds.

He notes that much of the general obligation sewer bonds have been paid off, but general-fund debt retirement will double annual costs to more than $25 million. While that will be reduced when the state reimburses about 55% of school construction costs, that “won’t happen until the kids walk through the doors,” said Schaefer.

“We’ve got wonderful accountants here who make me look good,” said Schaefer.  He went on to name Tax Collector Kayla Jones and Assessor Neal Dupuis. And he said he would be lost without the technical expertise of Phil Carlucci.

Schaefer is dismayed by what’s happening in Washington.

“He [Trump] i s trying to do everything by executive order. If you want to change benefits, Medicare, tax administration, then make a suggestion to Congress and do it by law,” he said. In an opinion piece published by the Providence Journal, Schaefer scored Elon Musk.

“Elon Musk developed a cost-effective company for launching rocket ships, was successful in creating a company that used to make a profit selling boring and ugly electric vehicles, but is someone who also bought Twitter for $44 billion and has seen its value plummet under his leadership to $9.4 billion. This is someone with a spotty track record and little patience for doing things the diligent and painstaking old-fashioned way,” he wrote.

Schaefer is careful with his own money.

With his wife’s approval, he bought a used sailboat that he looks forward to cruising to Potter’s Cove on Prudence Island, picking up a mooring, spending the night and then sailing back to Warwick Cove.  Newport is just too crowded for him. Over the winter he had the boat’s name removed.

It’s not surprising he’s renaming it “Persistence.”