To the Editor:

What a win by Mayor-elect Frank Picozzi! I wrote a letter to the editor in July explaining why I, as just one voter, leaned toward reelecting Mayor Solomon, mainly because of the upcoming budget challenges. He is a CPA and had worked with our city budgets for around 20 years so it seemed we should stick with experience due to the upcoming difficult city budget, and due to COVID’s effect on reducing revenue and adding expenses.

But later, I also watched the debates, and my impression of Frank Picozzi is he has two clear qualities – sincerity, and a caring for Warwick. He also did his homework on the issues. I like his emphasis on dealing with city infrastructure such as the empty annex and the disused schools. I voted yes on the school improvement bond because I too feel that you can’t ignore the infrastructure. It would seem, based on the Beacon endorsement of Frank Picozzi as well as his very high vote count, that the community was ready for a fresh start. And it would seem certainly from the vote count, that Mr. Picozzi has a tremendous amount of community support as well as credibility, which can be hugely helpful when making some hard decisions.

The next budget is sure to be difficult. We have a narrow range of budget options, based on the manpower needs of running the city, and contracted costs. There also isn’t much headroom to raise taxes. Continued tax increases tend to drive out empty-nesters and retirees. Who often replaces them? Young families. When you have a home paying a few thousand per year in property tax, now putting a couple children into our schools, that costs around $20,000 per child per year on average. So, raising taxes can drive the need for even more tax revenue. Those financial issues plus running the day-to-day decisions of an 84,000-person community are a tough job. Based on what I saw in the debates, Frank is up to it. He’s an honest, levelheaded person who also has run a business for a long time. It will be interesting to see how he approaches things.

In two years, looking forward to our new mayor hopefully having earned my vote for reelection. I’m comfortable with and congratulate Frank Picozzi becoming our new mayor of Warwick.

Chris Prata

Warwick