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BI scores low in liveability ranking
GoLocalProv, an online news organization in Providence, released its 2012 Best Communities rankings this week, and Block Island came in near the bottom of the heap — 36th out of 39 cities and towns.
The main reason is — no surprise — affordability. “New Shoreham is certainly a great place to visit... it’s just really too expensive to live there,” wrote the GoLocalProv news team. Read more at golocalprov.com (free sign up may be required).
The island scored well for education, arts and culture and bars and restaurants, as well as conservation (the story got that figure wrong — close to half the island has been protected, not 20 percent as GoLocalProv reports). But those factors couldn’t balance out high property crimes figures as well as a median house price of $1.27 million, the highest in the state.
Pawtucket, Woonsocket and Central Falls, all financially troubled cities, rounded out the bottom four, while North Providence, Johnston and Warren beat out the island by a few points. More rankings were released throughout the week, and the top place finishers were to be released Friday.
New Shoreham, because of its history and its very small population base, and its status as a resort island, is fundamentally a tribal society with a feudal economic structure. It is surprising that there are not more "property" crimes than there already are, given the huge gap between the very wealthy who come here for the summers, and the much poorer people who live here and work for them. There is such arrogance on the part of many wealthy and influential people on this island that I would have to go back twenty-five or more years in my life experience to find comparable examples of pure meanness. Very few people or institutions effectively mitigate the basic, and growing, imbalance between the very rich and the poor on this island.
We keep hearing how wonderful this place is and how "everybody always pulls together to help others." Two comments on that: One, this place is psychologically an Axis 4 stressor that is off the charts for many people who live here, most particularly the poor and the chronically ill. Two, when the Town's elite (unfortunately, including the staff and owners of this newspaper) decide somebody is persona non-grata, a herd mentality sets in that all but makes the offending party -- who may not even have given any serious offense -- not only persona non grata, but effectively persona non persona.
Seriously, I could go on and name ten to fifteen people, year-rounders here. who think they are the cat's pajamas. They believe they are good religious people, guardians of public morality and decency, and so forth. But they really are among the meanest, most selfish, most irreligious and generally hypocritical people I ever met.
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You go Adam. Pretty soon the chosen few will have to cook their own meals and clean their own mess. I now know that BI is a nice place to visit, but..... well, you know the rest. The island is beautiful, the people, not so much.
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