There’s no denying that Frank Rego cares about the city he serves.

It can be seen in the myriad of events he shows up in support of. It can be seen in how he invites Townies of all types into the city council chambers to congratulate them for winning a youth basketball championship here, a little league title there. It can be seen, large and literally, on a sign gracing the outfield fence of one of those little league fields at the Kimberly Ann Rock athletic complex in Rumford.

So it’s perhaps no surprise that the Rumford resident and current Ward 1 representative doesn’t want to call it quits on the city council after one term, which began when he won a convincing race in 2022 with 70% of the vote.

He will face off against Jonathan Jacobs for the seat.

“I think I've done a good job for Ward 1 in my four years of being on the city council,” he said in a recent interview after he announced his re-election bid on June 1. “We've made progress. Maintaining a good tax rate, bringing in new businesses, and improving the quality of life in Ward 1. From the playgrounds to the schools, to the roads and public safety. I think I've done a good job.”

Rego points to various initiatives to back up that claim — including his support for a renovation of the city’s police headquarters, expanding rescue coverage for Fire Station #3 — and supporting city investment in others, like casting the deciding vote to authorize construction of the community center that is well underway towards completion, and pushing for budgetary increases to go towards fixing the HVAC at Myron J. Francis Elementary, and improvements at Orlo Elementary School (as well as pushing for improvements to parks throughout the ward).

Rego said that one of the most important things the city council did during that first term was deliberate and debate on how to use its nearly $30 million in American Rescue Plan Act dollars in the wake of COVID. Ultimately, it would be used for dozens of projects, big and small; mostly for infrastructural uses with one-time costs and long-term benefits that likely wouldn’t have been possible to accomplish through traditional budgeting.

“We didn’t use the ARPA funding to fill holes in the budget. We did it right by working on projects that needed to be done,” he said. “And that was the result of good negotiations between the administration and the council, because we came in saying that we needed that money for infrastructure. We needed money for parks. The money, at one time, was talked about to be all going to the community center. But we had issues that we needed to take care of, so we spread that ARPA funding around to get the best bang for the buck.”

Housing presents a continuing challenge

Rego agreed that housing remained a huge challenge to overcome in the city, and said that he took a “middle of the road” position on the ever-present debate that occurs in East Providence over whether “too much” or “not enough” development was occurring.

“We have to have a balancing act here,” he said. “We have a lot of opportunities to re-tool present buildings and turn them into houses, and we have a whole waterfront area where we need to look into what we can do there.”

Rego said that the majority of the focus needed to be on finding ways to build more houses for families to move into the city, and for existing residents to be able to downsize, opening up those homes to growing families.

“Building studio apartments isn’t the answer for this city. We’ve got to attract families,” he said. “We’ve got this great high school and this great middle school and Riverside Middle School is in great shape. We need to keep them at full occupancy. Families attract businesses, because if your kids are involved in sports or dance or after-school events, at the end of the day you might be going to the local pizza place or sandwich spot. It helps the economy and it brings jobs.”

Last fall, when the city proposed lowering the amount of square footage needed for a residential property owner to build an accessory dwelling unit (ADU) by-right from the state’s standard of 20,000 to 7,500 — it was Rego who suggested lowering that even further to 5,000 square feet, which he argued more reasonably reflected the average lot size in the city.

“Now people can start using ADUs,” Rego said. “They can maintain their house, they can rent the ADUs and that can help them out.”

He mentioned other methods of turning larger, single-family homes into duplexes and building townhouses that fit with the character of neighborhoods rather than building large apartment complexes that drive disagreement and distaste among the residents. But overall, he agreed that the city needs to continue to develop to survive.

“That’s where we need vision. We can’t automatically think we can’t do things. We’ve got to grow,” he said. “East Providence isn’t the same footprint that it was in 1980, and it isn’t the same footprint that it was in 1940. We’ve got to evolve…I’m not one to say put a 30-unit housing in the middle of a street that already has houses, and doesn’t fit. It has to fit. But we can make things happen. There’s people on either side that don’t want to compromise, but you’ve got to compromise.”

Rego said that kind of development is how the city’s tax increases in recent years have stayed somewhat stable, including the most recent realized increase of just over 2% despite a maximum 4% drawdown on the levy.

“I’m hoping that we can totally maintain the quality of life with the tax rate for the next four years but we don’t know what can happen in four years,” he said.