Does Maria Rivera Have What It Takes to Move the Comeback City Forward?

 

In January of 2019, the Sunday before her first meeting as city council president, Rivera had an unusual religious experience.

“I got a call from someone with the Catholic church, who said to me, ‘You can’t do this; you need to remove this from your agenda,’ ” recalls Rivera. She was planning to introduce a resolution in support of the Rhode Island Reproductive Health Care Act, statewide legislation that codified Roe v. Wade.

Rivera is pro-choice — “I don’t believe in someone killing babies, but if my fifteen-year-old daughter gets raped and she does not want to have that child, I’m going to support her,” she remembers thinking at the time — but the pressure spooked her. She called her city solicitor and asked him to strike the resolution from the docket.

“Then I called back and I said, ‘You know what, no: Leave it on,’ ” she says. “And overnight was tough. I cried. I was stressed. I called friends. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want people to be mad at me.”
The next morning, a fellow councilmember, whom she was unsure would support the resolution, phoned to offer his support. She took it as a sign to call for a vote on the resolution that night.

“I have to tell you, in the five years that I’ve been here at city hall, that was the busiest time,” Rivera remembers. “The chambers were packed, the hallways were packed.”

A stream of constituents spoke for and against the resolution, and Rivera and her colleagues voted unanimously to support it. Not everyone was pleased with Rivera’s position — including her mother, a religious woman who attends a nearby Pentecostal church.

“But I remember saying at that meeting, ‘If you don’t believe in the work that I do to support me and you’re only focused on this, I’m not sure I need the support of someone like that,’ ” she says. “At the time, there was so much that I was doing for the community, and I still continue to do, so just to focus on one thing for me — that wasn’t being fair.”

Jessica Vega, who was elected to city council just as Rivera assumed its presidency, says Rivera was a mentor during her first days on the council.

“I had no idea what it meant to be a city councilperson,” says Vega. “She was my go-to.”

She recalls, in March of 2019, Rivera organizing an International Women’s Day celebration honoring unsung heroes in the community.

“She was recognizing the folks who do so much but aren’t necessarily in a ‘leadership’ role,” says Vega, who now serves as council president. “The small ways she builds relationships in the community — I really learned the emphasis on that through her.”

Vega says she equates Rivera with a first responder. She cites an eight-alarm mill fire in early March of 2020, which ripped through a string of commercial mill buildings in Central Falls and Pawtucket and displaced residents in both cities. Rivera was one of the first people onsite.

“She called me at 3 o’clock in the morning telling me, ‘I’m outside picking people up to transport them to the Knights of Columbus.’ It was freezing,” Vega says. “To her, it was about making sure people were okay.”

At the same time, the novel coronavirus was tearing through Central Falls. A city of essential workers living in multigenerational housing, it has suffered more than anywhere else in the state and, at some points in the pandemic, the nation. Vega says Rivera used the same grassroots strategies to prop up residents amid the crisis. In April, after weeks of lockdown, Rivera and her colleagues took to Facebook to organize the first fundraiser to support at-risk families with gift cards distributed by the school district.

In late June of 2020, as cases retreated for the summer, Rivera formally announced her candidacy for mayor of Central Falls. Endorsements, including from outgoing Mayor James Diossa and then-Lieutenant Governor Dan McKee, rolled in all month.

Rivera was up against Joe Moran III, an ex-city police chief who previously ran against Diossa and lost. A week before the election, Moran resurrected the Reproductive Health Care Act controversy by posting the resolution on his Facebook page and affirming his pro-life position.

Rivera responded in the comments, condemning Moran for “dirty politics” and sharing a personal experience of choosing to resume a pregnancy in the face of possible complications. She also called him “another selfish man wanting to decide for women” and closed with a taunt regarding the city’s primary elections in September, when she garnered more than 74 percent of the vote.

“My communications person would’ve told me, ‘You cannot engage in this. You cannot comment,’ ” Rivera says, wryly amused. “But I think that’s why people respect me: Because I am honest. Yes, I wanted to respond, though I’m not sure it made a difference.”

Come election day, she’d earn 77 percent. She was sworn into office in two ceremonies on January 4th.

Marcela Betancur, executive director of the Latino Policy Institute, credits Rivera for making immediate, productive use of her mayorship to address issues including affordable housing and education. She notes the mayor’s support of the school district initiative, Voces con Poder, where student and parent delegates chose how to spend $100,000 of federal relief funding. In August, they selected extracurricular programming.

“She has community meetings that look like regular family and friend engagement meetings,” Betancur says. “It creates this trust in her and government that doesn’t always exist in immigrant communities.”

Betancur, who grew up in Central Falls, also lauds the mayor for a rebranding campaign that changed the city’s tagline. In the years following its bankruptcy, Central Falls was known as “The Comeback City.” In September, a committee revealed the new slogan, “Diversity That Inspires,” which celebrates its strengths, she says.

“We have been very fortunate to have Latino mayors in our state that really care and are part of their communities. But, from day one, she made bold moves,” Betancur says. “Coming in during COVID as a new mayor of a city that was devastated — I wouldn’t wish that job on anyone. But she came in with guns blazing.”

 

On a gray early afternoon in late-summer, Rivera and her chief of staff, Zuleyma Gomez, slide out of Rivera’s city-issued black SUV and, shielding their faces from the drizzle, stride into Craft Burgers and Beer in Pawtucket. They’re fifteen minutes early for a lunch with Pawtucket Mayor Donald Grebien, with whom Rivera meets monthly to discuss issues relevant to the neighboring cities.

“I hate being late,” Rivera says, her voice faltering as she slips into a booth in a dark corner of the restaurant. About four months into her mayorship, Rivera began losing her voice. Doctors have prescribed several medications, but the issue persists.

A server arrives and Rivera orders a water to sip while she recounts the takeaways of a recent housing report, which came on the back of the city’s first housing summit. The one-square-mile community, where 80 percent of residents rent, has a dearth of affordable housing and doesn’t qualify for 2016 bond dollars through the state. Rivera says she has more than a dozen shovel-ready sites, but she doesn’t have the acquisition funding to build. More than 100 people are at risk of losing their Section 8 housing vouchers because they can’t find apartments in the city, she says.

At the same time, she’s lobbying hard for a new high school. The state retains fiscal control of the district but the city owns the ninety-four-year-old building, which Rivera says was failing when she graduated two-and-a-half decades ago. (In response to a reporter’s query, Rivera’s former social studies teacher, Ronald Thompson, could not comment on her class performance; the self-described hoarder lost many of his records when the roof collapsed a few years ago.) She’s a month from the first project deadline and, at the same time, her team is preparing talking points to fund the school with a $2.88 million bond proposal, which voters will consider on a special election ballot in November. The bond covers 2 percent of the $144 million tab; the state would pick up the rest, which includes funding to improve other district infrastructure, as well.

“At this point, we’re all failing our kids,” Rivera says. “If our kids continue to fail, it’s also my fault.”

Pawtucket Mayor Donald Grebien enters the restaurant alone, buoyant but without fanfare. With twenty-two years in public service to Rivera’s five, Grebien is a seasoned Rhode Island politician. He greets the women and the server, from whom he orders a side salad topped with a chicken patty. Rivera orders a chicken Caesar salad and Gomez gets fish and chips.

Grebien expresses envy that Gomez can order such a meal and maintain her figure. He explains he’s on a nutritional program through the Miriam Hospital. But the day before, the city launched a contentious license plate reader pilot; it wasn’t a great day for his diet.

“I’m a stress eater so, last night, I was just crunching,” he says.

Grebien steers the conversation toward the political firestorm of the week in Central Falls, which erupted following a press conference announcing the city’s first tennis courts, gold shovel props and all. The courts, which are grant-funded and were negotiated by Rivera’s predecessor, would replace one of the city’s basketball courts. The news sparked outcry among residents.

“If I can overcome hiring a new police chief, I can overcome anything,” Rivera says, recalling when she replaced Daniel Barzykowski with Anthony Roberson, a former sergeant in Providence with expertise in community policing. Rumors abounded that Rivera and Roberson were dating but Rivera, who has been divorced for twelve years, says they are not. (Rivera says she’s not seeing anyone; if she was, she adds, “this person would be frustrated with me, because he would not be a priority.”)

“I saw on social about the nonviolence training, so that’s some good PR,” says Grebien, referencing how her police department was the first in the state to complete training from the Providence-based Nonviolence Institute, which led programming for youth in both cities over the summer.

Rivera shifts in her seat and replies, “I think it’s good for my community. We have a lot of people of color here so it’s a step up for us.”

The food arrives and Grebien teases Gomez some more about her fish and chips as Rivera pushes aside supersized croutons from her salad. Grebien tells her he’s headed to Narragansett for the week to borrow a friend’s beach house. His staff knows how to reach him, he says, but he’s more or less off all week. Rivera says she recently visited a friend in Pomfret, Connecticut, but worked the entire weekend. Her time off usually involves sitting in a friend’s backyard for hours, decompressing.

Rivera’s phone rings; her daughter, Daniela, is FaceTiming her with news of her first paycheck from her job at Saver’s in Attleboro. Daniela, who just graduated from Blackstone Valley Prep High School and has declared herself the first lady of Central Falls, is headed to the Community College of Rhode Island to study business. The college just issued COVID-19 vaccine mandates for students; Grebien mentions his son will need to get vaccinated before classes start at Rhode Island College, as well.

“He’s thick-headed,” Grebien jokes about his son, who is hesitant to get the vaccine.

“Like you,” Rivera fires back playfully.

 

Rivera’s son, Christian, was reluctant to get the COVID-19 vaccine, too.

“He’s twenty, so he was listening to his friends,” Rivera says, sitting at a table in a corner of her office at city hall. “But there were situations that I had to speak to him about — about things that were happening in real life to certain people — that helped him make his decision.”

She convinced her son, and she’s trying to convince Central Falls residents to get vaccinated, as well. Since the start of the pandemic, a quarter of the city’s population has tested positive for COVID-19, and its rate of hospitalization is second in the state. Week after week, it claims the top spot for new cases per capita.

“In February or March, I said that by the end of April I wanted to have at least 80 percent [vaccinated in the city],” Rivera says. “It’s just hard. We knew we would hit the hesitancy stage.”

At press time, 61 percent of city residents are fully vaccinated versus 69 percent of the state. Rivera recently issued a vaccination mandate for City Hall employees, and she’s weighing one for all city staff, too. Except for a drive-through fundraiser, most events Rivera hosts involve mass vaccinations; others, including the beloved salsa night, have been canceled due to rising case counts. Rivera is working with the school district to create incentives for vaccine-eligible students, including gift card raffles.

“But at the same time, it’s not only about incentivizing them; it’s about educating them and having conversations about why this is so important,” she says.

On tap, too, are conversations involving the November bond proposal to fund a new high school and other infrastructure. In early summer, lawmakers passed legislation authorizing the state to provide its share of the funding upfront, versus the longstanding reimbursement policy. Her team estimates the school bond will cost each taxpayer roughly $12 a year for thirty years. In advance of the special election, Rivera and her team are working to assuage fears about tax and rent hikes, particularly as the eviction moratorium lifts across the nation. In the fall, Rhode Island Housing installed a bilingual representative at city hall solely to help residents apply for rent relief.

As she navigates these big-picture issues, Rivera says, she’s tackling day-to-day emergencies. She still responds to every blaze in the city and, in September, she responded to a fatal shooting at the basketball court that the city planned to replace with tennis courts. While Rivera tabled construction in search of a better solution, she says she hasn’t given up on the tennis courts altogether; she says she wants to provide alternative options for youth to keep them off the streets. Residents believe a community center would help keep kids busy; Rivera says she’s weighing that, too.

“I have lots of priorities. I have to, right, because these are the things that are important to our community,” she says, her voice wavering from her still-undiagnosed vocal ailment — some physical or stress-induced malady that she says won’t stop her from fulfilling her duties as mayor. She invested in a Peloton bike, she started boxing and she goes to the gym, she says, so she can endure the pressures of the job. She’s quick to add there are rewards, too.

“We’ve had so many students come here and you have to see — I’m sorry I’m crying,” she says, grabbing a pink face mask to wipe her eyes, “you have to see their faces when they walk in here. I had a boy in here who was eleven, and he wanted to pray for me.”

The work has been overwhelming, she says, but in a good way.

“I love to see people happy. It is my challenge, just trying to please everyone, which I know is not going to happen,” she says. “But I can tell you that I am somebody who pushes and pushes and pushes. When I want something done, I will continue pushing. Most of the time, I get it done.”

She remembers, back in 2016, as she weighed running for city council and returning to college at the same time, a colleague offered her a bit of advice: Someone who tends to do a lot never accomplishes anything.

Rivera’s response stood then, she says, and it still does now: “I beg to differ.”

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