Bob Rulli will be the first to tell you his strengths and weaknesses, just as he was now doing in between sips of beer from a snifter glass at the Wharf Tavern during a recent sit-down to discuss his imminent departure from Warren.

“I always say to people that I can't sing. I can't dance. I can't draw a straight line, but I have vision. That's my skillset,” he said. “So when I came here and I saw Water Street and Main Street, I thought there's so much potential here. What should this look like?”

Rulli’s tenure in Warren began back in 2017 as a part-time grant writer, which quickly evolved into becoming the Town’s Director of Planning and Community Development, a one-man role with more hats to wear than a haberdasher. As of Jan. 6, that role will be coming to an end.

And for better or worse, one cannot dispute that Rulli has left a mark of that vision throughout the town.

Seen and unseen impacts
Through his grant writing, the town has received millions in support from the state and federal government to do a variety of projects with real impact — like a $500,000 grant from RIDEM to make improvements at Burr’s Hill Park, an $825,000 grant for fire protection in Touisset, grants to secure a new transportation bus for seniors, dump trucks, and police vehicles through the USDA, and grants worth more than $4 million from the federal government to improve the town’s police headquarters and to build a brand new headquarters for the town’s fire department.

Some of his workings are less visible, such as the funding he helped secure to complete infrastructural improvements to the town’s wastewater treatment facility well under its expected budget — which has led Warren to be lauded for its climate resiliency efforts — and a net metering agreement that resulted in the town saving 50% of its electricity costs annually for the next 20 years. A drainage improvement program targeting areas south of Child Street, where flooding has been a problem for years, will potentially be aided by a grant worth up to $7 million, which is currently under preliminary review.

But the project that most squarely sums up the kind of planner and thinker Rulli is would have to be his massively-scoped economic development and climate resiliency plan, known as Market to Metacom. The innovative plan seeks to simultaneously redevelop the Metacom Avenue corridor with mixed-use, affordable housing through targeted form-based code while systematically addressing the threat of sea level rise to homeowners along Market Street through property buyouts and wetlands reclamation over the next 80 years.

“I always tried to think of things holistically. I’m not a straight line thinker. I always talk about connecting dots,” Rulli said. “Like with Market to Metacom, I’ve always used the analogy if you're looking at one piece of it, it’s one tile. But if you pull back from the whole thing, it’s a whole different mosaic. And that's what government is. That's how you grow communities.”

Market to Metacom has garnered awards and nationwide praise for its ambition, and the foundation for the plan is very much set in motion despite Rulli’s departure. The town is in the final stages of crafting its updated comprehensive plan, which will include with it the form-based code that Rulli developed in order to attract developers to Metacom Avenue with the allure of a straightforward and surprise-free list of demands in order to build there.

“Developers will be coming in and saying, okay, so I check all these boxes, I'm only going to one planning board meeting, and there's not gonna be people with pitchforks? Sign me up,” Rulli said. “Once all those things are in place, developers will be showing up.”

While the climate resilience piece along Market Street will be less straightforward — RIDOT is involved with a theoretical road adaptation piece, and Rulli admits that it will be a tough job convincing homeowners in the area to pick up and move under the auspice of the easily dismissible threat of sea level rise — Rulli is hopeful that his eventual replacement will understand and continue the mission.

“Without a doubt, Market to Metacom is not going to be done in three or four years, it’s a process, but I’d like to see continued positive forward progress with that,” he said. “I’d like to see that there’s more public engagement with that process and understanding it’s not just a theory, and that it’s a real thing.”

Water Street project was a turning point
If Market to Metacom represented the ambitious and optimistic end of the spectrum for Rulli in Warren, the 119 Water St. project represented all the things that ultimately led to his decision to leave.

Those who have been following the evolution of that project or have attended the meetings would likely have picked up on an animosity between critics of the project and Rulli — some going as far as openly mocking and criticizing him during the meetings, such as one man who muttered “You’re still here?” after Rulli provided an explanation during last week’s update before the planning board.

It is perhaps an inherent disconnect that occurs between members of a municipality and a town planner — where some of the former will inevitably not share the vision of the latter, resulting in friction and things being made personal, rather than professional. But Rulli understands this perspective and the challenges that come with it.

“I look at communities, and what makes them special is when you create a ‘there’ there. I mean, there's a sense of place right? The architecture, the cleanliness, the camaraderie, the community, you feel that it’s palpable,” he said. “And there's really a sense of community here. Those people that are in opposition to the Water Street project — that's community.”

Rulli said that having people stand opposed to the changes proposed for a section of town that was once more known for its dive bars and blight rather than world-class restaurants and vibrant local business ownership is proof of the positive impact that he and Town Manager Kate Michaud (who was the former planner prior to Rulli) have been able to have on Warren.

“That comes with the territory,” he said. “I mean you're evolving now. Ten years ago, if a property owner had a plan to knock those two buildings down on Water Street, I don’t know if anybody would have even cared.”

In other ways, the 119 Water St. project represented one of Rulli’s biggest frustrations in seeing a clear problem (in this case, affordable housing and the state mandate for communities to reach 10% of affordable housing stock), offering a solution, and having that solution be summarily ignored.

“The comprehensive permit statute is flawed, and you're seeing that up close and personal. The math is flawed, and you're never gonna get there,” he said. “We have to fix the programs that we have in place. You can't use area median income to determine what's affordable in Warren when area median income is $30,000 more than what the median income is in Warren. That's not solving the problem, and those people that are at 30, 40, 50% of median income, they’re the ones suffering.”

Rulli says that the solution for affordable housing in Rhode Island can be found within the same scope as Market to Metacom — by creating a smart, guided process through form-based code and targeted zoning to make things easy for developers and palatable for the community.

“That's how you're going to solve your how your housing problem,” he said. “If communities can be brave and think out of the box and say, ‘Okay, we can do these things through zoning,’ you're creating value for the developers. You're not spending any taxpayers money. If you also layer on tax increment financing, you're actually making money for the community and everybody wins. It's a win-win all the way around.”

Looking back, and forward
Rulli will be headed to Bridgewater, Mass. — fittingly enough, where he graduated college — to become their new Community and Economic Development Director. Rulli told the planning board last week when they announced his departure that he was solicited for the job.

“That somebody sought me out was kind of cool,” he said. “And it’s a chance to go back to where it all began…I always knew there was one or two more stops in my career, because I don’t think it’s healthy for somebody in my position to stay in one place too long.”

His colleagues expressed sadness to see him go.

“It has been great working with Bob and obviously he will be sorely missed,” said Town Manager Kate Michaud. “Bob was always conscious of the overall picture. Bob also valued the concept of regionalism, which is a rare and valuable thing in the RI municipal world. I wish Bob the best in his next endeavor, and I am grateful for the solid planning and community development foundation that he has left us to continue to build upon.”

Fred Massie, Planning Board Chairman, gave a special shout out to Rulli at the conclusion of their meeting last week.

“He has done really terrific work here,” he said. “He’s brought national attention to this town and has also been a terrific support and help to me and to the planning board over the course of the time that he’s been here. He’s brought a level of professionalism.”

Rulli said that he considered Warren to be the best job he’s ever had working for the best boss he ever had.

“I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished,” he said. “If I didn’t have the opportunity that Kate Michaud afforded me to have the guardrails be this wide and the toll gate up, I wouldn’t have been presented with the opportunity that I was given…For me to walk away from Warren breaks my heart, it really does. But at the same time, I don’t want to go home angry. So I just want to thank you.”