NORTH PROVIDENCE – Former Salvatore Mancini Resource and Activity Center Director Karen Testa will receive a settlement payout of nearly $500,000, officials have confirmed, a figure mirroring the amount town officials cut in municipal funding to the Senior Center back in 2017
Testa was hired as director of the Blackstone Senior Center in early 2018, at a salary of $58,000, short of the $80,000 she made in North Providence.
Testa could not be reached by press deadline, but her comments will be reported next week.
Town officials chose not to renew Testa’s contract in January of 2018 as they transitioned to a town-run facility, a long-held goal of Mayor Charles Lombardi as he bemoaned the high costs of running the center as a nonprofit.
Testa later sued the town, claiming the decision to stop funding the center and make it a town-run operation, as well as the failure to renew her contract, were retaliation for her support of Lombardi’s opponent in the 2016 election, Kristen Catanzaro. The lawsuit cited 2015 legal action against the town to restore grant funding at the Mancini Center and a 2017 defamation lawsuit against Lombardi as reasons for the retaliation.
But the 2017 vote to defund the center came three years into the battle over the center’s finances, starting long before the 2016 election where Lombardi defeated Catanzaro.
According to the lawsuit, Lombardi described the change from a nonprofit operation as a simple decision to stop appropriating money to a not-for-profit corporation to run the center. Testa painted a different picture, alleging a pattern of retaliation for exercising her constitutional rights to speech, petition and support a political opponent. She alleged that the decisions to stop funding SMRAC, single out her unpaid wages for nonpayment, and the refusal to hire her to work at the “new” center were all “impermissibly motivated by her constitutionally-protected conduct.”
Dino Autiello, who was council president at the time and remains in the leadership position, ended up being one of three no votes on a 4-3 vote to defund the center in May of 2017. He has since said on more than one occasion that it was the right move. He has also said that if he’d done what Testa did during the election in actively campaigning against his employer, he would probably have been fired.
Lombardi this week declined to comment on the reason for the settlement, saying it was in the hands of the town’s insurer.
“Why the insurance company settled, I have no comment, but based on the $350,000 savings per year (since going to a municipal model), $2.4 million in the last seven years, proves the Senior Center was out of control,” he said.
So glad the Mayor was exposed for carrying out his political agenda at tax payers expense. Unfortunately this was paid out by the towns insurance hopefully the civil lawsuit against the Mayor embarrasses his actions needless to say he deprived the seniors of a director that was involved with the senior center for many years and was very competent in her duties.
The municipal government in North Providence is the closest thing we have to the Patriarca Crime Family in Rhode Island. The whole town is an embarrassment.
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So glad the Mayor was exposed for carrying out his political agenda at tax payers expense. Unfortunately this was paid out by the towns insurance hopefully the civil lawsuit against the Mayor embarrasses his actions needless to say he deprived the seniors of a director that was involved with the senior center for many years and was very competent in her duties.
The municipal government in North Providence is the closest thing we have to the Patriarca Crime Family in Rhode Island. The whole town is an embarrassment.
The above comment brought to you by the committee to elect Catanzaro as Mayor
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