This whole issue of supporting a skating park should be a slam-dunk since the Skater Island evidently was not sufficiently supported. Instead, we will get a Big Box Farmer's Market and drive away our "local" farmer’s markets? Obviously, I am not fully informed of all the developments planned for Portsmouth, but they seem to be coming out of the woodwork.
It is a shame, that with all the stimulus money flowing from Washington, we could not get to incentivize Aquidneck Island Landowners and Town Councils to apply for some of those resources; after all, it is OUR MONEY. If farming is too difficult, we could instead apply it to a "Carbon Project" (EPA approval?) and sell CO2 futures (Chicago Board of Trades?) to the big polluters west and north of us?
Perhaps we need a "Community Organizer" not tied to any business enterprises with stakes in more housing projects and with retail development plans in their back pockets. I wanted to purchase an acre of land with the intentions of growing conifer trees, but at 1/2 million dollars an acre would make me homeless.
What we need in Portsmouth is a slush fund not under the control of the town council to be applied against big box interests and luxury developers or for our own projects. But this is most likely all too risky for a small town not used to out-of-the-box planning (i.e.: turn old Navy facilities into crucially-needed veterans support centers, promote journey-man certification schools using Navy surplus facilities for high-school drop-outs or graduates as well, establish manufacturing centers of excellence (COE) modeled after Navy centers, utilize fallow lands for carbon projects, initiate a bicycle fund for safe, European-type "paths" on designated bicycle "trails", incentivize homeowners to plant trees on their streets - after all we are the "City of Trees", and the list goes on).

We live in an age of enlightenment lest we let the seas of capitalism consume us.

Cheers,
Wernerlll