Cumberland’s Enright now helping to restore order
WOONSOCKET – Former Building Official Ted Isabella knows building codes inside and out and is very smart, says Mayor Chris Beauchamp, but his heavy-handed approach to the job ultimately led to his dismissal.
Beauchamp said a building official needs to have good “bedside manner,” and has to be able to compromise when needed. They can’t just be the “heavy sheriff” every time they go to a building site, all while picking and choosing who they “slap on the fanny” and who gets the big boot.
In a world where “everything costs $1 million” and everyone is struggling, they also can’t just be shutting everyone down for minor items, Beauchamp said. If there’s a life safety issue, that’s one thing, but there has to be some compromise and reasonable approach in other instances.
Isabella’s personality is to rarely compromise and always be loud, he said, and when he started sending emails to people very late at night, the mayor said he told him that wasn’t a good look, even if he was doing it for the right reasons. The content of those emails wasn’t necessarily bad, he said, but no one on vacation with their family on a Sunday night wants to get that sort of communication to stress them out.
Isabella, he said, kept fighting him on it, and ultimately refused to change his ways, a pattern he said he learned was consistent in past jobs.
The building official ultimately has to be a people person, said Beauchamp, and you can’t tell someone they have 30 violations, then when they fix all 30 violations, find five or six more on re-inspection. Unless electrical wires are falling out of the ceiling, he said, you work with the person and tell them they have a certain amount of time to get things in order.
What became especially alarming, he said, was when he had people telling him they were thinking about selling their 10 buildings in Woonsocket and never doing business here again.
Isabella had improved somewhat from the overwhelming complaints he had been getting, said the mayor, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
“We need people coming to Woonsocket,” said Beauchamp, not having them say they’re never doing another job in the city.
With Isabella gone, the person temporarily handling things as he has time is Larry Enright, Cumberland’s building official. Beauchamp said Enright, someone whose help Isabella had rejected by removing him from the portal, has already cleared about 30–40 permits.
Isabella had previously worked in Newport, Cranston, Providence, and East Providence. His LinkedIn bio says he’s currently a general contractor by trade. The Local Insider has reached out to him for comment.
Developer Greg Rice had described Isabella as the “clipboard cowboy” and criticized his handling of building and zoning matters as unfair and anti-business. Rice, in a video post this week, said Woonsocket is a brighter place because Isabella is gone. He said he’s backing Dan Gendron for mayor, criticizing Beauchamp for hiring and then keeping Isabella for as long as he did.
Beauchamp said Isabella had been the building official for a little more than a year.
