PAWTUCKET – The field so far for City Council District 1 in Pawtucket has Tyler McFeeters challenging longtime incumbent Councilor David Moran.
The two Democrats who have announced for the September primary live within a stone’s throw of each other in the northeastern-most part of the district and the city. McFeeters says he has no animosity toward his neighbor, and they’re actually quite friendly, but “people want something new, different, and maybe just a little bit of fun” in their elected leaders.
His message in running is quite simple, says McFeeters: People are looking for leaders to fight for them, and he’ll be that person to answer the call.
“If you call me, I’ll come. That’s it,” he said. Across the country, he added, politicians are failing to to respond directly to the people they represent.
Moran, who first won office in 1992, is a good person, said McFeeters, but his run for office is about it being time for someone with fresh ideas and willingness to buck the status quo to represent all of the district every day.
McFeeters said the sentiment out there is grim, both nationally and locally. He pointed to the recent near-loss of his son Taran’s school, Curtis Elementary School, in illustrating how news can hit home where people live.
As he’s meeting people, McFeeters said, they’re ready for someone to fight for them. It gets to a point where you’re looking around to see who will join the fight, he said, then suddenly you realize that person is you.
He and others put their foot down and said officials weren’t going to shut down his neighborhood school because they overbuilt schools elsewhere, he told The Local Insider, adding that he would have fought just as hard to save Cunningham or any other school.
“You have to fight for where you are and what you believe in,” he said.
McFeeters said he sees a model Democrat for others to follow in Graham Platner, an oyster farmer and Marine Corps veteran challenge Sen. Susan Collins in Maine.
Asked if he believes there’s a benefit to the people in a politician being in office for a very long time, McFeeters said he used to believe that at least that institutional knowledge is helpful, but “at this point, my answer is no.”
There’s a comfort that comes from electing the same person over and over, as people believe at least that person knows how to work the system, but he believes the whole system needs replacing, said McFeeters. As Platner illustrated by putting the sitting governor out of the race before the primary, a “regular guy fighting for regular people, who talks like a regular guy” is attractive to people.
“The system is stale, the people who have been there are stale,” he said.
Moran vehemently disagrees with the assessment by McFeeters, saying his passion “hasn’t declined whatsoever.” He said he maintains a passion for the city and a district he’s lived in his entire life.
Moran who will turn 64 on May 28, said he cherishes the honor of serving Pawtucket. He added that he never feels comfortable in the position, and sees his re-election campaigns every two years as a job interview to see if he can secure voters’ approval.
“Hopefully they’ll rehire me again, but they always have the option to not,” he said, adding that he hopes residents see that he’s been “responsive to their needs on a constant and consistent basis.” If he can’t get an answer right away, he said, he’ll work to get one. He may not be able to fix an issue directly, he said, but he can let the constituent know who can.
This city clearly has all the momentum, said Moran, with Mayor Donald Grebien working on many different projects. Some might point to the loss of Hasbro or the PawSox, he said, but the mayor had no control over either departure. The administration worked hard to keep both here, he said, but ultimately it wasn’t to be. He said the city has pivoted, earning big wins with construction of a new soccer stadium, train station, and a number of other developments.
“There’s certainly a lot more activity,” he said, saying there’s a buzz around Pawtucket that wasn’t here before, and it’s no longer just seen as a place located on the way to Providence.
Grebien has also done a great job overhauling local schools, he said, “working through the murkiness” of a city/school relationship that isn’t always perfect. To get stuff done, he said, one has to have a good working relationship with school officials.
McFeeters, who will turn 38 years old next month, serves as a behavioral health program administrator at Rhode Island’s Executive Office of Health and Human Services. He is married to Julie.
He previously ran for School Committee, and said he remains disenchanted with how the committee has approached potential school closures. The plan for Curtis was a complete mess, he said, with no issues with the building or enrollment. He said people need to remain vigilant against more of these efforts, questioning a plan that would have sent students to Winters Elementary School as they passed two other schools on the way.
There’s a great PTO at Curtis that showed up and made its voices heard, he said, adding that he has great faith in Supt. Randy Buck and his vision for the district.
Moran called out McFeeters for saying in his campaign announcement that he’s been a 16-year resident of District 1, saying McFeeters wasn’t in the district until after redistricting in 2022. McFeeters explained that the sentence in his initial announcement was an honest mix-up with his campaign team, saying when he lived on Locust Street, he was completely surrounded by streets in District 1, and the home became part of District 1 after redistricting.
The bottom line, he said, is that the Locust Street area of the district, off Broadway, has been overlooked and ignored for a long time, and residents here tell him they’ve never seen an elected official come to their door to ask them about their concerns. It was among the hardest-hit areas in the entire city during COVID, he said, with homelessness and crime particular concerns.
Today, McFeeters said, he and Moran live diagonally across from each other, and Moran is a good neighbor. He said he and his son Taran shovel Moran’s driveway, and will continue to do so.
“He’s perfectly nice, and exceptionally gracious to my son,” he said.
The way he sums up his run for people, said McFeeters, is that in 1992, Moran wanted to be a city councilman, and now in 2026, he wants that same role. He’s a bit further left and thinks differently than Moran in some ways, he said, adding that he loves the district and the city as a whole.
McFeeters said speeding is a serious concern for everyone, with stop signs seen as optional and people trying to get places as fast as they can. He said he wants to employ new tactics to tackle the problem.
The challenger said he’s still doing community cleanups on his own, but it’s discouraging to find cleaned areas become all dirty again by the next day.
People are hurting, he said, and adding more housing and finding ways to bring down the cost of living are both key to their future. Taxes are going up modestly, he said, but it’s up to the council to make sure residents get what they pay for. “A little information goes a long way,” he said, and residents deserve to be kept in the loop on where their money is going.
Speaking of communication, he said, he wants to bring people together to talk about the various speeding and litter issues in the streets behind Spumoni’s. The crux of the issues is at the lights on Newport Avenue, he said, and he wants to work with Attleboro officials to contact the construction and towing companies that are causing some of the issues.
Holding a community meeting on these matters would be a way to reconnect people who too often are debating in impersonal online forums, he said.
Moran said being a claims representatives (adjuster) with Nationwide Insurance for more than 30 years (40 total as an adjuster) has given him an enormous amount of customer service experience. He said he’s on the phone every day helping people successfully handle their issues, making it perfect practice for his work on the council.
“I think I’m doing the same thing,” he said, adding that he’s a public servant who works for others. “That’s what I try to live by every day.”
Just before the pandemic, Moran’s wife Lynn, a woman he’s been married to for 36 years, was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, the same condition Bruce Willis has. She’s been in a nursing home since November of 2022, and he said he goes to visit and take care of her every week. His children are 30 and 31 now, he said, and so far haven’t wanted to be tested to see if they too could be prone to the disease, which he understands, said Moran, who also has four grandchildren.
“It’s like a cloud,” he said. “You’ve got to keep living your life.”
Known for wearing his emotions on his sleeve, Moran said there are many moments of crying over everything, but there are also many good moments. He said he still loves seeing his wife, and he’s able to function as always as a member of the council.
Asked about some of the biggest issues he’s played a hand in over the years, Moran said a big one from the late 1990s was preventing a waste transfer station from moving into the district right near his home. He said he worked very hard that whole summer, and the proposal was eventually withdrawn.
McFeeters said one item he wants to look into further is possibly changing the senior tax exemption of $60,600, said McFeeters. It hasn’t been changed since 2015, he said, and helping older residents in this way could go a long way.
Moran said he isn’t focused on any one change to how things are done, saying council members realize quickly after taking office that not all of their grand ideas are feasible, and that being effective requires developing rapport with colleagues and the mayor. He said for him it’s all about trying to control expenses through the budgeting process and developing consensus with colleagues about manageable improvements to the city, including the coming new splash park at the John Street playground and investments in other play areas. This is his 35th budget, he said, and his “experienced, proven leadership” shines especially bright this time of year.
“It’s more about the bread and butter issues,” he said. “For now it’s about controlling what you can control.”
He said he’s able to lean on his experience to get changes made more quickly. It might seem like a small thing, he said, but one of those was adding a new three-way stop after a recent crash on Pinecrest Drive. Councilors don’t just “throw up stop signs like they’re eating their favorite candy,” he said.
McFeeters said he’s yet to find a person on the Broadway side of the district who knows the district or where they area in it. He said he offers to show it to them, and they’re all shocked that District 1 stretches as far as it does.
That ignored side of District 1 needs representation who will give it the attention the other side of the district gets, said McFeeters. This is no knock on Grebien, he said, as the mayor has been fantastic with his community meetings and getting out to hear the people.
The challenger said he wants to work against the “feeling that we’re all in these little fiefdoms,” and work toward a district that is in it together and “we all sink or swim together.”
“People are looking for fight, and I think I can bring it,” he said, saying he can’t promise he’ll win every fight, “but I promise you I will put up the fight.” Wherever the call comes from, he said, he’ll be in the mix.
“That’s what my party sucks at,” he said. “We suck at fighting and delivering results.”
