By EMMA BARTLETT

Ward 6 Councilman Matthew Reilly, 40, will seek reelection as a Republican in the upcoming election. Originally elected to the council in 2020, Reilly plans to run on the same platform of maintaining financial stability and focusing on the fundamentals of government.

Reilly said he was bitten by the “politic bug” when he was five years old; his father had several unsuccessful tries to run for city council but served on the school committee under Mayor Michael Traficante.

“I think I was five years old and I met Michael Traficante for the first time. I was taking him to his office with my dad and he let me sit in his chair. And I’m sitting there and he’s talking and then he looks over at me and says ‘you know what kid, you can sit in that chair one day,’ and that was it. But I do not have any plans to be mayor or run for mayor,” said Reilly laughing.

Reilly said he’s always been a middle of the road Republican and feels like extremes on both sides of parties are bad.

“Solutions are found in the middle,” Reilly said.

He said he admires and looks up to Allan Fung and how Fung ran the city. One main focus is on the city’s finances and the budget.

“We have to run a tight ship and stick with the fundamentals of governmental operations,” Reilly said.

City Council budget hearings started in April and, since that point, Reilly has spoken with colleagues and the mayor's office to see where cuts can be made without hurting city services. He said for any government to run efficiently and stay up with market conditions, there should be at 3/4 to 1 percent tax increase each year. He mentioned that 2 percent to 4 percent tax increases are the result of not doing things the right way.

Recently, Reilly worked on a proposal concerning 72 children and families in Cranston who are classified as homeless. He said Councilman John Donegan brought this data from RI KidsCount and Reilly believes that 72 is a feasible number that can be fixed. He’d like to use American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds for this project and would ask the school committee for use of some Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) monies since the schools have involvement in identifying students who are homeless.

Reilly talks of designing a program with CCAP’s Joanne McGonagle which would house families for two years, pay up to $3,000 for all living expenses each month and have CCAP wrap around services with job searches, training, home economic training so at the end of the two year program the families are self-sustaining; the initiative would be managed by CCAP. Reilly said after crunching the numbers, the cost for housing comes to about $5.2 million. Reilly would then suggest adding another million from ARPA funds to fund the program for two years.

The goal of the project would be to provide for the homeless 72 families and come up with ways to prevent homelessness in the future.

During his time on the council Reilly has worked with several council members, such as Aniece Germain and Nicole Renzulli, to clean up the city code since there are laws that aren’t used or don’t make sense as written. Additionally, he has been an advocate for the addiction recovery community. This year, Cranston recognized September as national recovery month and the city held an event that brought different people and organizations from the community to speak and share their experiences of addiction.

Reilly publicly shared his experience of suffering with addiction and being sober since 2010.

After Reilly graduated Cranston West as class president and went on to George Washington University where he received a scholarship for academic and leadership roles in high school. He helped design the department he majored in. small business management and entrepreneurship program. He went into real estate and, at that time, the market was booming.

“I made a good amount of money very young and quickly and I was a dumb kid,” Reilly said.

He said he got into partying and within four years was addicted to cocaine and lost everything. He was homeless and living in a car off Elmwood Avenue in a vacant lot – which lasted a couple years. He said each winter, he signed up for health insurance and would go to Florida for rehab to get off the street and out of the cold, and then come back to Rhode Island and repeat the cycle.

Reilly attended Alcohol Anonymous in 2010 and things started to click. He said it took time, but he got a sponsor and went through the 12 steps and has been sober since.

Reilly has enjoyed his time on city council and likes the constituent affairs aspect of the position. He usually receives two calls a day and mentions that 60 percent of the time calls are about speeding – which is something he would like to address.

Going through the city’s Municipal Court budget, he said the revenues for speeding tickets were down because of Covid. People are out of the habit of getting pulled over for speeding and there needs to be more enforcement to keep neighborhoods safer and regenerate revenues to where they once were.

If elected for the next term, Reilly would like to lobby for and bring in a consultant to go through the city's procedure and operation and provide a proficiency analysis for what the city can do better.

He would also like to introduce an ordinance that would establish an overtime task force commission that would provide oversight for each department and provide recommendations to the council and mayor’s office on how to handle things. He would hope to have monthly meetings and a monthly report to the finance committee.

One of the things Reilly said he has learned this year is to be more critical and provide more oversight on contracts put before the council. Most all the contracts are approved unanimously, and he said the council has to take a better look because the contractual raises are outpacing what the city can provide their non-union employees and are outpacing the economic indicators of local and national economics.

In addition to his role on city council, Reilly serves as the chair of Cranston’s Republican Committee. He pursued the position because of his goal to have politics be less partisan; he also wanted to establish a campaigning manual that could be passed down and used by the party each year.

During the last campaign, Reilly found the logistics of campaigning came natural to him. However, there wasn’t a system in place to help candidates so Reilly told Hopkins he wanted to design this system. Reilly helped most of the incoming candidates with their campaigns and felt he had a skill set that could help others.

Reilly said prior to being chair, the Cranston Republican Committee at most had $2,500. With hosting several fundraisers, such as a golf tournament, the committee raised $10,000 after eight months with him as chair. The funds will provide logistical and financial support for candidates.

Reilly works as a family court attorney – handling divorce, child custody and is regularly appointed by judges to be a guardian ad litem. Reilly moved from Pawtucket to Cranston with his family when he was three years old and currently lives in the city with his two daughters.

As of now, Reilly’s potential opponents include Dylan Zelazo, who is considering a run for ward 6 seat, and School Committee Chair Daniel Wall is also considering a run for council. He plans to run a clean race like his race against Paul Bucci and hopes that this year’s opponents will do the same.