The Planning Board voted 4–0 to grant preliminary approval to Phase 1 of the Rankin Estates conservation subdivision on Douglas Pike — a 126-lot project on its fifth scheduled hearing since April 2026. The board added a round of new stipulations covering bonding, phasing, and blasting notice, but declined, on its solicitor's advice, to further restrict the project's recreation fields. Nearly an hour of public testimony focused on the site's connection to Nipmuc tribal land and King Philip's War, along with traffic, school capacity, and an unresolved state wetlands permit. Board members Porter and the chairman both stated they personally opposed aspects of the project but felt legally bound to approve it, citing the risk that a denial could be appealed and reverted to a larger, non-conservation plan that already holds its own master plan approval.

A short meeting covering two unrelated, continued applications, both pushed to September 10, 2026. The main item was a gas station development at 3 Greenville Road, where a dispute between the applicant's and an objector's competing traffic experts — centered on whether the analysis adequately addressed the nearby City of Woonsocket school — led to a further continuance after the objector's expert was unavailable. The board discussed but did not yet order an independent town peer review of the dueling traffic studies. A second, unrelated item (a major change to a recorded plat) was continued because the applicant's notice to abutters had gone out without the required newspaper advertisement.

This was a brief, purely procedural meeting with no public hearing testimony and no discussion of the Rankin Estates application's substance. The board arrived expecting to reach a decision that evening — the fourth hearing on the preliminary plan — but with board member Ryan Hammond out sick and Dr. Benoit recused as an abutter, only three voting members were present rather than the full four who had sat through all prior testimony. The applicant's attorney proactively requested a continuance rather than proceed with a partial board, explicitly to avoid excluding Hammond from a vote he'd earned by sitting through the full record. The board agreed, continuing both the public hearing and its own decision deadline to August 27, 2026 — the date that ultimately produced the project's 4–0 approval. A new evidence deadline of August 20 (seven days prior) was also set.

This was not a Rankin Estates public hearing — it was a regular Planning Board meeting covering four unrelated administrative and subdivision items. It opened, however, with a closed executive session specifically concerning ongoing Rankin Estates litigation, held the same evening the board later discussed procedural matters for unrelated projects. No votes were taken in executive session and its minutes were sealed. The regular meeting that followed granted two master-plan extensions/reinstatements, approved a combined preliminary-final plan for a two-lot subdivision on Providence Pike, and held an informal pre-application review for a nine-lot conservation subdivision at Buxton Hollow Farm — formerly known as "Jake's Farm."

The Planning Board reopened the continued Rankin Estates public hearing, with the chairman announcing upfront that no vote would occur that night and the hearing would continue again — ultimately to June 25, 2026. The applicant's co-counsel, Attorney Michael Kelly, opened with a lengthy account of the project's 21-year history, including a prior wrongful-denial lawsuit the town settled after evidence surfaced that board members had improperly coordinated a denial with a since-discredited expert witness, and closed with an explicit warning that a denial on the recreation fields or earth-removal issues would trigger a new damages lawsuit. The applicant's team then presented updated materials requested at the April 9 hearing: a revised fiscal impact study, a nutrient-loading memorandum, a reduced and relocated recreation-field plan, and volume estimates for excavated material. Roughly a dozen residents spoke, with recurring concerns about traffic safety on Douglas Pike, the recreation fields' necessity and siting, process transparency, and a specific question about whether a town-owned road segment was being effectively privatized by the project's gate placement. The hearing was continued to June 25, 2026.