I pulled the town's own tax roll
against its official directory.
They don't match. Not close. Here's what 550 tax records and one town website turned up — and what it means for the small businesses that keep this town running.
The directory covers about 1 in 5 businesses in town.
I compared the town's published business directory against the 2026 tangible property tax roll — the actual record of who operates a business in North Smithfield. The directory is missing the large majority of them.
1 in 5 listings point to a business that no longer exists as listed.
Of the 71 businesses the town does list, I checked whether each one still operates as described. Fourteen don't.
No two listings show the same information.
Every business "file" on the directory can carry five pieces of contact info: phone, email, website, a picture, and a description. Almost none of them have all five — and there's no consistent standard for which ones a business is expected to fill in.
Put another way — here's how many businesses have all five fields filled in, versus just a couple:
fields
complete
Some kinds of businesses barely show up at all.
The directory sorts businesses into categories. When I compared each category's share on the tax roll (navy) to its share on the website (red), most categories are badly under-represented — some almost entirely missing.
Filed wrong, or not filed at all: one business on the directory doesn't turn up under any search category — it's simply unfindable. Another appears in two categories at once, when every other listing appears in exactly one. There's no visible standard for how a business gets sorted.
Even the logos aren't treated equally.
Every business that submits a logo gets a different amount of "real estate" on the page — some enormous, some barely visible, with no consistent sizing standard. And a cluster of businesses have no logo at all.
The town's categories are too broad to tell businesses apart.
I sorted every business into a more specific type — then checked how many of those specific types get flattened into a single label on the town's directory. Some categories are doing a lot of hiding.
Number of genuinely different kinds of businesses filed under the same category label.
Being a small town means supporting local business — equally, and accurately.
That starts with a directory that's actually complete, consistent, and current. Right now, ours isn't — and it's the businesses that keep this town running who lose out when they're left off the list.