The monument in question is basically a white cross, constructed out of granite but fashioned to look like it was a simple log-based wood construct poised atop a simple blocky granite base. A bronze plaque identifies the reason for the monument's dedication, basically that it commemorates some local WWI and WWII vets who died in service to their country.
When I lived in Woonsocket, I'd passed by this monument countless times but never really thought much of it. I knew it was right in front of a fire station which would have been city property, of course, but I didn't think twice about its legality.
But perhaps that's because Woonsocket has always been a bit of an odd duck, in my experience, when it comes to the separation of church and state.
When I was in elementary school, public elementary school that is, it was not unusual for a priest to be a special guest speaker in the auditorium, under the guise, I guess, of community outreach, and talk to us kids about the importance of going to church.
The school allowed a priest to administer ashes on Ash Wednesday and, though it was "voluntary", kids would be looked at with ridicule if they didn't get them, and wear them for the rest of the day.
All school lunches on Fridays were strictly meatless. Don't like tuna salad or clam chowder? Too bad, there was nothing provided for you.
The public school I attended for my 6th grade year had recently been a former church building and still had a large cross atop the main entrance (this was later covered up). The priest would be available in one of the vacant classrooms for confession every Friday afternoon.
Woonsocket, being a French-Canadian cultural enclave has always marched to the beat of its own drum. Even its geography, nestled in a winding valley cut through the Northern Rhode Island highlands by the Blackstone River, serves as a physical synonym to its social isolation.
People from Woonsocket are fiercely independent and provincial, ie. stubborn and uninterested in the world around them. With a longtime impoverished local economy still based on a decades old, long-dead industrial foundation, Woonsocketites are essentially bitter, poor and stupid. Add to that mix their blind and unwavering allegiance to a bastardized form of the Catholic religion and you have a steaming cauldron of "such terrible despite".
I personally feel entirely at peace with letting them have their little monument because if any enlightened, educated persons happen to see it in passing, they can simply drive on by since I'm sure they don't call Woonsocket home. Leave it for them, I say, the ignorant masses need their pablum. Or, like a weak little baby deprived of its momma's sore tit, the woeful wailing will commence.