Stop discriminating against children

Platner seems to think only children cost the town money

By Will Collette

Time and again, Charlestown Planning Commissar Ruth Platner has evaluated the merits of projects in Charlestown against a single economic standard: the cost of educating school children.

She did it again at the December 28 Planning Commission meeting where she attempted to refute the criticism that the million-dollar YMCA land purchase proposal puts millions of dollars of taxable property permanently off the tax rolls.

Specifically, she noted that the proposed conservation development for 10 market-rate homes in an eco-friendly setting on the current site of the derelict Y Camp on Watchaug Pond – a proposal she helped to kill – would really not add to the tax base. She said each Chariho school kid costs the town $14,000, so it would only take three kids living in those houses to wipe out that development’s potential tax contribution.

This is only the latest project to be lashed by Platner’s bias against children.

But to only consider the cost of children as part of any cost-benefit analysis grossly misrepresents reality. It is also discriminatory.

We ALL represent some cost to the town. Each of us, in some way, consumes town resources.

Even if you are in a coma and on life support, you require aid from people and services who have to come to you via town roads. You may also require the services of our quasi-public Ambulance Service. This costs the town.

If you are stone-cold dead, the police and EMTs will respond to make sure you died naturally before the undertaker hauls you away. This costs the town.

Elderly, handicapped AND she has a cat....
Platner would consider her a drain on Charlestown

We all use the Town Clerk and town hall services. We occasionally use the police department – certainly when we need help, and sometimes when we’re naughty. We use the Charlestown Rescue and Ambulance Service, which is heavily subsidized by the town. We use our volunteer fire companies, who are supported by a special levy on each tax-paying property owner. Even when we don’t use these services, we are glad to pay to have them standing by. But nonetheless, these are all tangible public costs.

If we want to do something to our houses, we use the town building official, maybe the Zoning Board and, I shudder to think, might have to go before the Planning Commission. This all costs the town.

Non-residents, whether they own property here or are just visiting, use all our public services (except schools), and our roads. And they sometimes leave us little presents, like their trash in town bins or tossed along the roadside. These are all considerable costs to the town that the Charlestown Citizens Alliance and RI Statewide Coalition would like you to disregard.

Lots of people use our beaches. Lots of people use Ninigret Park. And many of these people aren’t even children! This costs the town.

Some of us are handicapped. Others are elderly. For the elderly and handicapped, the town is required by law to make reasonable accommodations for access to public places and services. These accommodations are costly expenses for the town.

Many of us vote. For that, the town is required to spend what is needed for the infrastructure that allows us to exercise our right of franchise.

It even costs the town money to take our taxes – printing the bills, mailing the bills, collecting the checks, depositing them in the bank, etc. That’s a lot of postage, printing, miscellaneous costs and tons of staff time.

My point is this: each and every one of us, dead or alive, costs the town money. There is a “carrying cost” for each of us.

Yet Commissar Platner only counts the cost of children – and I want to know why that is. Is it because she finds them to be an easy target? Or does she hate children?

I know Ruth Platner and her husband Cliff Vanover do not have children. Neither do my wife and I.

But even though I have never had a kid to send to school, I appreciate the fact that without children, our civilization dies. Without children, Charlestown becomes a sad little village of grumpy old people.

Why does Ruth Platner only count the cost of children when she judges the merits of, for example, proposed affordable housing?

If it was up to me, I would focus on the tremendous cost to our town posed by an entirely different demographic group: radical conservationists who want Charlestown to spend millions of dollars to turn most of the town into uninhabited, tax-exempt land.

With the amount of money Ruth Platner wants Charlestown to spend on buying the YMCA Camp for the Charlestown Land Trust, we could send 34 kids to Chariho for a year. Or we could fund a $200 Homestead Tax Credit for town residents. That’s not the $1000 Homestead Tax Credit I’d like to see, but it’s a higher priority for me than buying a busted-out campground.