Deputy Dan Slattery gets SPANKED by the Westerly Sun

Sun Editorial condemns Slattery's conduct on Ninigret Park

By Will Collette

Today's Westerly Sun carries an important editorial, "Let Parks & Rec Take Care of Park." Click here to read it. Better yet, go and buy a copy so you can cut out the article and frame it as a reminder when Deputy Dan asks you to re-elect him in November.

This editorial dissects the wild and baseless attacks made by CCA Town Council member Deputy Dan Slattery on the town's management of Ninigret Park. 


The Sun concludes that Slattery's attacks are wrong, that town management of Ninigret Park is proper and that recent controversies over the Park were handled according to procedure.

Deputy Dan wanted to give our federal overseer, Charlie
Vandemoer, veto power over town use of Ninigret Park

They conclude that Slattery's effort to trash the Ninigret Park Master Park is wrong. They conclude his attempt to supplant the Charlestown Parks and Recreation Commission with a new "Stakeholder Commission" is inappropriate.

They note that the Frosty Drew Observatory did not ask for and did not want to be given any special role in controlling what happens at Ninigret Park.

Since March, Slattery has had the town in an uproar as he posited his claims that things were so terrible at Ninigret Park that the only solution was to trash the whole town management process and recreate it to suit his vision of "moral, ethical and legal" responsibility.

He made up facts. He misrepresented others. He sought to give the US Department of Interior veto power over all of Ninigret Park, including the town-owned 55 acres over which the Interior Department has no jurisdiction.

Boss Gentz is afraid of the feds

He was backed up by Town Council Boss Tom Gentz who said that he feared that the federal government was on the verge of taking Ninigret Park away from the town. I guess Gentz thought the best way to keep the feds from taking Ninigret Park back was to simply give it to them.

None of this has any basis in fact or reality. All of this was wrong. All of it was misrepresented. All of it was thoroughly refutted in public.

There are ways you expect a responsible adult, especially one who claims to be driven by "moral, ethical and legal duty" to behave. You'd expect a responsible adult to respond to being so thoroughly discredited by saying, "Yes, I screwed up. I made a mistake. I'm sorry. I will make amends. And I won't do it again."

But Deputy Dan Slattery lives by a different moral, ethical and legal code - his response was to deny he ever said what his own writing in his own motions said. To deny he said what is recorded on Clerkbase video and audio, and in the Council minutes.

Over the past several months, Slattery has turned his bizarre crusades into moral jihads. He has used the phrase "moral obligation" repeatedly. He seems to see most of his pet issues as tests of character.

If that's the standard you wish to apply to others, Deputy Dan, look in the mirror. Apply the same standards you used to drive Town Administrator William DiLibero to resign to yourself.