Charlestown’s lack of concern leaves residents in the cold, Part 2

Steps Charlestown can take on its own to improve the local economy

By Will Collette

In Part 1, I reported the latest spike in Charlestown unemployment and what it means. 

Our 8.7% unemployment rate is terrible. In addition, another 3-5% of Charlestown workers are no longer collecting benefits, especially after the termination of the federal extended benefits program. 

Then there’s another 15-16% of Charlestown workers who are “under-employed,” meaning they are involuntarily working fewer hours than they want to.

The Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA Party) leaders who control Charlestown government do not see any role for town government in addressing this crisis that affects more than 1,200 Charlestown workers. I say this is not true.

What is true is that the CCA Party simply doesn’t want to help struggling Charlestown working families. Let’s start off with one controversial item that the CCA Party, along with its allies in the RI Statewide Coalition, tore apart when it was proposed by Charlestown Democrats:

Homestead Tax Credit

Former CCA Party Chair Kallie Jurgens received multiple
homestead tax breaks - in Florida - at the same time the
CCA was attacking town Dems for proposing similar
breaks for Charlestown residents

This simple concept has been used all over the US, and especially in Florida where many of the CCA’s non-resident supporters actually live, to reward full-time residents by granting them either a certain percentage reduction in property tax or a specific dollar figure as a credit. 

Charlestown Democrats proposed a $1,000 property tax credit on every Charlestown property owned and occupied by a permanent resident. The main beneficiaries would have been people living in $200,000-$500,000 homes, where almost all of those 1,200 distressed working families live. It would have created a modest tax hike for high-end properties and those owned by non-residents.

Despite the profound effect this could have had for working class families, the CCA Party and RISC mobilized a mob of non-residents who drove in from suburban New York and Connecticut to condemn this proposal as tantamount to communism, even though many of the communities where they make their permanent homes have homestead exemptions. Anyway, the CCA Party bloc (which at that time included Councilor Lisa DiBello) quickly dispatched this proposal.

But Charlestown still needs it, perhaps more than ever. Perhaps in the form it was proposed, or in some other form, Charlestown needs tax justice, not the continual tax increases we’ve seen over the past six years.

Tax incentives

Under Commissar Ruth Platner and the CCA-controlled Town Council, Charlestown has adopted some of the most draconian anti-business zoning regulations in Rhode Island. 

Every few months, the Planning Commission finds hitherto undiscovered problems. Then, they come forward with new ordinances that lay more unneeded burdens on existing businesses and unwarranted barriers to potential new businesses.

The new ordinances adopted in December to regulate shrubbery and the depth and color of mulch and parking spaces are cases in point.

The Town Council approves those ordinances with nary a care about how stressed businesses will handle the added expense or whether these new ordinances will drive out businesses, as the signage ordinance did in clearing out a whole block of women-owned businesses on Crossland Street.

We regulate in a way that makes it harder for businesses to do business. As a direct result, we cost Charlestown jobs.

If it’s really so important to make town businesses conform to the Planning Commission’s standards, why not show that we’re serious by providing incentives for businesses to comply? Instead of passing new unfunded mandates, why not require Charlestown to offset the costs of compliance with tax incentives? Why not allow town businesses to deduct some percentage of their compliance costs from their property tax bills?

Then we can have some hard data that will allow us to calculate the costs attached to the largely unaccountable Planning Commission’s fevered dreams of transforming Charlestown into some sort of 21,000-acre English garden or wildlife preserve (which version depends on whether you listen to Faith LaBossiere or Ruth Platner).

Watching the Planning Commission over the past five years, I’ve noticed they almost never consider the cost of their actions. If, for example, the cost of LaBossiere’s mulch crusade comes to $100,000 but some percentage is charged back to the town as a tax credit, we may begin to think twice about enacting ordinances that address "problems" only Faith LaBossiere (or Ruth Platner) are able to see.

In general, the federal and state governments, and some local governments, recognize that if we want a healthy economy and we want an environment that conforms to our standards, offering tax incentives is can be good public policy.

Use the town’s purchasing power

The Town of Charlestown issues contracts worth millions of dollars for goods and services every year. Charlestown does not have a “bad actor” ordinance or policy to prevent those contracts from going to vendors with bad rap sheets for such things as fraud, price-fixing, labor law or environmental violations. Charlestown also does not have a policy or ordinance that favors the use of local contractors or companies that hire local workers.

We are overdue on both scores. The Copar Quarries flap shows how important having a “bad actor” ordinance is. Further in this case, the problem is compounded by the fact that Copar is Connecticut-based and hires most of its workers from Connecticut.

A good “Bad Actor” ordinance would impose practical standards on businesses seeking permits or contracts from our town. A good “Bad Actor” ordinance would have kept Copar from getting a permit and would make sure Charlestown doesn’t give public contracts to businesses with dirty records.

Richmond actually has decent bad actor language in its ordinances (see §5.04.30.B.) that apply to all businesses required to get a town business license. Unfortunately, Richmond for inexplicable reasons does not require quarries to get a town business license so Copar was not "permit-blocked" due to its bad record. But that’s a fixable problem, at least for the future.

“Bad actors” are often low bidders on public contracts, but usually because their price is based on cheating. Even when a bidder has a clean record, Charlestown should still have a scoring system that includes extra points for bidders who employ or plan to employ local workers. The City of Providence offers an example for how to promote local hiring in its “First Source” ordinance.

Re-visit Charlestown’s regulatory policies

During the debate over the Planning Commission’s various anti-business ordinances over the past three years, we have learned that Charlestown frequently enacts ordinances it does not intend to enforce.

Instead, Charlestown zoning ordinance mandates are deemed “complaint-driven.” Instead of uniformly enforcing its own ordinances, the town relies on neighbors to complain. Then the appropriate town officials, often Zoning/Housing Official Joe Warner, but also Charlestown Police or Fire, Animal Control Officer Kathy McA’Nulty, or Wastewater Management officer Matt Dowling, find themselves in the middle of a neighbor-versus-neighbor feud.

These town-aided regulatory feuds are not only bad for business but also bad for the community. People already have plenty of reasons and means to carry on their local feuds without the town offering them so many handy tools. Presently, if you hate your neighbor, all you have to do is go through the Charlestown Code of Ordinances to find ways to screw your neighbor by filing a complaint with the town. Many of them are courtesy of Planning Commissar Ruth Platner.

When the town gets drawn into these types of disputes, it not only takes up staff time and town resources, with little good to show for it, but can also cost the town money. Take for example, this recent lawsuit filed against the Town of Charlestown by Peter W. Bloomquist, who is one of the antagonists in a long-running feud with Cheryl Dowdell that, according to a RI Supreme Court decision, dates back to 2000.

Without addressing the merits of the issues between Bloomquist and the Dowdells, or the pain and anguish involved, their issues have now become Charlestown's issue by dint of this litigation against the town.

"Complaint-driven" enforcement is a problem that needs to be addressed by at least reviewing the town’s ordinances to see which among them make sense. If ordinances are not enforced, or are only enforced in the context of a neighborhood dust-up, those are ordinances that should either be repealed or revised.

The Planning Commission should be required to produce a bona fide cost estimate for changes it proposes to the Charlestown zoning ordinance on businesses and residents instead of only giving uninformed guesses when they are asked that question during public hearings. Otherwise, how can town taxpayers and policy makers make informed judgments about the costs versus the benefit of amendments to the zoning ordinance?

Create Jobs

As I was thinking about this topic, it occurred to me that one way Ruth Platner and the CCA boys on the Council could enforce all their new ordinances and silence critics of their lack of a policy to address Charlestown unemployment is to hire a phalanx of ordinance enforcers. To fully and fairly enforce all of Ruth Platner’s new ordinances, you’d need a new Charlestown Department of Regulatory Enforcement.

However, this would not only make fiscal conservatives gag, it would also make life pretty unbearable for most Charlestown businesses and residents. The only businesses left after an enforcement blitz would be Copar Quarries and all the new gun shops. And Cliff Vanover’s map business.

One way that Charlestown could really spur job growth would be to drop its phony policies on affordable housing. Charlestown steadily loses people because of the lack of affordable housing. Elderly residents who need to downsize, perhaps to a rental, can’t find one and leave. As Charlestown’s sons and daughters grow up and want to start families of their own, they can’t find what they need and leave.

We need more than 200 units of affordable housing, especially rentals, that can be created either through new construction or retrofitting existing structures. Either way, if Charlestown embraced rather than resisted affordable housing, that would create construction jobs we desperately need.

Transportation

Charlestown is one of the few among Rhode Island’s 39 cities and towns to have no access to public transportation. No bus stop. No rail stop. No shuttle service. Because there are so few jobs within Charlestown itself and, according to the Census, only 65 work at home, many of the 4,600 adults in Charlestown’s workforce have to go out of Charlestown for their jobs. By car or truck. Or, if Faith LaBossiere gets her way, by bicycle to Westerly.

To connect with a RIPTA bus route in Richmond, Westerly, Kingston or Wakefield, or the MBTA and Amtrak means a ridiculously long drive. It makes both economic and environmental sense for Charlestown citizens, especially commuters, to have public transportation access.

Job-seekers need access so they can go to where jobs are in the hope of getting a job. When you’ve been unemployed for a while, you may not be able to fill the tank with gas every day to trek up to the city to look for work.

Some of the long-term unemployed are in re-training programs, apprenticeships, or are going back to school. Again, without public transportation, getting there is problematic.

The CCA Party has been very sensitive to the town’s interest in preserving its tax base. For that reason, they have sought volunteers to go clean-up absentee owners’ beach property, and federal money to stormproof those properties.

Charlestown has at least as big a stake in helping working residents get to good jobs or job training so they can keep their homes. If we can’t get public transportation to come to Charlestown, maybe it makes sense to consider taking Charlestown residents to public transportation.

Before Cathy and I returned home to Rhode Island, we lived in Montgomery County, MD, outside of Washington, DC, for 25 years. Montgomery County is home to lots of commuters who rely on public transportation. The county understood that getting people hooked up to public transportation was in the community self-interest. 

So the County paid for its own supplemental “Ride-On Bus” system to shuttle thousands of county residents to regional transportation hubs like Metro stops where you could not only get on the subway but also hop onto one of the buses in the regional WMATA fleet.

I do not suggest we need a fleet of shuttle buses – Montgomery County currently owns 335 – but it could use one or two to start. We just spent $2.1 million to block a wind turbine project. Surely we can find the money to benefit the town’s environmental and economic health by reducing our town’s total reliance on automobiles.

When our CCA Councilors Tom Gentz, Dan Slattery and George Tremblay fumble and mumble their words and can’t find a way to constructively respond to the needs of the Other Charlestown, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing that can be done. It just means there’s nothing they can think of that fits within their narrow-minded conservative values.

We spend so much time and energy focused on small or imaginary problems that we miss opportunities to grapple with real problems. We spend so much time catering to fights among neighbors that we forget to build community. We spend so much time trying to push Charlestown toward some imagined vision of the way it was fifty or a hundred years ago, that we forget to look forward and prepare for the future.

It’s a new year and a chance to turn the page that sets Charlestown on a new direction that makes this town a great place for everyone to live.