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| Tom Gentz: Have you seen this man? |
Here's one for the Missing Persons Bureau—only one month after announcing an internal leadership shakeup and rearrangement of their officers' and Steering Committee members' roles, two of the CCA officers, Town Council President Tom Gentz and Dr. Milton Krantz, seem to have disappeared.
While you will soon be seeing their faces on the sides of milk cartons, your humble sleuths at Progressive Charlestown have launched an investigation into their disappearances.
Some background: The Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) is Charlestown's shadow government. They currently have a lock on the Planning Commission plus the two top posts and working majority on the Town Council - with Councilor Lisa DiBello usually voting with the CCA bloc and against her enemy, Gregg Avedisian..
Yet the CCA operates in complete secrecy under the cloak of anonymity to shape town policies. They allow no new members. They do not hold open meetings. They do not hold open elections. They e-mail anonymous comments about town issues to their mysterious list.
The group of roughly a dozen people who run CCA today are remnants of the people who started the CCA as a resistance group to Jim Mageau's reign on the Town Council in 2006-2008. About half of the CCA left during the CCA's bloody civil war in 2008-2010. Now, in its current incarnation, the CCA is the implacable foe of improved town facilities (e.g., beach toilets, properly constructed firehouses), affordable housing, and conservation development and is the proponent of the interests of shoreline residents and the conversion of as much property in town as possible into nontaxable open space.
On June 15th, the CCA sent out an e-mail announcing it had "refreshed" itself by reshuffling its leadership (in complete secret). This involved demoting Kallie and John Jurgens, who had been serving as President and Treasurer respectively, to basic Steering Committee membership, elevating Bernice Krantz to the Presidency, leaving her husband Dr. Milton Krantz and Tom Gentz in their positions as Vice-President and Secretary respectively, and moving Leo Mainelli up to the Treasurer's slot.
On the whole, this seemed like a good shakeup, given that the Jurgenses had declared permanent residency in Florida for a couple of years and the Krantzes are two lifelong Democrats and really good people. Too bad the CCA felt it needed to make these moves in secret.
Anyway, the CCA website continues to describe the structure of CCA as four officers with decision-making vested in their Steering Committee. But when you go to the link for the Steering Committee, Tom Gentz totally disappears. They even expunged the very nice bio page they had on him when he ran for Town Council. It's as if he never existed! Was there foul play involved?
Dan Slattery, former CCA President and current Town Council Vice-President, did a similar disappearing act a few months ago, although until now, the CCA maintained his candidate's bio page too. Now that's gone.
Dr. Krantz is only listed as a Steering Committee member, not an officer. Was he stripped of rank?
As a registered Political Action Committee, the CCA is required to file regular reports with the RI Board of Elections. Those filings include notices of changes in leadership. When the CCA made its most recent filing on July 12, they notified the Board of Elections only about the swap in the Treasurer's position between John Jurgens and Leo Mainelli.
Like the CCA website, the CCA filing with the BOE makes no mention of what has happened with Dr. Krantz or Tom Gentz.
The CCA knows how to fill out these forms because they have done this before. Compare these current omissions with earlier Re-Organization filings made by the CCA on October 5, 2010 and July 7, 2008 in which they complied with the law and reported their complete officer corps.
Now, if Cliff Vanover was part of Progressive Charlestown, rather than a CCA Steering Committee member, he'd be whipping out a complaint to the Board of Elections in a New York minute. He's filed complaints on virtually any grounds, no matter how flimsy. In this instance, the violation is pretty clear—but I think I'd like to give President Bernice Krantz a chance to make it right without filing a formal beef.
But this still leaves the mystery of what happened to Dr. Krantz. Is he still Vice-President or not? And I am very concerned about the disappearance of Tom Gentz. He seemed so fit and vigorous at the Town Council meeting a week ago.
Author: Will Collette