Reforming the Planning Commission

They forgot to include "staggered terms"

This land is your land, this land is my land, part 2

By Will Collette

I worked for the AFL-CIO on corporate campaigns. These were campaigns that targeted companies that not only treated their workers badly but also behaved like poor corporate citizens. In a nutshell, they screwed everybody, including their own shareholders. These companies usually employed a variety of techniques to fend off pressure from their own shareholders.

One of the techniques they used was the “staggered board.” It’s a technique also used by the Charlestown Planning Commission to insulate itself from community pressure. The staggered term gimmick involves setting the terms of office for board members so that it takes a very long time to change the board.

Commonly, the board would be divided up into thirds and only one-third of the board would be up for election at any given time. Just like the Charlestown Planning Commission where members serve six year, staggered terms. To turn-over the Planning Commission, opponents would have to win three consecutive elections over six years. To gain a majority, opponents would need to win all open seats in two consecutive elections, a four-year minimum.

The fact that Charlestown’s Planning Commission is elected is unique to Charlestown. Rhode Island law requires town planning and zoning bodies to be appointed, not elected, but Charlestown, being Charlestown, has to have it its own way.

Nick Gorham, Larry LeBlanc's
lawyer, argues the Planning
Commission is illegal. He might
be right.

Currently, this issue is in litigation. Larry LeBlanc, developer of the proposed Whalerock wind farm project, is suing Charlestown over its refusal to allow LeBlanc to go forward with his project. Among the remedies LeBlanc asks from the court is a court ruling that Charlestown’s Planning Commission is illegally constituted. He makes a very strong argument and stands a chance of winning that ruling from the judge.

Over the years, there has been a lot of rhetoric, mostly coming from the Charlestown Citizens Alliance and its precursors that electing our Planning Commission is democracy in action, that electing members and awarding them the six-year staggered terms takes the politics out of the planning process. What a load of crap!

Almost by definition, electing Planning Commission members necessarily politicizes the Planning Commission. That was precisely the reason why the state enacted the law requiring their appointment.

And the staggered terms allows an entrenched majority to hold its grip on one of the most powerful bodies in our town government, long after their colleagues on the Town Council have left office. If anything, the elected, six-year staggered term Planning Commission is anti-democratic.

"Whatever it is, I'm against it!"

Our current Planning Commission is comprised of members who ran and won election under the CCA banner. They are the embodiment of the CCA theme song “Whatever It Is, I’m Against It.”

This Planning Commission under the leadership of Ruth Platner is the Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight. They write ordinances that can’t be enforced (e.g. the accessory dwelling unit and the tree ordinances). They can’t seem to finish ordinances that are popular and seem to be ready to go (e.g. the dark sky ordinance). They write ordinances that are dishonest and intrusive (e.g. the so-called residential wind energy ordinance).

And they bumble, time and again. Watch the Clerkbase video for the September 28 meeting. In it, they’re supposed to be having a public hearing on the designs for the new beach sanitary facilities. Instead of focusing on the design of the buildings, there’s an hour of aimless and excruciating conversation about traffic and parking issues along East Beach road. And because someone reversed the lot and plat numbers for the sites at Blue Shutters and Charlestown Town Beach, the public hearing wasn’t even valid. They had to do it all over again on October 26.

A new Charter Revision Commission has begun to work in earnest on proposals for charter changes in advance of the 2012 election. At their September 6th  meeting, they discussed the idea of changing the way the Planning Commission is constituted.

They may be open to taking steps in the right direction. For example, they seem to be considering putting changes to the charter before the voters that would make the Planning Commission an appointed body with four year terms.

Unfortunately, at the urging of the Town Council liaison Gregg Avedisian, they might retain the unfortunate practice of staggering the terms. The Commission minutes once again raise the concern about “politicizing” Planning, as if we haven’t already learned how ineffective staggered terms are at accomplishing such a commendable but naïve goal.

As Affordable Housing Commission chair Evelyn Smith noted at the last Town Council meeting, the town’s Comprehensive Plan is due for a review and update. Frankly, I don’t see how this Planning Commission is up for that task. If it’s not their CCA political bias, it’s their inability to accomplish much smaller tasks. And on top of it all, there’s Ruth Platner’s inept leadership.