By Will Collette
On June 6, Charlestown voters, by a surprising margin, approved spending $1.19 million to building decent toilet facilities at our two town beaches.
It was a struggle to overcome opposition from the Charlestown Citizen Alliance's "voices of greed" - wealthy beach property owners who felt that providing decent toilet facilities would only encourage more people to come to the beach. Just recently, Planning Commissar Ruth Platner giggled when she said that hot showers were excluded from the beach facilities plan, meaning that "people from western Connecticut won't be driving to our beaches to use the showers." I didn't make that up.
Anyway, the project was put out to bid and, today, the bids were opened. Beach Facility Ad Hoc Committee Chair Paula Andersen commented, "While we appreciate the efforts of all the bidders, my committee will work diligently to compare quotes and specifications so that we may give our citizens a product that they will be proud of. Hopefully will make our decision before the next council meeting."
Here are the bid results:
This project will pay workers "prevailing wage" - the equivalent of the union wage and benefits for each craft on this job.
The $220,000 in extra costs largely arise from the two "hearings" held by the Planning Commission where this project was almost nit-picked to death over issues that the Planning Commission has no authority under the Town Charter to raise. And, as I noted in an article earlier today, the Town Charter does not authorize the Planning Commission to hold public hearings unless the Town's Comprehensive Plan is being amended.
So the extra almost quarter million in cost we can chalk up to Platner and her Planners trying to exert their Power to Obstruct.