What ever happened to the Dark Skies Ordinance?

It’s been replaced by an 82-minute movie

By Will Collette

Last July, to great fanfare, the Charlestown Planning Commission announced it has finally finished its “Dark Skies” ordinance, a plan to cut down on unnecessary light and preserve Charlestown's especially fine night-time views of the stars and planets.

This ordinance had been in the works for years. It looked like the Planning Commission had learned from its earlier mistakes with the tree ordinance and had built in practical measures to implement the ordinance and enforce it when necessary.

There was also (still is) a very strong majority sentiment in town in favor of practical measures to preserve our beautiful night sky. I even liked it.

So where is the ordinance that was, supposedly, ready to go last July?

You see, the problem is that the Planning Commission can’t help itself. It just has to stall, delay, tinker, futz around, delay some more, get distracted, dawdle, delay, yap and yammer and stall. It does that to everything. So why should an overwhelmingly popular and essentially finished thing such as the Dark Skies ordinance be any different?

Even though the Planning Commission itself considers this ordinance to be a priority, and they’ve been working on it since 2007, they still can’t let it go.

So instead, they have worked a deal with the Frosty Drew Observatory to get an unlimited license to show an 82-minute-long movie about Dark Skies called "The City Dark."

The discussion at the October 26 planning meeting about the Dark Skies ordinance involved almost no discussion about the Dark Skies ordinance.

Instead, we were treated to a bubbly dissertation by Planning Commissar Ruth Platner about the 82-minute-long f#@%%$# movie, the "City Dark," and how she has grand plans to show the movie numerous times in numerous venues – at Town Council meetings, the Senior Center, at Kettle Pond, at Frosty Drew itself.

As always, I urge you not to take my word for what happened – watch the Clerkbase video yourself to see if I’m making this up.

I think Ruth also plans to show up at a different household each night to ask residents to pop "The City Dark" into their DVD player. Ruth will bring the popcorn, as I understand it.

Look, it’s not that often that a Planning Commission ordinance has the kind of support the Dark Skies ordinance has (at least the version they had supposedly completed last July – haven’t seen any recent changes). So vote the damned ordinance out of the Planning Commission and send it to the Town Council. Then show your movie until your eyeballs fall out.

I know the Planning Commission likes to delay things and stall – just because they can – but why do this to your own popular ordinance? Are you that ornery, or is it just incompetence?

For those of you with short attention spans, here's a three-minute trailer in case you don't want to sit through the full 82-minute version (BTW - the full-length movie is rated 3 out of 5 stars by IMDB). This trailer earned a 5-star rating from YouTube.