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| What could have been: Ted Veazey's proposed conservation development, which would have gained us $5 million in tax revenues instead of costing us half a million. |
Strangely, the same people who were so violently opposed to
the homestead tax proposal—which would have been revenue-neutral to the
town—at Monday night's town council meeting had absolutely nothing to say about the town spending half a million
dollars or more to acquire the YMCA camp. Even though they themselves suggested
that rather than offer a new tax credit, the town should cut back on expenses.
By Linda Felaco
Last spring, the big controversy around town was the beach
pavilions. We don’t need them! We can’t afford them! I don’t want my taxes to
go up to build them! If we’re going to build them, we should spend much less
than what’s being proposed! But in the end, we voted to spend $1.2 million of
our hard-earned tax dollars to give ourselves and our summer visitors a decent
place to answer the call of nature.
So you’d think after all that sturm und drang over the beach
pavilions, people would not be eager to drop another half a mill anytime soon.
And yet here we are charging ahead to acquire the YMCA camp.
Oh sure, Russ Ricci of the Land Trust says it’s a “unique
parcel” and blah blah blah, and Mal Makin of the YMCA, who of course wants to
unload the property, and pronto, says it’s an opportunity that will never come
back.
But.
Grace Klinger of the Conservation Commission said that if we
deplete our open-space bond to make a new purchase, we’ll have no money left to
develop the open spaces we already have. Forty-two percent of the town is already
untaxable, according to Tax Assessor Ken Swain. And when you add in “farm,
forest, and open space” property, which is taxed at about a quarter of the
market rate, he says it’s over 50% of the town.
And as Ken Simoneau, a member of the town’s YMCA Land Advisory Panel, pointed
out, the land isn’t even “open space” seeing as how there are currently 14
buildings on it. He’d prefer our open space money to be spent on actual open
space.
Because RIDEM has already
awarded the Land Trust $367,000, we can get the land for “50 cents on the
dollar,” Ricci kept saying. Um, not quite. The $475,000 in estimated costs to
the town is already more than $367,000, and who knows how realistic that $475,000
number is till someone gets in there and figures
out the condition of the buildings, which have been unused for 4 years, and all
those decades-old leaking cesspools.
And as Michael Souza
pointed out in his recent (free access!) Westerly
Sun story on the deal, that DEM grant was actually obtained under false
pretenses, given that Ruth Platner originally sold the town on the idea of
acquiring the land for active recreation but “under
the terms of the grant application, which was co-authored by Platner, only
passive recreational opportunities would be allowed.”
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| Open space for sale. |
And yet the council voted
3-1, with Lisa DiBello voting no and Dan Slattery recusing himself because he’s
an abutter to the property, to proceed with the sale and authorized the town to
spend $3500 for an appraisal and $10,000 for a survey of the property. $13,500
that we’ll never get back, even if the sale doesn’t end up going through.
Because somehow or other, we’ve always got money for open space.
Not for people, mind you, but for space.
Not for those pesky Chariho kids, each one of whom, the
anti-homestead crowd reminded everyone, soak us for $13,000 a year for their
schooling (which, as the astute gentleman sitting next to me Monday night pointed
out, is a bargain compared to the $80,000 a year they cost us down the line
when they wind up in the ACI because they never got a decent education and have
no job skills).
Not only that, but after venting his spleen against the proposed
homestead tax credit, Leo Mainelli, zealous guardian of our tax dollars, once
again took to the podium during Parks and Recreation Director Jay Primiano’s
presentation about the grant he’s submitting to RIDEM for a lighted practice
field for the Chariho football teams at Ninigret Park to ask about the
durability of the lighting and the maintenance costs. (More on the lighting issue in my next meeting report.)
Yet Mainelli had nothing whatsoever to say about the town spending
half a million dollars to acquire a derelict summer camp.
Because there’s always plenty of money for open space.
Apparently, the goal is for the town to eventually consist of just
the South of One properties and lots and lots of open space. I suppose the RISC/CCA
crowd will let Ruth and Cliff keep their farm in exchange for all their hard
work on their behalf, and they’ll let Forrester Safford keep his place so he
can carry out their endless arms race of home renovations. But the rest of us
will be driven out of our homes as the tax base dwindles and tax rates go up
and up.
And that will be the Charlestown of the future, if we let it.