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| Council Prez Tom Gentz being constructive, not destructive. |
Of the six residents who took to the podium to address the
Town Council at Monday night’s Citizens Forum, three of them don’t think town
taxpayers should have to pay for the abandoned YMCA camp on Watchaug Pond.
The turnout at Monday night’s Citizens Forum was the lowest so
far, perhaps due to the fog and rain. In fact, if you were 20 minutes late
getting to Town Hall, you’d missed the whole thing. But most of the speakers
who did show up were there to express opposition to the proposal
being championed by Planning Commission Chair Ruth Platner to have town
taxpayers spend a half-million dollars to acquire land in order to give it to
an organization she helped found, namely, the Charlestown Land Trust.
The first speaker was Peter Ogle. Mr. Ogle stated that he
favors the town purchasing the land, but not under the terms of the proposal
that is currently before the Town Council. He said that even if the property
doesn’t have any conservation or historical value, as the Conservation Commission has concluded, the frontage on Watchaug
Pond has recreational value and suggested that the cost to the taxpayers should
be offset by subdividing the property and allowing a couple of new homes to be
built along the Prosser Trail end. Alas, this would require rezoning that part
of the property from Open Space/Recreation to residential, an idea that had
already been rejected
out of hand last year when Ted Veazey proposed his conservation development.
Maureen Areglado then took to the podium. She clearly had
taken Council President Tom Gentz’s January 9 exhortation for town residents to
be “constructive,
not destructive” to heart and prefaced her remarks by praising the DPW
staff for keeping the roads so clear Saturday night after the snowstorm.
Indeed, I never left the house myself, but from what I could see out my front
window, it looked like Biscuit City Road was well plowed as well. Never let it
be said that I never say anything constructive.
But as might be expected, Ms. Areglado did not drive to town
hall on a rainy winter night just to praise the DPW, which she surely could
have done in an e-mail to Alan Arsenault. No, she was there to give Deputy Dan
Slattery his new assignment now that he’s put
Virginia Wooten’s mind at ease about all our open space. Ms. Areglado’s
neighborhood apparently experiences so many power outages that the running joke
among her neighbors is that if 10 people sneeze, the power goes out. And she’s
been getting the runaround from National Grid and wanted to know what the town
could do to help.
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| Deputy Dan is on the job once again! |
Deputy Dan jumped in to say that he’s been having the same
problem in his neighborhood and has already addressed it with National Grid,
which sent an engineer to his house to check his wiring and found no problems.
According to National Grid, outages have been more of a problem since Hurricane
Irene because the storm weakened so many trees. Deputy Dan promised to follow
up with National Grid and report back.
Town Administrator Bill DiLibero was asked for any other
suggestions. DiLibero said he’d send an e-mail to National Grid’s municipal
liaison, who he felt confident would be responsive.
But before stepping down from the podium, Ms. Areglado
wanted everyone to repeat their assurances of what specific actions would be
taken. Whew. Glad that’s all taken care of.
Mike Chambers then took to the podium. Apparently, after an
entire week since the transfer station cut back from 4 days a week to three,
he’s already up to his eyeballs in trash. He’s concerned that with Monday being
one of the three days that the station is open and so many holidays falling on
a Monday, that he won’t have enough opportunities to drop stuff off and asked
if the station could be open on Tuesday in weeks with a Monday holiday.
DiLibero explained that for the convenience of his staff, Arsenault
didn’t want to change any of the days of operation but that he’d discuss the
Tuesday holiday idea with him and that if Arsenault had no objections, he
didn’t either. Which seemed to satisfy Chambers but still leaves the question
of how Chambers’s family manages to produce so much trash that they need to go
to the transfer station more than once a week. Nowhere that I’ve ever lived has
had trash collection more than once a week. Perhaps Chambers should start composting.
Chambers then went on to repeat his praise
of Gentz’s “constructive, not destructive” speech, though he felt that the
effects only lasted about a week. Hey, better than nothing. He then said that
although he’s been reading the town’s site, “the Democrat site,” and the CCA
site, he’s going to stop reading the Democrat site because it’s just a lot of
“mudslinging and character assassination” and is “uninformative.” Why the town
council should know or care which web sites Chambers visits was another
unanswered question.
George Prior then took to the podium to state that we
shouldn’t be spending public money for private property and asked the council
if they would approve the YMCA camp purchase without the grant money. He stated
that if we wouldn’t buy it if there were no grant money involved, we shouldn’t
buy it just because of the grant money. Mr. Prior, I wholeheartedly concur.
Leo Mainelli then took to the podium to praise the town
council for the job it’s been doing. Why he drove to town hall in the rain just
to say that is anyone’s guess. Maybe he lives in Maureen Areglado’s
neighborhood and his power was out, too.
John Rooney then took to the podium to ask whether the Y
would be an abutter to the property after the sale. Gentz explained that the
Sonquipaug Association lies in between the old and new camps (see map). One
thing he didn’t mention, however, is that the lot directly to the south of the
current Y camp (114-115) is state-owned and presumably could serve many of the
same purposes that are being proposed for the Y camp.
Indeed, in looking at the map, it occurs to me that the
Sonquipaug Association has always had vacant land either to the north or south
and the owners seem to have decided that that’s not a privilege but an
entitlement.
But I digress.
Rooney then went on to ask why the Conservation Commission
was not involved from the very beginning. He’d read the recent Westerly Sun story about the
Conservation Commission’s opposition to the purchase and felt that based on
the factors they’d outlined, he didn’t think the purchase was a good use of tax
dollars.
Mr. Rooney, I wholeheartedly concur. And thus ended the
least well attended, and yet most singularly focused, Citizens Forum to date.