First Review: Town Council meeting tonight – very short, mostly boring

But another moment of clarity about who the CCA Council members really represent

"Please Mr. Slattery, please Mr. Gentz,
I really am truly needy"

By Will Collette

The two lead Town Council members who ran as the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) slate, President Tom Gentz and Vice-President Dan Slattery, made it absolutely clear that they represent the interests of Charlestown’s economic elite, the high-value shoreline property owners and non-residents. They made it clear they feel it is too divisive and unwieldy to try to give struggling middle class property owners any tax relief.

Gentz and Slattery were only interested in considering help for the “truly needy” – provided they could prove they were truly needy, and not in need because of some mistake they made – and also provided it doesn’t raise taxes for the high-end property owners.

In an otherwise short (90 minutes) and generally sedate, if not boring, Council meeting, the debate over tax policy was the most interesting part of the meeting.

Before I go into detail, here’s a recap on the rest of the meeting:

Affordable housing

There were two agenda items related to affordable housing – one concrete and specific, the other fuzzy and half-formed. The concrete matter before the Council was a resolution to help resuscitate the long-dormant Edwards Lane affordable housing proposal that will hopefully have new non-profit development expertise that includes South County Habitat. They need to refinance and restructure the project and asked the Council for a resolution to go to the Affordable Housing Commission to re-start the process. The motion was made and passed unanimously – and was later cited by Council Prez Gentz as evidence that the Town Council majority really doesn’t hate affordable housing.

Council authorized spending up to $10,000 on a consultant
to help them deal with their affordable housing confusion

He and his fellow class warrior Dan Slattery proceeded to throw away whatever credibility their Edwards Lane votes got them by leading a meandering and confusing discussion about whether the town needs a new task force to review just about everything pertaining to affordable housing – the town’s plan, statistics on affordable housing in the three Chariho towns, the state’s intentions, including what the state might do with the two Council resolutions the state is asking the General Assembly to consider.

As part of the Council majority's New Year's Resolution on openness and transparency, there were no materials provided in advance to give the public any inkling what the hell they wanted to do, but after hearing the discussion, I think I now know why. 

It was clear that Gentz and Slattery didn’t know what they want. Slattery wasn’t even sure the town needed a new committee and that the Affordable Housing Commission should do whatever needed to be done. He wanted Town Administrator William DiLibero to come back with a detailed 500-page proposal describing exactly what kind of work any new committee would do, how it would do it, when it would do it and how much it would cost. In other words, faggedabottit.

Gentz felt that maybe no new committee was needed because he felt that all our problems should be handled at the state level by changing the state law, obliquely referring to the already tabled Platner-Gentz Affordable Housing Deconstruction Act.

It took Evelyn Smith, Affordable Housing Commission chair, to step up to the microphone to clarify what the Commission is doing, but also what else needs to be done to update the town’s Affordable Housing Plan and to comply with state law.

In the end, the Council voted to authorize DiLibero to prepare a plan and hire a consultant to assist for no more than $10,000.

Kumbaya Time. 

Since Councilor Lisa DiBello was absent from this Council meeting (no doubt spending time reviewing her lawsuit against the town so it can be filed before the deadline), there was a lot less negativity than usual. And only Frack, of the Frick and Frack team, was present and only spoke once.

Other than that, there were well-deserved commendations for the great New Year’s Eve bonfire for Parks & Rec Director Jay Primiano, Economic Improvement Commission chair Frank "Frankie Pallets" Glista and our volunteer firefighters who made sure the bonfire (or “barn” fire as some put it) didn't turn into a forest fire.

Councilor Marge Frank pointed out a great new volunteer service called the Chariho Shovel Brigade that is assembling a stand-by list of volunteers who will come out to help shovel snow for people who need the help. Contact them at CharlestownSMO@gmail.com. The “SMO” stands for “shovel me out.”

Construction at Charlestown Town Beach - good weather
moves the schedule along

Parks and Recreation Commission chair Paula Andersen noted the forward progress of the last year, including rapid construction of the new beach facilities (DiLibero reported construction is well ahead of schedule), the Ninigret Dog Park and the greatly expanded list of activities for young and old.

Town Administrator Bill DiLibero added that there will be a new trail and picnic area at Mud Cove (the old town driving range) and that the much-needed dredging work at Ninigret Pond is on track. He also spoke about the tangible progress in negotiating some relief from RIDEM’s draconian wastewater treatment regulations in the negotiations led by Rep. Donna Walsh, as reported here.

DiLibero also reported that by the end of January, the town transfer station will cut its operations time from the present four days to three days – Monday, Thursday and Saturday.

Can't beat a nice Citizens Forum

Councilor Slattery announced that the third of his “Citizens Forums” will take place in Town Hall on January 23. You can count on Slattery’s CCA colleague Virginia Wooten to be there, no doubt with another serious, serious problem, like her reported “phantom property” concern that led to discussion of the town perhaps spending half a million dollars to cure this terrible problem. I can only imagine what Ms. Wooten can come up with to top that.

Potentially controversial subjects were handled quickly and without incident. The hearing for the Breachway Grill liquor license was announced to take place in February without a tantrum from Council President Gentz. Ordinance 346 to make a special change to the zoning map to benefit the Ranalli family and Ordinance 347 to enact a Dark Sky ordinance were both advanced through the first reading and will be advertised for a public hearing later. March for the Ranalli special ordinance and February for Dark Sky. 

There was no fight over the Dunkin Donuts sign when Town Solicitor Peter Ruggiero reported that he had talked over how to resolve the issue with the Dunk’s local lawyer Maggie Hogan. And as part of the Consent Agenda, Joe Dolock was named to the Economic Improvement Commission, presumably to keep a close eye on the Glista Gang. And my colleague Tom Ferrio was appointed to the Wastewater Treatment Commission.

I would be remiss not to note Council President Tom Gentz’s extended remarks, the gist of which was his exhortation to all Charlestown residents to “be constructive, not destructive.”

The Main Event: Tax Justice

That lasted for about an hour until he and Dan Slattery started firing up the old class war on the tax issue.

You should watch the discussion for yourselves on Clerkbase. My opinions and analysis are obviously skewed by my belief that government owes its citizens fair and equitable taxes and that it should be possible to discuss the concept of tax justice without being accused of starting a “class war.”

In a nutshell, there are two polar opposite positions on the Town Council. These positions reflect the divisions in this town.

The present view, held by the Town Council majority, the CCA and the RI Statewide Coalition, is that the rich pay their fair share. They should not asked to pay more. We should be nice to them. We should maybe even give more of what they ask for because, after all, being rich is clearly a sign of virtue and merit. Council members Tom Gentz, Dan Slattery and Lisa DiBello subscribe to this view. There are also a number of town residents, generally those who are very conservative in their politics, who think we should love the rich, not tax them, and maybe if we’re good, they’ll hire us to cut their grass.

The opposition view, held by the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee and most people who are struggling to make ends meet with only one house, not two, is that taxation should be progressive. It is not too much to ask that non-resident property owners – for whom Charlestown is a vacation spot or second home – to pay 12% more in property taxes to provide each resident Charlestown household with a $1000 Homestead Tax Credit.

There were two votes taken by the Council.

The main motion, by Councilors Dan Slattery and Tom Gentz, was to form an internal committee within the town comprised of town staff, the Budget Commission and Councilor Slattery. This committee would review existing town tax exemptions to see who is getting them, to tally up who is not paying their taxes on time and find out why, and then decide who is truly, really, sincerely and definitely worthy of town tax relief.

Councilors Gregg Avedisian and Marge Frank offered an amendment to Slattery’s motion to include five Charlestown residents to open up the process and permit a diversity of opinions to be heard.

The debate led to two votes, both 2 against 2, causing first the amendment and then the main motion to fail (the Town Charter requires three affirmative votes to pass any Council action).

But the debate was very telling – and clearly showed the outline of the trenches in Charlestown’s on-going class war.



Dan Slattery has checked - and there are almost
no low-income people in Charlestown.
What a relief!



Slattery made it clear that he was only interested in helping people who are poor. And only if he thinks they deserve help. He noted he didn’t think Charlestown had many needy people at all and that in fact, Charlestown residents were by and large very well off. He scoffed at the idea of broad-based help to Charlestown’s middle-class households who labor under this economy.

As one audience member muttered, Slattery “doesn’t give a rat’s ass” about working people. Slattery himself is a retired high-salary federal bureaucrat. He said the town needed to make sure it wasn’t doling out aid to “somebody making $80,000 who maxed out on his credit cards.”

Slattery said the town already took care of the elderly poor by increasing the tax credit for 79 senior citizens in poverty by $150. Problem solved.

Gentz agreed there was no need for any kind of general tax relief. Both Gentz and Slattery expressed no willingness to go beyond looking at existing tax exemption programs and making only the tiniest of tweaks if – and only if – there was compelling evidence of desperate need.

Cathy Collette (disclosure: my spouse of 41 years) spoke on behalf of the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee (CDTC) to ask the Council to look seriously at the need low- and middle-income Charlestown households have for tax relief. She noted that last year’s revaluation dumped an extra 6% tax burden on homeowners whose homes were assessed at less than $400,000 while cutting taxes for owners of properties worth $1 million or more.

She noted that no one came into the Town Council with torches and pitchforks, as the wealthy property owners did on December 12, to complain about the shifting of the tax burden to middle-class homeowners last July. She said the CDTC’s proposal was aimed at starting the discuss about tax equity and justice in Charlestown.

Evelyn Smith came to the podium again and noted that a lot of misinformation and misinterpretation went into the Council decision to kill the CDTC Homestead Tax proposal. She said that it makes sense to review the town’s overall tax policies and look hard at the numerous exemption programs on the books, and not overlook the many properties that receive big tax breaks (e.g., Planning Commissar Ruth Platner’s 13.5 acres) under the Forest, Farms and Open Space tax program.

At the end of the meeting, there was the smoke and echoes of canon fire. The two tie votes meant nothing actually happened except to make it crystal clear which Council members favored which sides. Tom Gentz's illusory constructiveness was shot to hell.

The lines are clear: Gentz, Slattery, DiBello, Platner, the CCA and RISC represent Charlestown’s economic elite, the 1%. 

Councilors Avedisian and Frank, and the CDTC, are fighting for everyone else, the 99%.

We'll have more detail and analysis for you in the coming days.

Meeting adjourned.