Planning Commission Alert

Hide your fingernails – here they come again!

By Will Collette

Last October, commenter T.J. Kahr wrote “The Charlestown Planning Commission in action is just so painful…I would rather have my fingernails pulled out one @ a time.” We’ve used that fingernail-plucking theme several times, since it aptly captures the experience.

Well, it’s gonna happen again on Thursday, January 5, as the Planning Commission goes at it again with a “Special” Meeting agenda packed with oldies but not-so-goodies.

In order, here’s what’s on the Planning Commission agenda:

A.  Subdivision/Land Development Regulations & Zoning Ordinance Re-Write

B.   Low and Moderate Income Housing – Program Analysis

C.   Memo to Town Council – Impact of H-5554 and S-533 Rhode Island House & Senate bills

D.  Discussion and Advisory Opinion – Lighting Ordinance

As of 1 PM today, there are NO documents attached to these agenda items on Clerkbase, so you will have to trust me to provide you with the translation of these agenda items.

These will become commonplace around Charlestown

Item A is a continuation of the Planning Commission’s discussion on some fairly draconian plans to regulate shrubbery and parking.

The parking proposal would require some pretty radical measures at most of the town’s commercial and retail establishments, which certainly fits in with the Planning Commission (and Charlestown Citizens Alliance) animus toward small business. This proposed ordinance is discussed in this earlier article. 

This same article also discusses the proposed ordinance changes to the shrubbery requirements in subdivisions and developments. Since the Planning Commission failed to post any new material on Clerkbase, we are left to guess what their current plans are for these issues.

Platner HATES affordable housing

Item B on Low and Moderate Income Housing is a mystery. The Platner-Gentz Affordable Housing Deconstruction Act went down in flames so this agenda item probably isn’t about that. However, it may be the platform for Planning Commissar Platner to rail against those who opposed the Platner-Gentz scheme or to come forward with something completely new. I am pretty sure Platner will use this as an opportunity to once again pick on Chariho school kids as being the cause of all evil (affordable housing is bad, says Platner, because it attracts families with kids; kids have to go to school; taxpayers have to pay for their education - ergo, affordable housing = bad).

Item C is a moldy oldie. It is entitled "Memo to Town Council – Impact of H-5554 and S-533 Rhode Island House & Senate bills." It will be interesting to see what the Planning Commission considers the impact of two dead-as-a-door nail bills to be.

Last year, the Planning Commission, the Town Council majority (especially Dan Slattery and Tom Gentz) and the CCA got themselves worked up into a lather when the RI Builders Association got two legislators to introduce concurrent bills in the General Assembly. The bills were bad bills that clumsily tried to take a meat cleaver to a lot of Rhode Island’s land use laws. In many ways, it was similar to the way the Platner-Gentz Affordable Housing Deconstruction Act sought to take a meat cleaver to the state’s affordable housing law.

Anyway, these two bills scared the crap out of Hopkinton and they then asked Charlestown and other coastal towns to join in with them in jumping up and down in panic over the introduction of these bills. Both bills never saw the light of day. Both bills died ignominious deaths in committee. Deservedly.

But panic and hysteria is a great way to pander to your political base (the national Republicans are masters at it), so here comes the Planning Commission to see if they can whip everybody back up into a froth. Sure, it makes sense to pay attention to bad legislation, but H-5554 and S-533 are dead. Finito. For more expansive explanation of what dead means, watch the video at the end of this article.

Finally, there’s Item D, a reprise of Ruth Platner’s exposition on how angry she is at Town Solicitor Peter Ruggiero and Town Building Official Joe Warner. Ruggiero and Warner raised serious concerns about the legality, enforcement and financial consequences of  her draft Dark Sky ordinance.

See this article for more detail:   As I explained in that article, Platner wants  Ruggiero and Warner to come to the January 5 meeting, but doesn’t expect that they will. Watch to see if she does another 45 minutes of pointless ranting about an issue going absolutely no where fast.

Now, as promised above, here is a video to help you to understand exactly how dead H-5554 and S-533, the  legislation that failed to get out committee, are.