UPDATED: It comes down to the Town Council (or the courts) to make final decision

Charlestown Bond Counsel Calls for Separate Vote on Y-Gate $475,000

By Will Collette

As the week comes to a close, there is at least a partial answer to the question of how the $475,000 gift of taxpayer money to the Charlestown Land Trust will be handled.

On Friday afternoon, Acting Town Administrator Pat Anderson e-mailed me to report that Charlestown’s Bond Counsel recommended placing the town’s $475,000 purchase of the conservation easement that is essential to the execution of this scam (my opinion, not hers) on the June ballot as a separate warrant item on its own merits.

But it will be up to the Town Council majority to decide whether to take Bond Counsel’s advice or, instead, try to bury the money in the back pages of the town’s general budget. That later choice would force voters to reject the entire budget if they disapprove of the Y-Gate scam. It may also violate the Town Charter.

Read the entire e-mail string by clicking here.

This is one of the core controversies in the ongoing Y-Gate Scandal Progressive Charlestown has covered for the past year.

If Sonquipaug leader JoAnne D'Alcomo wants the
Y camp, go ahead and buy it – but not with
taxpayer money

At issue is the 27.5-acre abandoned, derelict campground on Watchaug Pond owned by the Westerly YMCA. The CCA, and in particular Planning Commissar Ruth Platner, has worked closely with the nonresidents in the Sonquipaug neighborhood to the south of the camp to try to get the state and the town of Charlestown to buy the campground.

The principal beneficiaries of the Y-Gate deal would be the Sonquipaug neighborhood, who would get a de facto expansion of their backyards at no cost to themselves; the Charlestown Land Trust, which would score its biggest land deal yet; and the Westerly YMCA, which would get $730,000 for the land based on an appraisal that was described by the appraiser himself as based on “hypotheticals known to be false.”

The Y-Gate schemers are also counting on $367,000 coming from the state, but have run into a snag where DEM wants another, more honest appraisal done.

When the Town Council majority agreed that Charlestown should spend $475,000 to buy a “conservation easement” of the type the Charlestown Land Trust describes as not only worthless, but an actual liability, to finance the deal, citizens protested that the matter needed to go to the voters.

Y-Gate plotters retorted that the Town Charter does not require a new vote when funds are drawn from an already voter-approved Bond, in this instance, the $2 million Open Space/Recreation Bond.

Sartor's proposal to buy the Y Camp out of the town
budget surplus is a terrible idea

But when Budget Commission Chair Richard Sartor made the surprise announcement that the Budget Commission felt the town should spend the $475,000 from its petty cash – i.e., its surplus – the Y-Gate plotters could no longer argue that the deal was being financed through existing bond authority.

The Town Charter requires that any new land acquisition of $50,000 or more not made under an existing Bond fund or similar funding source has to go to the voters.

According to Acting Town Administrator Anderson, Charlestown’s Bond Counsel said that the purchase of a “conservation easement” was the same thing as the purchase of land. Indeed, even though the transaction is obscured by its complex structure, it is, she said, a land buy subject to the requirements of the Charter.

But that’s her opinion. Since the Y-Gate deal is now being done without the use of existing bond authority, her opinion may not matter to the die-hard open-space junkies who seem determined to pick the pockets of Charlestown taxpayers. It may not matter to some Town Council members who only seem to follow the law when it suits their agendas.

Pat Anderson says this issue will be discussed on Monday at the public hearing on the Town Budget at 7 PM at Town Hall.

The current Town Council has become increasingly unpredictable and erratic, so there’s no telling what they will do with the Bond Counsel’s advice.

In my opinion, the only fair and reasonable choice for the Town Council is to put Y-Gate before the voters on its own merits, where, again in my opinion, it will get the thrashing it deserves. Or they could do the most honorable thing and just kill this awful deal now, once and for all.

If they do, then I hope the Land Trust and Sonquipaug will do the good and honest thing as well – if they want the land, go ahead and buy it, but not with taxpayer money.