By Will Collette
With no announcement, just some minor modifications to
the leadership list on their website, the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) has changed
its line-up. Their actual process for making such decisions is a closely held secret.
CCA President Bernice Krantz will hand over the scepter of
power to Virginia Wooten in June. Leo Mainelli will remain as the CCA’s
Treasurer.
Mrs. Krantz and her husband Dr. Milton Krantz are moving out
of state after selling their home on King Tom Road for well over a million dollars. They are remaining
on the Steering Committee.
Immediate past president Kallie Jurgens and her husband John, the CCA’s past Treasurer, have disappeared from the CCA Steering
Committee list. As in the book 1984, “down the memory hole.” The Jurgens had
declared their legal residence to be Stuart ,
Florida .
Kate Waterman remains on the CCA Steering Committee list
even though she too has moved out of Charlestown
to Connecticut .
Rounding out the rest of the CCA Steering Committee are Town
Council President Boss Tom Gentz, Faith LaBossiere, Dick and Marge Newton and Charlestown Planning
Commissar Ruth Platner’s husband Cliff Vanover. Platner herself lurks in the
background without a formal leadership
role, as does Deputy Dan Slattery.
The changes in the leadership roster have the practical
effect of boosting the average age of the CCA Steering Committee to 73.3 years.
Deputy Dan Slattery - one of the CCA's behind-the-scenes leaders |
Maybe they lost Mike’s application. Or maybe he and the others just didn't make the cut.
Toward the end of June, when candidates for office must
declare themselves, we’ll see what kind of a slate the CCA puts out there in
their third election cycle as a Political Action Committee (PAC). Will the
aforementioned Chambers and Areglados be on their list, even though they have
not been admitted to the inner sanctum of CCA decision-making? We’ll know by
June 28th.
Town Council Boss and CCA leader Tom Gentz |
Numerous errors – often caused by over-reach, insensitivity
and political miscalculations – will put the 2012 CCA candidates in the tough
spot of trying to defend the indefensible (e.g. Y-Gate, the attack on Ninigret, etc.)
Their likely strategy already seems evident in the
increasing number of instances where Deputy Dan Slattery and Boss Gentz attempt
to make problems go away by denying they ever existed and by creating
alternative facts.
In six months, we’ll know how well that strategy works for
them.