By Will Collette
At issue is the Town Council’s 3-1-1 vote last February to hand over $475,000 to the Charlestown Land Trust to buy the Westerly YMCA’s
abandoned campground on Watchaug Pond. Yep, it’s another story about Y-Gate,
folks.
Dr. John Donoghue brought suit to block the sale arguing the
Town violated the state Open Meetings law by inaccurately (actually,
deceptively) advertising the agenda item and charging the
YMCA Land Advisory Panel violated by Open Meetings Law by simply disregarding
it – didn’t advertise meetings, didn’t keep or post minutes, etc.
The Town’s argument is that the YMCA Land Advisory Panel
isn’t really a “public body” covered under the Open Meetings Law because of a
variety of factors, most notably that it was custom designed to get around the
Town Charter requirement that town committees be comprised of town residents.
The plan for an ad hoc committee to decide how to address the
future of the Y camp was made on July 11, 2011. The Town Council decided to
form the committee following the usual protocol for selecting such committees
under the Town Charter. One of those protocols is the requirement that you must
be a town resident to serve on a town committee.
 |
| The YMCA Land Advisory Panel was concocted to allow non-residents, like JoAnne D'Alcomo of Sonquipaugia to be a member |
The Westerly YMCA, the Sonquipaug Association and other
“stakeholders” either didn’t have, or didn’t want to appoint, actual Charlestown residents, so on September 12, 2011, this new configuration, the YMCA Land Advisory Panel, was created to get around the Town Charter to accommodate them .
At the time they did this, no one said this
newly created body would also operate outside the open meetings and
open records laws. If they had, I think recall petitions would have been filed at that time.
Read the entire town brief by clicking here.
On February 13, 2012, this committee reported back that it
wanted the town to fork over $475,000 to buy a conservation easement so the
Charlestown Land Trust could then buy the property from the Westerly YMCA – and
put the land under its private ownership.
This arrangement was a surprise, especially since the Land
Trust’s proposal to the state Department of Environmental Management stated the
local funds to match the state’s grant of $367,000 would come from private fund-raising and NOT Charlestown taxpayers.
At a loud and raucous meeting where virtually every speaker
– except the stakeholders – blasted the scheme as a bad deal for Charlestown taxpayers, three Town Council
members (Boss Tom Gentz , Gregg Avedisian and Marge
Frank ) voted to approve paying the $475,000. Lisa DiBello , to her credit, voted no. Deputy Dan
Slattery recused himself because he lives next to the campground.
Dr. Donoghue filed his lawsuit shortly afterwards. His
lawyer, local attorney Maggie Hogan, has been attempting to conduct “discovery”
by getting relevant documents and conducting sworn depositions of witnesses.
See an example of town resistance to her efforts by clicking here.
The town’s motion was filed with the court on April 18. My
apologies for the delay in reporting this, but my April 22 request for the
records under the state Access to Public Records Act was not fulfilled until
May 6.
I’m not a lawyer, so my opinion is simply that of a layperson. But
I do have some skin in the game since Y-Gate involves my tax money and that of
every other Charlestown
taxpayer. If it turns out that the town slides out from under the Donoghue lawsuit on a legal technicality, it is still morally and ethically wrong to put so much public money - against the public's will - toward a private project that benefits very few people..
Almost exactly one year ago, on May 9, 2011, the Town
Council killed a proposal from Ted Veasey and the same Westerly YMCA at the
heart of this controversy. Then, Veasey and the Y had proposed to turn the
trashed-out campground into a beautiful conservation development that even the Planning Commission liked.
But Planning Commissar Ruth Platner was also working behind
the scenes with the Charlestown Land Trust to kill the Veasey project. Instead,
in partnership with the non-resident vacation home owners in the Sonquipaug
Association to the south of the camp, they hatched Y-Gate, which would use
state and town taxpayer money to buy the land for private use, mostly by the
Sonquipaug Association.
The public process required under the Town Charter didn’t
work for them, so they crafted a new process that allowed them to rapidly
devise their unpopular scheme and sprung it at the February 2012 Town Council
meeting.
You don’t need to be a lawyer to know that this stinks or to
understand that Charlestown
taxpayers are being taken for a ride. How the District Court responds to the
Town’s motion, we’ll soon see. But ultimately, it will be up to Charlestown citizens, exercising their Constitutional rights to speak out, assemble and VOTE to make this right.
