Did Gentz do ANY due diligence at all on the Y-Gate deal?
By Will Collette
In his Sun letter, Gentz claimed there was no deception, no false
representations, no withheld information, no secret meetings and no backroom
deals. In Gentz’s fantasy, there were only diligent and selfless volunteers
trying to do a nice thing for the town by lining up a deal for Charlestown
taxpayers to pay $475,000 for limited rights to walk around in a rural
junkyard.
The records show that Gentz is either deluded or deceptive. You be the
judge, today and on November 6, since Gentz seems determined to run for
re-election as the champion of Y-Gate.
In this installment, we’ll look at Gentz’s basic failure to
exercise the kind of prudent judgment and minimum standard of care we have the
right to expect from a person in his position.
Did Gentz fail to notice the many signs that Y-Gate was a rotten
deal? Did he even read any of the documents placed before him? Did he ask the
right questions? Did he simply do what Planning Commissar Ruth Platner told him
to do? Did he even write the Westerly Sun letter, or did Ruth write it for him? Or was Gentz part of the Y-Gate scam from the beginning?
The Y-Gate records show that, from the beginning, Gentz was ready to give away your tax dollars
without due diligence.
Gentz accepted the Charlestown Land Trust’s bogus now-discredited appraisal. This
appraisal pegged the value of the campground at $730,000 based on the false assumptions that the land was zoned residential when it’s really zoned open
space/recreational and that all the old buildings and assorted crap that
littered the site doesn’t exist.
Gentz never asked for an appraisal of the “conservation easement” he voted to spend $475,000 of town taxpayer money to buy – the same kind of easement that the Charlestown Land Trust reported to IRS as worth less than zero.
Gentz never questioned the Land Trust’s claims that the land would
be accessible dawn-to-dusk, 365 days a year. He accepted the Land Trust’s word
that open access was guaranteed in the “management
plan” that was never put into the
public record. If you check Clerkbase for February 13, May 7, May 14, June
25 and July 9 – all occasions when the Town Council discussed this easement –
you will find that this management plan is absent from the Council documents.
It was not included in the documents package
for the crucial February 13 Council meeting.
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| 90% of the land on the Watchaug Pond shoreline is already protected. This map was produced by the Town of Charlestown (click to enlarge) |
If you listen to the Land Trust – and Gentz – you would think that this site is the only possible way that people could ever have access to Watchaug Pond, a claim that is pure fantasy, given that almost 90% of the shoreline is owned by federal, state or nonprofit agencies, or is zoned open space/recreation. Don’t believe me – look at the town’s own map for yourself.
Earlier in the same February 13 Council meeting where Gentz voted
for the $475,000 Y-Gate deal, Gentz embarrassed himself, the town and
Charlestown’s Chariho School Committee representatives by publicly browbeating
Chariho Schools Superintendent Barry Ricci. Click here to watch for yourself.
Gentz wanted Barry Ricci to come up with budget reductions that
would lower Charlestown’s share of Chariho’s costs by roughly the same amount
Gentz voted to blow on Y-Gate later in the meeting.
Ricci and Chariho Committee reps Deb Carney and Andrew McQuaide
tried to patiently explain to Gentz that the Chariho budget had already been
thoroughly squeezed of savings, and that the cuts Gentz wanted would have to
come out of student education and programs. They asked Gentz if he had any
specific suggestions for making cuts. Gentz didn’t have a clue. Instead, he
just kept repeating his demand that Chariho cut its budget.
So much for “open,
accountable, ethical, and fiscally responsible.” So much for “civil.”
Naming Names?
But Gentz just can’t help himself. In his August 5 letter to the
Sun, he … wait for it … names names. He singles out Dr. Jack
Donoghue, whose lawsuit saved Charlestown taxpayers $475,000 by exposing Gentz’s Open Meetings Act violation. He also singles
out Jim Mageau, David Mars and Joe Dolock for joining with Donoghue in
launching a petition drive to put the direct purchase of the abandoned Y camp
on the ballot.
He accuses the four of making “specious”
claims, false charges and simply engaging in “political posturing.”
Gentz not only violated his “don’t name names” policy, but he also
weaves blatant deceptions into the narrative. In his letter, Gentz writes, “this proposal [the direct purchase
petition by Donoghue, Mageau et al.] added
a $200,000 commitment of town funds and failed to acknowledge, as the Town
Council and Land Trust did, that the Y land property had buildings that need to
be demolished for an estimated cost of $48,000. Their petition had taxpayers
assuming nearly double the price that a partnership with the CLT would have
cost taxpayers.”
Comparing apples and oranges
The Donoghue petition called for a taxpayer referendum to authorize up to $600,000 for the
town to actually take ownership of the land to use for active recreation. Further, under the Donoghue petition plan for active recreational use, all those
rundown buildings might not even have to be torn down, but might have been fixable
for reuse.
Gentz also misrepresents the Charlestown Land Trust's ridiculous $48,000 pie-in-the-sky estimate for
demolition. As Forrester Safford, a construction professional and former Town
Council member, told Gentz at the Town Council meeting, it will take more
than $48,000 just to remove the chain link fence that surrounds the campground.
Expensive demolition and cleanup would have been a necessary part of converting the abandoned camp into open space for passive recreation – the proposal Gentz championed. But the proposal to use the camp for active recreation would present an entirely different way of dealing with all the stuff the YMCA has left behind on the site. While I favored neither proposal, I thought that if we had to use taxpayer money on Y-Gate, we should at least OWN the land.
Expensive demolition and cleanup would have been a necessary part of converting the abandoned camp into open space for passive recreation – the proposal Gentz championed. But the proposal to use the camp for active recreation would present an entirely different way of dealing with all the stuff the YMCA has left behind on the site. While I favored neither proposal, I thought that if we had to use taxpayer money on Y-Gate, we should at least OWN the land.
Gentz’s proposal guaranteed taxpayers – state and town – would pay
$600,000 and only get a dubious conservation easement and uncertain access to
the site for passive recreation.
Tom, if you’re going to name names, make sure to get your facts
straight.
In this one troubling letter, we see our Town Council President
violating every value he claims to hold dear. He tries to defend the
indefensible. He names names. And he flat-out lies. On top of it all, he seems
to think that no one will fact-check his claims or dispute his declarations.
Is the Y-Gate zombie really dead?
You will notice that I have not mentioned the news that the YMCA has decided to sell to another
buyer and that just maybe, Y-Gate is dead. The apparent death of the deal was
in fact the reason Gentz wrote his odd letter to the Sun.
But throughout the months, the Y-Gate deal has died and then re-animated itself
like a zombie so many times that I hesitate to believe it’s truly over. Given town leaders like Tom Gentz who are so determined to make
this deal happen that they will break all the rules, tell any tale, and do any
dirty deed, it ain’t over till it’s over.
