You could drive a prison bus through the gap between the CCA's high-minded ideals and their actions. By Linda Felaco
The Charlestown Citizens Alliance, like many organizations,
has a mission, and as they were at great pains to tell us when candidates for
town offices submitted their declarations in June, the CCA’s Town Council and Planning Commission candidates
have all pledged to adhere to that CCA mission.
First and foremost in the CCA
mission statement—and therefore, presumably, the most important part of it to
them—is “open,
professional and ethical government that is transparent.”
Judging from their actions in office, however, the CCA’s
definitions of “open,
professional, ethical, and transparent” don’t seem to square with the way those
terms are commonly understood.
For example, as we’ve repeatedly shown here on
Progressive Charlestown, CCA’s view of “open” and “transparent” seems to be
“everyone else had better be open and transparent, but we’re closed up tight as
a quahog.” Cf. “Transparency
and the Planning Commission,” “Transparency
and the Planning Commission, redux,” “CCA
promotes dark skies and open space without sunshine or openness,” and “Deputy
Dan Slattery and the case of the secret records” for more examples of what
I’m talking about than you probably care to read.
And their definition of “ethical” seems to be “anything we
do is ethical by definition; anything anyone we don’t like does is not.”
As for professionalism in government, it implies a course of
training and certification in public policy and/or related fields, e.g.,
community planning. Inherent in the concept of professionalism is deferring to
professionals. Absent a public policy or planning degree, it is disingenuous at
best to claim the mantra of professionalism in government.
By that definition, former
town administrator Bill DiLibero was probably the most professional town
employee we had. And the
CCA ran him out of town on a rail. Although I
don’t believe any of the pretexts offered by the CCA in their “Kill Bill”
campaign were the real reason they went after him. To quote Cicero by way
of the inscrutable Michael Chambers, “The
causes of events are ever more interesting than the events themselves.”
So just what does the CCA mean by “professional government”?
Do they mean making effective use of town staff? Hiring qualified staff? Or do
they mean recruiting know-it-all town leaders—e.g., Deputy Dan Slattery the
supersleuth, or Ruth Platner the superplanner, or George Tremblay, the expert
on whatever it is he’s talking about?
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| I would put one of our "Kill Bill" graphics here, but Michael Chambers doesn't like it; he says it's too violent. I think he'll like the Chamberpot better. |
The demeaning treatment of town staff—“Kill Bill,” “Slay
Jay,” “Ashley,
peel me a grape,” or using the Amy Weinreich defense whenever CCA council
members get caught failing to follow proper procedures (see examples here
and here)—is
not exactly what I’d call professional.
Then there’s current planning commissioner and town council
candidate George Tremblay’s shameless and well-documented blackballing
of Melina Lodge when she was the only candidate to apply for a job for
which she was eminently qualified.
Governments and organizations seek to balance the powers of
professional staff and elected or volunteer leadership. Here in Charlestown,
we’re notorious cheapskates and rely very heavily—some might say too heavily—on
volunteers rather than paid staff. Which is all fine and good when qualified, experienced
people volunteer their skills and expertise but becomes a problem when people
“volunteer” because they have axes to grind like (need I say it?) the CRAC-ers, whose sloppy, unprofessional lawsuit in the Whalerock case was just sent back by the judge for a do-over.
How “professional” is it to, say, propose that the town
spend half a million dollars to acquire limited access rights to a piece of
property without giving due consideration to how exactly the public and in
particular handicapped
members of the public will even access said property? Or to suggest that the
major demolition work that would be required to even use the property the way that
was being proposed could be accomplished by volunteers. Or for that matter,
to berate
the superintendent of schools about an unavoidable increase in the school
budget triggered by increased enrollment and then vote later in the same
meeting to give away an equivalent amount of money to acquire said limited
access rights as if tax dollars were candy?
Or to go before the Town Council with an ordinance that you expect
them to vote on when you can’t even explain the rationale behind certain
passages and just throw up your hands and say “I
got that from another town’s ordinance” like Planning Commissar Ruth
Platner did more than once with various aspects of the lighting ordinance,
which resulted in the ordinance being voted on with an issue yet to be
resolved, namely the inexplicable and unjustifiable 15-foot
light pole height restriction? In fact, according to the lighting
expert from Musco Sports Lighting who gave a presentation at the December
council meeting of the ill-fated plan for sports lighting in Ninigret, paradoxically,
for reasons of geometry, dark-sky lighting in fact has to be mounted on taller poles than customary so that more
of the light is directed toward the intended area rather than spread along the
ground.
Or claiming that turning lights off at night somehow enhances
security, but when asked for an explanation, vaguely saying you read it
somewhere.
Or serving on the Planning Commission and telling an
applicant that a model of the building would help because it’s hard to read
architectural drawings.
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| "Why does it have to be so big?" "Does it have to be brick?" "Can't we build it out of soda bottles like I read about on the interwebs?" |
Or suggesting
that rather than build a new fire station that’s large enough to hold the
trucks and equipment, there should be a number of small buildings each holding
one piece of equipment. Or that the building could be made out of recycled
soda bottles. (I’m not joking about this. I wish I were.) Or in the same meeting
saying the new building had better not raise taxes and then suggesting that the
roof be covered with solar cells to be green.
Or demanding details about buildings and critiquing them,
when it is not in your power to do so, like the Planning Commission’s
last-minute attempt to delay the opening of the new beach pavilions by
requiring that the Blue Shutters pavilion have blue
shingles.
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| Bet Craig Marr feels he was treated very professionally by the Town Council. |
Or repeatedly talking about “two
documents” that are vitally important to the town’s management of Ninigret
Park, but only one of them is ever presented to the public and the other is
never mentioned again, as if it never existed. Or approving
the agenda item for a vote on a Memorandum of Understanding between the town
and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as a stakeholder in Ninigret Park and
then, at the council meeting, playing the “Blame Amy” game again, saying the
item was placed on the agenda by mistake and a needed meeting to discuss and
review the wording hasn’t even been scheduled yet.
We’ll be looking at these sterling examples of CCA “professionalism”
in more depth—plus dissecting the new ones they will surely present us with if
the past is any guide—during the countdown to Election Day.