Sixteen years are more than enough
By Will Collette
To read all of Progressive Charlestown’s coverage of Ruth
Platner’s tenure as head of the Planning Commission, click
here.
Charlestown Planning Commissar Ruth Platner is easily the
most powerful person in Charlestown. If you’re looking for the true leader of
the Charlestown Citizens Alliance, look no further, even though she pointedly
notes on the CCA website that she holds no official office other than as CCA’s webmaster.
From her perch as head of the Planning Commission, Platner
has grown and consolidated her power over every Charlestown home and business
over the four years since every single Planning Commission seat has been taken
by a CCA-supported commissioner. Under Platner, the Planning Commission has
assumed powers never contemplated under the Charlestown Home Rule Charter and has
become the actual legislature for the town, writing ordinance after
ordinance that have been rubber-stamped into law by the CCA-controlled Town Council.
Aside from power, Platner’s other clear passion is for open
space. Now, I think we all agree that open space is a good thing, but not above
all else. It is an important priority, but not Charlestown’s only priority.
Throughout her sixteen years on the Planning Commission,
Platner has insinuated the power of town government into every home and
business to the point where the town’s zoning ordinance, frequently amended
under Platner to cover more and more activity, controls town businesses – often
to their detriment – and governs
what property owners can do with their land and property down to fine details.
Indeed, Platner took an obscure, and controversial, passage
within the zoning ordinance and expanded it to become what I have called the “Platner
Principle.” Stated simply, the Platner Principle holds that all land uses are banned unless they are
expressly permitted in the zoning ordinance.
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| Platner held this project up for months because she didn't want a firehouse made of brick |
Examples abound of Platner’s use of her power to obstruct
and frustrate worthy efforts. She personally led an effort to obstruct
the construction of the recently opened Cross Mills Fire Station. Why?
Because the structure is made of brick, not mud-and-wattle or some other 17th
century “traditional village” material. Even though brick is actually listed as
one of the acceptable building materials in Charlestown’s zoning ordinance.
Platner, for whatever reason, doesn’t like brick, so she subjected the
volunteer firefighters to almost a year of costly delays, refusing to accept
the common sense that brick is an appropriate material for a firehouse.
After voters approved construction of the new beach toilet
facilities, Platner tried to torture that project to death as well, subjecting
it to two full nights of hearings over every minute detail, including many
that were totally outside the scope of the project (such as traffic-control
devices to cut down on speeding along our beach roads).
As if that wasn’t
enough, as the project neared completion, the beach committee – as a courtesy –
informed Planning that they planned to use some nice blue shingles at the Blue
Shutters beach facility. That led to an agonizing
discussion over what shade of blue and what shape of shingles would be
used. Some planning commissioners actually wanted the project stalled –
potentially past the opening of the 2012 beach season – while Planning
deliberated over the shade and shape of the shingles. I’m not making this up. Click
here to listen to the the discussion.
Platner and her Planning running mates have bragged that one
of their greatest achievements was the passage of the Dark Skies Lighting
Ordinance. While I’m happy that an ordinance was finally passed, there’s lots
more to the story.
Because our dark-sky view is something most Charlestown
residents really love, it should have been easy to craft an ordinance that
protected that view. Except under Ruth Platner, Planning does not build
consensus – it tells people what to do. It
would have been easy to involve town businesses and residents in crafting a
sensible dark-sky policy that was based on community spirit and cooperation
rather than the micromanagement and unfunded mandates that made Planning’s
draft ordinances a source of division rather than community building.
Instead
of working together, Platner and her planners tried to bull through
regulations that would have subjected town businesses and homeowners to minute
regulations – at one point, they even considered banning those little solar
sidewalk lights that hardly put out more light than a candle.
Under four years
of Platner’s misguided leadership, this popular idea became an unpopular ordinance
that had to go through draft after draft until when it finally emerged, it
really does practically nothing to protect the dark-sky view except ban new
commercial lights taller than 15 feet, even though many of our dark-sky-friendly
businesses have shown that the 15-foot limit has no practical basis. But no
matter, now we have an ordinance. And Platner claims bragging rights.
In similar fashion, Planning has written and had enacted
ordinances to regulate signs, driving at least one business out of town and putting
several others on the brink of bankruptcy because potential customers don’t
know they’re there. They enacted a public
tree ordinance that minutely regulates what you can and can’t do with trees
and shrubs along your land’s public right-of-way. Except there is no mechanism
to enforce it[1].
Planning led the charge to ban wind energy in Charlestown.
Not just the unpopular Whalerock industrial wind farm, but
all wind energy. Platner and her planning running
mates point proudly to the passage of the town ordinance on residential wind
energy. They claim they have made it possible for homeowners to install small
wind generators to power their homes with green energy. Except the ordinance
actually makes it impossible for the average homeowner to get a permit. Read
the conditions you have to meet to install a small wind generator by clicking here. It’s no wonder that since the enactment of that ordinance, not
one single permit has been issued.
Platner grabbed more power through the enactment
of Ordinance #349, which she and her running mates claim is pro-business.
Now they claim this ordinance allows the town more discretion to grant
businesses waivers rather than require strict compliance with the zoning
ordinance. But what Ordinance #349 does is consolidate that “discretionary”
power under Planning, which has already shown how stubborn and obstructive it
can be. Think about the brick at the Cross Mills firehouse or the shingles at
Blue Shutters Beach. Under Ordinance #349, Charlestown will regulate the pitch
angle of roofs, how signs will be attached to hangers and what color covers
businesses can put on outside electrical outlets, among many, many fine details.
Click
here to read the ordinance for yourself.
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| AFDU - Accessory Family Dwelling Unit. Not one has been built after almost two years. |
This scheme does nothing for the people who live in those
devalued homes, other than make it harder for them to see any price rebound.
Nor does it address the need for a true affordable housing policy that
addresses the desperate need for senior citizen housing and for year-round
rentals.
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On affordable housing, as on wind energy and lighting, Platner and her colleagues have bent and twisted data and science to fit their conclusions. Most recently, Platner’s Planning colleague (and CCA candidate for Town Council) George Tremblay produced an incredible report on affordable housing that not only played fast and loose with the data but also completely ignored the issue of affordable year-round rentals. Tremblay also engaged in the flight of fantasy that affordable housing is prone to exploitation by elderly millionaires who somehow disguise their wealth and seek to buy affordable housing units as investment properties[3].
Tremblay went on at length about this threat even though he presented not one single shred of evidence of the
existence of this peculiar class of predator.
Of course the Planning Commission endorsed Tremblay’s report
and forwarded it to the Town Council. The CCA members of the Council thought
this was a great report and have ordered it sent to every city and town, every
legislator and anyone else they could think of. It’s bad enough when we
embarrass ourselves within the privacy of our town borders, but why Platner and
her CCA colleagues in town government want to subject Charlestown to statewide
ridicule is beyond me.
While Tremblay charges up the troops to attack the elderly, Ruth Platner has concentrated much of her ire on families with children, especially school-age children. In Platner's view, childen are an option, an expensive option, not the future of our community. Actually, she treats them like an indulgence to be avoided. She even created a pseudo-scientific formula - I'm not making this up - that purports to show what terrible parasites children are. Don't believe me? Click here.
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| This cartoon ran in the Charlestown Land Trust newsletter |
In addition to an indefensible public record, Ruth Platner
has also done plenty of harm to Charlestown behind the scenes. Her fingerprints
are on most of Charlestown’s most bitter controversies, especially the Y-Gate
Scandal and the Battle for Ninigret Park. In the Y-Gate Scandal, she gave Ted
Veazey and the Westerly YMCA signals that she supported Veazey’s conservation
development plan, only to stab him in the back to push for the scheme of having
taxpayers pay an inflated price to the Westerly YMCA for their busted-out
abandoned campground and giving title of the land to the Charlestown Land
Trust.
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| Charlie Vandemoer - suckered into playing roles in Platner's games |
Platner’s efforts are not entirely about her radical conservationist
ideology, however. Sometimes she operates on a purely personal agenda, as in
the case of the Y-Gate Scandal, where she tried to steer town resources to an organization
she founded.
In the infamous
Win-Dor dispute, where the company laid asphalt pavement at their Old Post
Road business without obtaining a proper permit, Platner was willing to
overlook her usual disgust for asphalt and allow Win-Dor to keep the paving
provided they paid a “fine” in the form of a contribution to the Nature
Conservancy, the organization that just happened to give Ruth Platner an
incredible deal on six acres of land. Platner got not only a nice piece of land
but also favorable tax treatment (land assessed at only $8,836 an acre compared
to the $50-90,000 an acre for the average house lot).
The Planning Commission does not have the authority to levy
fines, nor to waive requirements under the zoning ordinance (remember the
Platner Principle). Nor does the Planning Commission have the authority to
direct a business to send a donation to a specific group, particularly not one
with whom the Planning Commission chair has had beneficial business dealings.
But throughout Ruth Platner’s 16-year run on the Planning
Commission and certainly during the four years she has been in charge, she gets
to make up her own rules. And her own facts. And the town’s laws. And who must
obey those laws, and who does not[4].
The Planning Commission has an important role to play under
the Town Charter. The Town Charter also contains some important checks and
balances on the Planning Commission. Under Ruth Platner, the Planning
Commission has become the town’s most important body – outside the law and to
the detriment of Charlestown.
Rather than return Ruth Platner to office for another six-year
term, and elect her CCA running mates who share her philosophy of
ever-expanding control over Charlestown businesses and homeowners, we need new
Planning Commissioners who believe in restoring the balance and roles set out
in the Town Charter – a “law-and-order” Planning Commission, not the renegade
body Platner has created.
FOOTNOTES
[1]
The ordinance requires a Tree Committee, except no one has ever signed up for
it. It also requires a certified, trained arborist to volunteer to be the Town
Tree Warden. Volunteer = no pay. Again, no willing takers. Maybe if the
ordinance provided for the Tree Warden to get a snazzy uniform and carry a rifle,
they’d get some volunteers.
This ordinance is a textbook example of the kind of
pointless, unenforceable ordinance Platner has foisted on Charlestown.
[2]
Perhaps you sense a pattern – success to Ruth Platner and her Planning
colleagues is the passage of ordinances. It doesn’t matter whether they
actually work, or make sense, or are enforced, or are enforced selectively. All
that matters is the ability to make the CLAIM of success.
By the way, Platner's Planning running mates are: Gordon Foer, Connie Baker (who hates affordable housing even though she's currently on that commission, and hates meetings that last more than 90 minutes), Jan Knost and Peter Herstein.
[3]
Normally I’m a sucker for conspiracy theories that involve greedy, rapacious
rich people, but this one was WAY too much, even for me.
[4]
The late Christopher Hitchens wrote “the essence of tyranny is not iron law. It
is capricious law.”