Happy New Year, Charlestown!

Some predictions for 2013

Our new Town Administrator

By Ann Nonimus

After the crazy ride our town leaders put us through in 2012, how could 2013 be any worse? Mmmmm, well, it can and, as your Progressive Charlestown team sees it, it will.

Our prognostications for Charlestown 2013:

Town Administrator selection made - It’s the 2012 model of Furby programmed by Hasbro with only one phrase - (“Yes, Tom, whatever you say”). None of the other candidates recommended by the Search Committee were able to polish Council boss Tom Gentz’s shoes to his standards.

The entire CCA Steering Committee will take part in the Penguin Plunge charity event on New Year’s Day to benefit the WARM Center – but they will all be arrested before hitting the water. Somebody told them the affair was swimsuit optional.

Dramatization of Peter Herstein's abduction

George Tremblay’s replacement on the Planning Commission named - CCA-endorsed Peter Herstein, except before he could take office, he was grabbed by a golden eagle during one of his frequent bird-watching excursions and flown away to parts unknown.

Charlestown’s electricity will be turned off from dusk until dawn.

A REAL product - not making this up!

The new official footwear for the Planning Commission – Last year, it was I-Pads for all the Commissioners. This year, it's Kusa Shoes.

Councilor Dan Slattery will be promoted from Deputy to “Inspector,” given a badge and a gun and broad power to investigate anything he wishes.

Town Council boss Tom Gentz will start wearing a toga at Council meetings. George Tremblay will wear a powdered wig.

Deputy Dan

Councilor Lisa DiBello will take the $200,000 settlement she receives from her $1.5 million lawsuit against Charlestown and will move to Hollywood to become a full-time game show contestant.

Seasonal Town Council Consent Agenda items will require several Charlestown area businesses to undergo name changes consistent with the rural character of our pristine town. Cumberland Farms will henceforth be known as Charlestown Farms, The Breachway Grill will become Gentz’s Getaway, and The Cove will morph into The Cove Across from The Daniel J. Slattery Commemorative Post Office.

Connie Baker

New Planning Commission rule: a thirty minute recess after every ninety minutes of meeting time to allow new Commissioner Connie Baker to take a nap.

For their protection, the town will begin on the construction of a 12-foot tall wall around the Narragansett Tribe’s lands.

Beware outlaw gardeners - Charlestown’s “phantom properties” will be protected by electrified fencing.

New Zoning Ordinance: the only way to get a building permit for a new building is to build the structure by hand with native materials.

Ready to receive his award
from King Gustav

George Tremblay will receive the Nobel Prize for Economics.

Charlestown Police Department cruisers will be replaced with solar powered electric vehicles. This will necessitate a ban on both driving and crime during overcast days.

Dark Sky protection: starting New Year’s Eve, 2013, the annual Charlestown bon fire will be held indoors.

The Town beach pavilions will be bulldozed.

The Charlestown Citizens’ Alliance, in concert with The Rhode Island Statewide Coalition, will file a petition – along with substantive cash payments – with the US Interior Department to designate rocks as an endangered species, thereby protecting the Charlestown Moraine and everyone’s backyard from any development whatsoever, at least until the scheduled asteroid visit in 2017.

In the 2013 town financial referendum, voting rights will be proportional and based on the size of your tax bill.

The town’s official Holiday Tree will be fitted with dark-sky compliant lights. Run by solar power, of course, since the town’s electricity will be turned off from dusk till dawn.

The Charlestown Animal Control Shelter will utilize composting pooper scooper technology.

Town Solicitor for Indian Affairs Joseph Larisa will draft an ordinance to revoke the retail sales permit of The Purple Shell, owned and operated by Narragansett artisans Allen Hazard & Craig Spears Jr., because their use of wampum in many of The Purple Shell’s creations is a clandestine effort to establish a regional economy based on quahog shells which will fund an Indian casino on land off Kings Factory Road.

Charlestown Tree Warden

Every tree in Charlestown will be given a name. Charlestown will finally recruit a Tree Warden after promising to provide the Warden with a gun, a cool uniform and a chainsaw.

Charlestown Public Works will no longer apply road salt to town byways during hazardous driving conditions. Instead, highway maintenance vehicles will be converted for use as 4 wheel drive pepper mills.

Charlestown will deed Ninigret Park back to the federal government.

Beach concessionaire Johnny Angel’s will have to change its signs to read “Johnny Angel’s Affordable Housing Clam Shack” after becoming one of the many Charlestown properties now designated as “affordable housing” under the CCA plan to bring Charlestown into compliance with the state affordable housing law.

The no-spitting ordinance will be strictly enforced.

Town Council President Tom Gentz will decree that the traditional Easter Egg Hunt will be moved from Ninigret Park to Ninigret Pond, where area youngsters will be outfitted with flotation devices and armed with non-aerosol pump-spray six-packs of Pam Nonstick Cooking Spray and turned loose on goose eggs. Age group winners will be awarded tuition vouchers to attend Westerly public school. 

The new Charlestown Comprehensive Plan, due to be completed in 2016, will be finished early. Except under Dan Slattery’s new public information policy, you can’t see it. And under Planning Commissar Ruth Platner’s new public participation process, you can’t go to any meeting where it is discussed or see the meetings on Clerkbase.

The Town Council will change its meeting dates and locations to new ones, but they won’t tell Paula Andersen, or for that matter, anyone else, where or when.

Bye-bye. After seeing their anti-affordable housing proposal go down in flames once again, the CCA Town Council majority will lead Charlestown to secede from Rhode Island. Families with children will be asked, civilly, to leave.