Charlestown short takes

• Rachel Maddow likes Progressive Charlestown
• L&M ends its lock-out of its own workers, but still no contract
• DiLibero loses out on two job prospects
• Chariho drops expensive, unpopular program
• Walsh and Cool Rumsey plan meeting with voters
• Sales tax on art drops to the delight of local business
• Doomsday prophet meets his doom
• Behind the good Charlestown unemployment and home value numbers

By Will Collette

Rachel Maddow commends Progressive Charlestown on  MSNBC

Screen shot from the Rachel Maddow Show for December 16

On her popular show on Monday night, Rachel Maddow devoted almost seven minutes of air time talking about the landmark victory in Exeter last Saturday where 63% of Exeter voters voted to reject the recall of their Democratic Town Council majority, despite the duplicitous efforts of the Gun Lobby and the Tea Party and Rep. Doreen Costa (R-Wingnut) to engineer a recall of those Council members. 

Click here for the segment from Rachel Maddow’s show. The Exeter coverage starts just before the one minute mark and continues until ~7:45. At the 2:35 minute mark, a long and lingering image of Progressive Charlestown is displayed on the screen featuring the headline of one of my articles on Exeter. That’s a first for us to get featured on national TV, although the real focus of the story is on the successful campaign to defeat the Exeter recall effort by our home-grown gun nuts.

Big win in the Lawrence & Memorial strike/lock-out: Management ends lock-out while intense negotiations continue

Congratulations to the nurses and health care workers at L&M!

I received some great news tonight that management at Westerly Hospital’s new owner, the Lawrence & Memorial Hospital decided to end their lock-out of eight hundred unionized nurses and techs. They will return to work at 6:45 AM Thursday, Dec. 19.

These health care workers staged a four-day strike to protest unfair labor practices by management, offenses that had been verified by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). When the staff reported back to work on November 30, they discovered that management would not allow them back, turning a limited duration strike into an indefinite management “lock-out.”

For the past several days, both sides have been at the bargaining table for long hours. The Connecticut AFT views management’s decision to end the lock-out as a major win in the face of overwhelming community support for the workers. They are committed to negotiating a contract that deals with the sticky issue of L&M’s efforts to move union jobs out of the hospital and into non-union subsidiaries.

Once a fair agreement is reached, then comes the long time for the wounds to heal. Then, of course, we’ll see what tricks management has in store when it turns its attention on Westerly Hospital.

DiBello lawsuit against Bill DiLibero plays role in job search

Bill DiLibero - still looking

Since being forced to resign last year by an out-and-out “hatchet job” spearheaded by the CCA Party’s champions of civility, Town Council Boss Tom Gentz and Chariho School Committee member Ron Areglado, Bill DiLibero has been looking for another town administrator gig. 

Unfortunately, the “Kill Bill Campaign” that drove him out is sticking to him.

In late November, DiLibero missed out on getting the top job in Cohasset, MA, though he was one of the finalists. But the Charlestown attacks against DiLibero were a major factor in his loss of the Town Administrator job in Grafton, MA, where the major local paper, the Springfield Republican, ran articles (here and here) featuring the lawsuit that was filed against DiLibero, the town of Charlestown and a number of present and former town officials by Lisa DiBello over her firing in May 2010. The problem with the coverage is that it presented nothing but DiBello’s claims and none of the counter-arguments filed by the town.

The DiBello case hinges on her being able to prove that former Charlestown Town Administrator Richard Sartor, who is present Budget Commission chair, has a grudge against DiBello and actually recruited DiLibero while DiLibero was working as Hopkinton’s town manager. According to DiBello’s lawsuit, Sartor offered DiLibero the better-paying Charlestown job on the condition that DiLibero would fire DiBello once he got the gig. Except the job was not Sartor's to give even if the offer was indeed made. Read the lawsuit if you think I am making this up.

As the late Carl Sagan said, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof,” none of which you will find in DiBello’s lawsuit. But the case is still pending. Most of the defendants (e.g. DiLibero, Police Chief Jack Shippee, former Town Councilors Marge Frank, Gregg Avedisian, Richard Hosp and Forrester Safford) are out of office or left town, or both. The case has not been set for trial. 

Generally, these types of cases sit for a while until the insurance company decides to clear its books by negotiating a settlement. 

Chariho School Committee, Teachers’ Union agree to drop expensive, controversial program

In a rare display of labor-management cooperation, the Chariho School Committee and the Chariho local of the NEARI agreed to eliminate the controversial TE@CH program. This expensive and unpopular program is a version of incentive pay that the union hates and management loves. The school committee, facing the fact that the Chariho budget was rejected by voters three times in a row, forcing the system to operate on last year’s budget, saw TE@CH as an opportunity to lower the system’s budget – which is what NEARI has been saying all along.

This turkey of a program cost the district $200,000 a year. In its place, the school district will use a much more modest, less controversial program that will only cost $35,200 a year.

Rep. Walsh, Sen. Cool Rumsey schedule forum for residents on January 11

Cathie and Donna

Donna Walsh and Cathie Cool Rumsey will co-host a meeting for South County voters who live in their combined, far-flung districts (Westerly to Exeter, South Kingstown to West Greenwich). The meeting will be held at the Cross’ Mills Public Library on Old Post Road in Charlestown on Saturday, January 11 from 9 to 11 AM. 

In addition to covering a lot of geography, Donna and Cathie also sit on committees that address a broad array of topics including economic development, the environment, civil rights and justice, protection of children and families, and gun violence. Coffee and snacks will be provided.

Charlestown is very lucky to be represented by two of the best legislators in the General Assembly. Actually, the best in my book. Plus, in adjacent district, we've got Reps. Larry Valencia and Teresa Tanzi, and Sen. Sue Sosnowski.

Removal of sales tax on art helps local galleries

Starting December 1, thanks to Rep. Donna Walsh, sales tax will no longer be charged on original works of art. That’s one added incentive to “buy local” at some of our outstanding local shops such as the Charlestown Gallery and the Purple Shell. As Dave “Gilly” Gilstein told me on Saturday, buying an original work of art is a very big deal for many people. They save the money to buy a work either for themselves or as a gift and, sometimes, when that extra 7% sales tax gets tacked on, it kills the sale. He’s one of the many Rhode Island retailers who might enjoy a better holiday season now that the sales tax is gone.

Armageddon prophet Crooks shuffles off this mortal coil

For several months during 2011, Rev. Harold Crooks got much more than his fifteen minutes of fame by predicting, not once but twice, the end of the world. 

He was so convincing that Charlestown Democrats attracted the best turn-out ever to one its tag sales by calling it the “End of the World Tag Sale” and reminding people that since we were all doomed, they might as well donate their stuff to the town Dems to resell to others. After all, you can’t take it with you.

For Rev. Crooks, the end of the world finally arrived, for him, on December 15, 2013 at age 92.

Charlestown unemployment, housing values show improvements

Since August’s unemployment numbers showed Charlestown at 9.1%, the town has gone through quite a wild swing, dropping to 7.3% in September and then back up to 7.7% in October. While the month-to-month numbers are always interesting, at least to me, the underlying data is, in my opinion, more important. One fact jumps out, the common perception promoted by the CCA Party that Charlestown is a town of well-off retirees is simply not true.

Close to 60% of all Charlestown residents work for a living, or at least try to, even though Charlestown has few jobs, a dying small business community and no public transportation. But the number of people counted in the workforce is shrinking – since a year ago, 175 Charlestowners dropped out of the labor force.

This correlates with the 228 Charlestown residents who have dropped off of the unemployment rolls. There are generally two ways you get dropped from that tally – either you get a job or your lose your benefit eligibility and fall into a statistical black hole. According to the state statistics, only 53 Charlestown residents found jobs during that same period.

That basically means that 175 Charlestown wage earners are no longer earning wages or collecting unemployment benefits and explains the stress on local food programs like the WARM Center, RI-CAN, Johnny Cake Center and church pantries.

We haven’t yet received our new tax assessments based on the revaluations done by the town’s consultant so we don’t know yet if those numbers line up with Zillow’s calculations of the increase in Charlestown home values.

Zillow shows a rise of 0.5% in average home value in Charlestown over last year, with the Charlestown average home value at $304,500. That’s still almost 25% less than Charlestown’s peak values in 2004 to 2006 where the town averaged just under $400,000. But any rise is good news for hard-pressed homeowners. Of course, having a rise in Zillow price doesn’t mean you can now sell your home for what you want. But as my sainted grandmother used to say, “it beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.”

Despite that good news, RealtyTrac.com still shows several dozen distressed properties in Charlestown. In the map (left), the properties marked in red are up for auction. The ones marked in orange are bank-owned.