A dozen tasty
tidbits for Charlestown news lovers
By
Will Collette
On Tuesday,
April 8, vote on the Chariho budget
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| Ron Areglado & Donna Chambers, CCA Party patronage appointees to the Chariho School Committee |
Voters
in Charlestown, Richmond and Hopkinton go to the polls on Tuesday (Town Hall
for Charlestown voters) on a new Chariho School District budget that offers a
$556,667 reduction in the amount taxpayers from the three towns will pay. The
budget cuts jobs and squeezes school expenses.
Apparently, this is the
price the District is willing to pay to appease budget nihilists and
conservatives who led a taxpayer revolt last year that rejected the District’s
proposed budget not once, but three times, with the ironic result of having the
District operate on the higher FY 2013 budget.
This
new budget has drawn praise from the likes of Charlestown’s CCA-appointed
School Committee rep Ron
Areglado (his cohort Donna Chambers has yet to be heard from), the Richmond
Town Council and right-wing Hopkinton Town Councilors Barbara
Capalbo and Scott
Bill Hirst.
With these types of endorsements, I am skeptical
that this is a budget that puts students and quality education first, rather
than pandering to right-wing budget-cutters and opponents of public education. As Scott
Bill Hirst made a point of noting, “It should be noted that rejecting the
proposed Chariho budget, for next fiscal year, actually would increase it, as
it would revert to the current operating budget.”
So if you support more funding, not less, for the
Chariho School District, perhaps the vote of conscience is to vote “No” against
the proposed budget. You get what you pay for.
Circle the wagons, call out the militia
Maybe CCA Party Town Councilor Dan Slattery will
get to wear his new militia commander uniform after all, even if we’re not
going to war with Hopkinton and Richmond over Chariho. The new thing for the
CCA Party to get alarmed about is the introduction
of new legislation (S. 2188) in the US Senate by Montana Senator Jon Tester (D)
to “fix” the 2009 Supreme Court Carcieri v. Salazar decision that stripped over
500 Indian tribes of many of their sovereignty rights.
Even as he introduced his bill, Tester
acknowledged that many of his colleagues, especially powerful Senator Diane
Feinstein (D-CA), want to see it changed and Tester said he was willing to
accommodate them.
Even before
he introduced his bill, Tester also told Indian leaders, “While
I believe a clean fix is a solution, many of my colleagues in the Senate don’t
agree…Even Indian country is divided on the issue…“At the end of the day, we
need the votes to pass the legislation…[W]e need to know how we reach sixty
votes. So let’s be realistic. We will not receive the full support of my
Democratic colleagues, so the question becomes how we bargain with Republican
leaders to make meaningful inroads to solve this issue.”
Despite the sponsor’s own bleak assessment of the
prospects for passage, I guarantee we’ll
see more hours billed to Charlestown by the town’s Special Counsel for Indian Affairs Joe Larisa and we may yet see Dan Slattery lead the construction of
ramparts around the Narragansett lands manned by trusty Charlestown Volunteer
Militia.
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| Arthur "Chuckles" Schopenhauer. Hint: it WASN'T him. |
Who said this?
“Instead of encouraging free and open debate, collectivists strive
to discredit and intimidate opponents. They engage in character assassination.
(I should know, as the almost daily target of their attacks.) This is the
approach that Arthur Schopenhauer described in the 19th century, that Saul Alinsky
famously advocated in the 20th, and that so many despots have infamously
practiced. Such tactics are the antithesis of what is required for a free society—and
a telltale sign that the collectivists do not have good answers.”
A.
Michael Chambers
B.
Michelle Bachman
C.
Rush Limbaugh
D. Justin Beeber
D. Justin Beeber
E.
Tom Gentz
F.
Charles G. Koch
The answer appears at the end of this article.
“This beach is my beach; this beach ain’t your beach”
While Charlestown
is looking at removing a public access point to town beaches by selling a strip of land to non-resident beach property
owners, a different battle is going on over Misquamicut.
State Attorney General Peter Kilmartin, on behalf
of the people of Rhode Island, is
suing 16 private beachfront owners over beach access rights. The state’s
suit charges the owners with illegally changing their property records to
extend their property lines onto the beach and then improperly denying the
public access.
The
trial has just begun and so far the testimony has been complex and
inconclusive.
Attention, Anemomenophobics
The
five-turbine pilot project by Deepwater Wind took a major step forward when The Coastal
Resources Management Council’s Ocean Special Area Management subcommittee unanimously
voted to recommend full CRMC approval. The pieces are rapidly falling into
place for the project which would be sited several miles to the east of Block
Island.
 |
| image © altaeros energies |
The
US is currently
generating 61,000 megawatts of wind energy nationwide and another 12,000
megawatts are under construction. This has resulted in a 4.4% drop in greenhouse
gases from energy production. Wind power has also achieved another, less
appreciated benefit by reducing water consumption by 36.5 billion gallons that
fossil fuel and nuclear power plants (such as Millstone in nearby Connecticut)
use in mass quantities for cooling.
In October
2011, I wrote a short blurb about a new wind energy technology that
combined a wind turbine and a blimp for a device that could float one to two thousand
feet up to catch higher velocity winds for more energy.
That technology, called
a “BAT” (buoyant air turbine)
apparently was no joke, but being
installed for $1.3 million to power remote communities south of Fairbanks,
Alaska at about half the price of other forms of off-grid energy. Can you
just imagine the reaction if someone decided to float one of these just off the
Charlestown coast?
Bill DiLibero gets warm welcome in Texas
I recently reported in the March 9 Tapas that former
Charlestown Town Administrator Bill DiLibero, driven out of town in 2012 by the
CCA Party’s “Kill Bill
Campaign,”
finally found a new gig as City Manager for South Padre Island, Texas.
Like Charlestown, South Padre Island is a sleepy little town
in the off-season, but its numbers swell when it receives approximately one
million visitors during tourist season.
Click here for a nice
feature piece in the local newspaper welcoming Bill to his new position.
Narragansett HS School Nurse loses her license
Lynn
Magnusen of Charlestown is on paid leave from Narragansett High School
where she worked as school nurse after Charlestown Police busted her for heroin
possession when she was found passed out in the parking lot of Rippy’s. Adding
to Magnusen’s problems, Rhode Island Health Department Director Dr.
Michael Fine has suspended her nursing license pending the outcome of the
charges against her. She is due in court on April 25.
Congratulations, Donna, for being “Hot” twice within
a month
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| Donna (left) and Teresa Tanzi both lost committee posts |
Our own state Representative Donna Walsh
(D) was named to GoLocalProv’s “Who’s Hot?” list for the second time in three weeks.
On March 21, she made the
list for her bill to try to take politics out of the appointment process for
judge magistrates. On April 4, Donna
was at the top of the “Who’s Hot?” list on the general principle that she
is a leading voice for the environment and for ethics, and that the new House
leadership should listen to her.
Speaker Mattiello’s people apparently have
listened and didn’t like what they heard. Mattiello stripped Donna of her
vice-chair position on the House Environment Committee, but left her on the
Committee. She also lost her co-chair position on the Joint Committee on
Economic Development and her seat on Judiciary.
Her close colleagues, Rep. Larry
Valencia (D-Richmond) and Rep. Teresa Tanzi (D-Peace Dale), also got whacked
for their less than enthusiastic reaction to Nick Mattiello’s power blitzkrieg.
Larry was kicked off the Finance Committee and Teresa was kicked off
Environment. That bodes poorly for the many pieces of good legislation both
have proposed, such as Larry’s
bid to raise income tax rates for Rhode Island’s top earners and Teresa’s
bill to ban cesspools.
Craven does all right
By contrast to Representatives Walsh,
Valencia and Tanzi, Rep. Bob Craven (D-No. Kingstown and also Charlestown assistant
town solicitor) did just fine in the House leadership shake-up. For about 15 or
20 minute period after the FBI raid on former Speaker Gordon Fox’s office and
home, there was a brief “Craven for Speaker” boomlet. When that fizzled, Craven
threw his support whole-heartedly behind now Speaker Nick Mattiello.
That won
him appointment as the new
chair of the House Municipal Government Committee. It also led to swift
and unanimous approval of one of the first bills passed by the House under
Mattiello’s leadership, a bill to water down state apprentice training
requirements to benefit some companies operating at Quonset Point which is part
of Craven’s district.
Craven’s bill was co-sponsored by the
odious Tea Party wingnut Rep. Doreen Costa (R-Guns-R-Us).
As my fifth grade nun Sister Mary
Discipline used to tell me, “Show me who
your friends are and I tell you what you are.”
Real Estate for the rich
While overall home valuations in
Charlestown have dropped, according to the town’s recent revaluation, the
market for big-ticket properties is booming. According to GoLocalProv,
Charlestown is the site of one of the Top
Ten Most Expensive Houses for Sale in RI. It’s beach front, of course, at 165
Surfside Avenue in Quonnie. The asking price is $3.3 million.
The home is owned by John and Sara
McConnell who live on the East Side of Providence. The Tax Assessor’s website
shows their 2013 assessment at $3,402,300 so I guess this one is, as they say, "priced to sell."
And of course, the agent is Charlestown’s
top real estate gun, Ray Mott. Business has been so good in the high end market
that Ray’s firm, Mott & Chace Sotheby’s International Realty has
just opened their second office, this time in Watch Hill. Of course.
Charlestown medical device company receives new
patent
Jenesis Surgical LLC and its owner Dr. Jennifer K. White received a new
patent from the US Patent Office for a surgical device called a "repositionable
endoluminal support structure and its applications." This device can be implanted to improve the
results of heart surgery.
It’s nice to see progress for small tech businesses in Charlestown
though it seems that some of these businesses operate on the down-low, perhaps
to avoid the draconian anti-business attitude of the town under CCA Party
leadership. Though Jenesis
Surgical is listed as having been in business for four years and is located
at 5331 Old Post Road, the company is not on the town’s
March 2013 list of active and licensed businesses.
Hi, Neighbor! Have a ‘Gansett!
When I was growing up, we had a
saying for Narragansett– “Once a proud tribe, now a shit beer.” But after going
away for a long time, the brand was brought back in 2004 by ambitious brewers
who wanted to restore its past greatness – not so much for its skunky taste,
but for its broad popularity.
They have apparently taken a major
step forward by landing on the coveted Brewers Association's Top 50 U.S. Brewing Companies list
based on 2013 sales.
Answer to “Who Said This?”