Happy Trailers To You!

Lions and tigers and bears…and, oh boy, George…

By Robert Yarnall

Charlestown Historical Society take note - future site of rural heritage historical site right on Route One

When CCA Tinman George Tremblay coughed up a sizeable chunk of the Planning Commission’s half-baked parking ordinance at last month’s town council meeting, he may not have realized that an unintended consequence of his former colleague Ruth Platner’s proposal– a ban on pick up trucks and utility trailers typically used by independent contractors  – was ironically symbolic given the ramblin’ wreck stashed at the base of his own driveway just a few back pedals north from Charlestown Town Hall itself.

Councilperson Tremblay seemed genuinely taken aback when Partridge Run resident Bruce Loeckler, a self-employed home improvement contractor, complained to the town council that the proposed parking ban would impose very real economic hardships on his business and as well as those of other working class families in town. (Yes, Dorothy, there are actually real working class families living on Partridge Run in spite of the self-appointed Aregaldo-Chambers Cultural Preservation Commission.)

After Wastewater Management Commissioner Beth Richardson criticized the offending section of the ordinance on the grounds that it downplayed the value of entrepreneurship, Tremblay couldn’t move fast enough to strike the pertinent language, to the likely disappointment of a handful of spectators in the audience who were hoping for a more favorable outcome to prop up their pretentious “rural” environmental sensibilities.

We here at Progressive Charlestown, ever vigilant for hidden agendas embedded in Planning Commission–generated municipal droppings, duly note the omnipresent disdain and distrust for any activity or initiative that seeks to make Charlestown a family-friendly place to live, where family is defined as residents with school age children.

The trailer is on South County Trail just a few yards north of Town
Hall and across Route Two from the Narragansetts' Health Center.
Tremblay actually lives down that long driveway where marked
(Google Earth screen shot)

It is obvious from Tremblay’s reactive retreat that he is out of touch with regular people, and his documented resistance to affordable housing initiatives and programs that help unemployed Charlestown families suggest that he is one more aging patriarchal dinosaur who has lost touch with the harsh economic realities of real-world Charlestown - a far cry from the planned retirement community he and his CCA cohorts embrace at the expense of “those people.”

Before ye leave this page, cast again a careful eye upon Tremblay’s Happy Trailer. If you look very, very closely at the contents, you may be able to discern the total output of family-friendly ordinances churned out by the CCA Steering Committee.

What? You don’t see a damn thing? Dead solid perfect, baby.