Lots
more tasty tidbits of local news
By Will Collette
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| Shelter Cove today [Google Earth screen shot] |
In 2011, Shelter Cove was cited for an illegal use of the property by the town Building Official. Shelter Cove appealed to the Zoning Board of Appeals which ruled in favor of Shelter Cove and threw out the Notice of Violation.
Shelter Cove had argued, correctly as it turned out, that they had been offering paid beach parking there for “over twenty years,” at least back to 1978.
The Town Council decided this result was unacceptable. So they approved a lawsuit against the Zoning Board (producing a Charlestown v. Charlestown case where it costs the town money at both ends.
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| As it was in 1995 (earliest available Google Earth screen shot). You can see more moorings, but not more parking |
The Court sent the case back to the Zoning Board of Review to re-do the appeal proceedings. They did, deciding on a 4 to 1 vote to go with ZBR vice-chair Ray Dreczko’s proposal to throw out the Notice of Violation and let Shelter Cove continue to offer parking as it has for a generation. With that, it looks like this case is finally over.
What puzzles me is the reasoning that leads the CCA Party-controlled Town Council to decide to sue the Zoning Board and, at other times, to allow a controversial Zoning Board decision to stand unchallenged. Charlestown spent a small fortune of taxpayer money waging a losing battle in the courts to block the Zoning Board’s initial decision to allow the Whalerock Wind turbine proposal to go forward, and more thousands to try to stop Shelter Cove’s long-standing parking business.
But there was no such action by the Town Council to defend the Building Official’s finding that the Botka quarry right on the shore of Pasquiset Pond was an illegal use operating in violation of town laws. If this Council followed consistent reasoning, they would have immediately gone to court against the ZBR’s decision and to reinstate the Building Official’s cease-and-desist order. Instead, the Council left it up to local residents to spend their money to mount their own legal challenge.
Why does this Council find some causes worth fighting and others not worth the bother?
Copar gone…Meet Armetta LLC
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| Phil Armetta fighting with the Inland Wetlands Commission in Middletown CT over filling in wetlands without a permit (photo courtesy of Stephen DeVoto, and the Middletown Eye) |
Does re-branding make a difference? Take a look at similar moves, such as how Blackwater USA dealt with its image as a supplier of mercenaries with a record of indiscriminate murder of civilians in Iraq. They took care of the PR problems by re-branding themselves as “XE.”
Then there’s Phillip Morris Tobacco whose name lost its luster as more people figured out that the company’s business was selling death. Solution: change the name of the company to Altria.
Usually a company with a bad reputation changes its name to something obscure and innocuous. However, in the case of Copar, changing the name to Armetta only draws more attention to the incredible legal and environmental issues connected to Phil Armetta, detailed here.
Incidentally, if you’ve seen a lot of Copar trucks running at high speed along Route One, that’s because Copar won a part of the federal subcontract to supply sand for the Misquamicut Beach restoration project. As it turns out, the controversial Botka quarry – cited as an illegal operation by our Building Official – was not able to supply enough sand quickly enough.
Despite Copar’s record of violations, federal tax liens, health and safety violations and battles with Charlestown and Westerly, expedience wins out over ethics.
Speaking of re-branding, what happened to the Gentleman Farmer?
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| Windmills are NOT allowed in Charlestown |
Some of my colleagues have checked it out and they report the food is much better than it was under the last owners.
"Old Mill" comes before the Town Council for a beverage license on May 12.
The word is that they changed the name to emphasize the new ownership. I just hope their decision to put a windmill on their new sign will not lead to a fatwa issued against them by the Areglado Anti-wind cult.
Hartford
appointed received for Central Coventry Fire District
Former
Westerly Town Manager Steve
Hartford was appointed by Governor Lincoln Chafee as receiver for the troubled
Central Coventry Fire District. The CCFD was
almost liquidated last week, saved by a legal decision to put the CCFD under
state jurisdiction to – hopefully – be saved or dismantled.
After
being forced to resign as Westerly’s CEO, Chafee hired Hartford to a
high-ranking policy position. This new assignment comes with no bump in pay.
His mission is to figure out how to juggle all of the District’s debts with the
public safety needs of local residents. Given Hartford’s botched handling of
the Copar flap in Westerly, I don’t hold out much hope for a happy ending to
this.
Chariho High
School makes the Top Ten list of Rhode Island’s best high schools
US News and World Report issued its own report card on the nation’s 20,000 high schools and Chariho was awarded a “bronze” medal for the quality of its teaching. Given that thousands of schools were reviewed and ranked, bronze is pretty good.
Among all 52
Rhode Island high schools, Chariho came in at #9,
again not too shabby. Barrington came in at #1 (big surprise). Classical came in second and North Kingstown
came in third.
Nine Rhode
Island high schools received Bronze medal ratings. That includes Chariho and
also includes Westerly High School which squeaked into the Bronze category and
came in at #14 overall.
Deepwater on a
roll
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| Oh, the horror! This is what Deepwater will look like from Block Island |
RI’s Department
of Environmental Management (DEM) issued Water Quality Certificates and a Freshwater Wetland
permit after finding that Deepwater’s
wind farm and underwater transmission cable comply with state and federal law.
Next, Deepwater expects to get final Coastal Resource Management Council
approval and the go-ahead from the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the
Army Corps of Engineers. Then they begin to build.
If all that wasn’t enough, Deepwater announced a collaboration with Seattle-based Principle Power to build the first floating wind farm 15 miles off the coast of Oregon. This is planned as a five-turbine project called WindFloat Pacific.
Rhode Island’s version of Agenda 21[1]?
CCA
Party Town Councilor George Tremblay has been
sounding the alarm for months about a nefarious plot by the state to implant
mind-control devices in every resident’s head. Or something like that. Anyway,
Tremblay has been warning Charlestown about the dangers of the “RhodeMap RI" project being conducted by the RI Division of Planning.RhodeMap RI has put on sessions across the state to “help identify intersections between the state’s environmental, economic and social resources, and determine where and how future development should happen.”
As any sentence with the word “development” is cause for alarm for Tremblay and his CCA Party comrades. Tremblay has been pushing for CCA followers to hoof over to every RhodeMap RI meeting they can to make sure there’s no funny business going on.
So far, the Division of Planning has
held 23 community meetings plus another 30 focus groups and meetings. Now they plan six more.
The session slated for South County will take place on Tuesday, May 13 at the Wickford Middle School, 250 Tower Hill
Road, North Kingstown (5-8 p.m.)
Check out the Charlestown Police Department Facebook page
and website
From the CPD Facebook page, repair work at the Charlestown Breachway, just completed:
Congratulations to Tim Faulkner
Tim is a sharp environmental news reporter for
EcoRI and you’ve probably read his work re-posted here at Progressive
Charlestown under our content-sharing arrangement with EcoRI. Tim
was named one of ten environmental journalists worldwide and won a Metcalf
Institute Fellowship.He will join nine other journalists from as far away as El Salvador and Israel to spend a week at URI to gain “gain hands-on research experience through scientific field and lab work at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography campus in Narragansett,” according to the information released by the Metcalf Institute for Marine & Environmental Reporting.
Tim is the only one of the fellows who will be able to commute to this year’s June 1-6 program. Nonetheless, it is an important recognition for Tim’s great environmental reporting to be picked as one of this year’s fellows.
Some follow-ups from previous Tapas
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| Rhode Island is home. So STFU! |
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It was pretty much a waste of time. Councilor Erik Davis wanted Michaud to publicly explain why he reversed position and Michaud responded that Davis’s question was politically motivated, which of course it was, but at least it was an honest position. Unlike Michaud’s stab in the back. Council President Joe Reddish declared the matter over and directed his colleagues to move on.
ΔΔΔΔΔ
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| Contender for worst Governor (of course, there's Ed DiPrete) |
Carcieri cried and whined, saying he was trying to get the promised work done on the house to bring it up to code, and to get back the tax exempt status for the “Academy Science Center” which had its 501(c)(3) status revoked by IRS in 2010. It seems like it takes Carcieri a really long time to accept his responsibilities.
Despite the lameness of Carcieri’s arguments, East Greenwich has lifted the tax sale on the property on Carcieri’s promise that the work will be done and the building will be open to the public this summer. Right.
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| Jayne Donegan's NKPD booking photo Watch the video to see her son's new booking photo. Family fun! |
The latest is the arrest of her son Jack, age 18, for assault, also at her North Kingstown home. According to NK Police, the assault occurred on April 29. The report says that Jack Donegan beat up another teenager when that unnamed teenager denied Donegan’s allegations that he had stolen jewelry from the house.
Police say the unnamed victim was beaten bloody, suffered a concussion and vomited up blood. Another house guest apparently took video of the beating. Naturally.
According to police, the victim told them a group of teenagers were sitting in the living room of the Donegan house drinking Grey Goose Vodka before the assault. The victim also say Jayne Donegan was at home at least part of the time, but later left.
Donegan was released on $1,000 personal recognizance and faces simple assault and disorderly conduct charges. As of yet, no additional social host charges have been brought against Jayne Donegan. What's up with these people?
Here is that video embedded in a Channel 12 News report:
Live feed
Beisel gets scholarship
FOOTNOTE
[1] In
case you’re wondering, Agenda 21 is one of the many fevered nightmares of
right-wing conspiracy theorists. They believe it is the opening gambit toward
creating a New World Order that will make the United States the slaves of other
countries. In reality, “Agenda 21” is a voluntary United Nations protocol that
urges the nations of the world to practice environmentally-friendly
“sustainable development” practices. Click here for more detail. As noted earlier, just the use of the word "development," regardless of the context, is enough to get many of the CCA Party members to fill up their drawers.