State Senate nail-bitter, and other tasty tidbits
By Will Collette
Cameron Ennis –
despite break from BOE, still might not make the ballot
Cameron Ennis of
Charlestown, a newly minted lawyer, filed his declaration to run as an
independent against first-term incumbent state Senator Catherine Cool Rumsey.
Apparently Ennis forgot to
read the candidates’ rule book published by the Secretary of State and
collected signatures on his Nomination petition without regard to where the
signer lives.
The rulebook says each town
within a district must be on a separate page so that the signatures can be
turned in to the Town Clerk in each municipality – e.g. Charlestown signatures
go to Charlestown, Richmond to Richmond, etc. Ennis simply turned in all of his
100 signatures to Charlestown Town Hall, thinking Town Clerk Amy Weinreich
would take of this for him.
Wrong.
Charlestown only validated the Charlestown signatures – 49 of them – leaving
Ennis 51 signatures short of the required 100. Ennis appealed to the state
Board of Elections and the BOE decided to cut him a break, even though he
failed to follow the rules. They gave him an extra 72 hours to get his
signatures from the other towns validated by the other towns.
Red light
cameras are finally happening
Expect to see
new cameras
mounted in both directions of Route One at the intersections with East Beach Road and
Route 216 (Ross Hill Road), perhaps in August. These cameras are intended to deter
people from running those red lights by automatically photographing offenders
and, if the Charlestown Police approve, issue tickets for the red light
running.
At one point,
the plan was to have all four intersections in Charlestown with traffic signals
- the two listed plus West Beach (site of Colin Foote’s
tragic death in May 2010)
and Route 1 and Wildflower (at the Hitching Post). But for now, two
intersections is what we get.
RI DOT had been
putting the town’s contractor, Sensys America, a subsidiary of a Swedish
company, through a long series of hoops, but gave its final approval.
Click here for the latest.
Click here and here for more detail
on how this system is supposed to work.
Charlestown gets
praise from statewide press
Charlestown did
well in both the Providence Journal and GoLocalProv. Every year, GoLocalProv
does a statewide rating of Rhode Island’s best communities. In the last three
years, Charlestown was stuck in the middle of the pack, scoring only 14th
place in 2011, #19 in 2012 and #17 in 2013.
But the new ranking are
out
and Charlestown jumped four places to rank #13 in the state. That still leaves
us in the middle third among the 39 Rhode Island cities and towns, but it’s an
improvement.
Newport came in
as #1 followed by Providence and Cranston.
While many of us love Charlestown
and think it should be even higher, it's nice to seen this improvement in position.
In South County,
we were beaten out by South Kingstown (#5), Exeter (#8), Narragansett (#9) and
Block Island (#12).
Ranking behind
Charlestown are North Kingstown (#16), Richmond (#19), Westerly (#23) and
Hopkinton (#23).
Maybe
Charlestown got its four-place bump-up from Quonochontaug getting recognized as
the “Neighborhood of
the Week” by the Providence Journal. Here’s how the ProJo described it:
“Quonochontaug, also known as “Quonnie,” started to become a summer colony in the late 1800s, and today, it is still mainly a second-home, summer neighborhood. This pricey oceanfront community is located between Quonochontaug Pond and Ninigret Pond.”
Those part-time residents provide the bulk of the funding for the Charlestown Citizens Alliance
and the full-time residents are hard-core CCA Party supporters who would vote
for a roundworm wearing a suit if it was endorsed by the CCA.
The Central
Quonochontaug neighborhood has the added benefit of being designated a “Fire District” even though
they have no fire trucks, fire house or fire fighters. However, through their
fire district, the residents own some incredible property that is taxed at
assessments that are only a fraction of what similar properties elsewhere in
Charlestown would be assessed.
 |
| Casa de El Jefe Gentz from the Charlestown Tax Assessor database |
The fake Fire
District properties also include tennis courts, docks, beaches and other
amenities, plus public drinking water, trash pick-up and more – all of which is
tax-deductible on state and federal
income taxes.
It’s good to be
rich. Among the properties shown in the ProJo’s
accompanying photo gallery is #17, the home of CCA Party Town Council Boss Tom
Gentz. The ProJo is sticky about its fair use policy, so the photo of Gentz’s
house is taken from Charlestown’s Tax Assessor database.
Nuke regulators
grant Millstone nuclear power plant dispensation
The Nuclear
Regulatory Commission granted Virginia-based Dominion Power, owner of the
Millstone Nuclear Power plant only 20 miles to the west of Charlestown a rise
in the temperature of sea water it can use to cool the reactor in Unit #2.
Millstone was shut down for several weeks in 2012 when water temperature
climbed above the safe limit of 75 degrees set by the NRC.
Rather than take
steps to draw cooler water, the NRC acceded to
Millstone’s request
to bump up the safety limit to 80 degrees. Millstone has had lots of documented
problems (click here and here and here) but they can
generally count on the NRC to go easy on them.
The issue of
cooling water not only affects the safe operations of the plant, but also
highlights the damage to the ocean ecology caused by Millstone’s discharge of billions of gallons of heated water
back into the ocean.
At the July 17 Charlestown Town Council meeting, Frank Glista noted that this is the 50th anniversary year of one of the only nuclear accident fatalities in the United States that happened right here in Charlestown at the long-shuttered United Nuclear "recycling" operation.
On July 24, 1964, Robert Peabody of Charlestown was exposed to lethal levels of radiation when there was a small explosion. For a detailed reporting of this tragedy, click here for a special article on the subject by Yankee Magazine.
Job Opening
Wood River Health
Services in Hope Valley has another opening, this time for a medical assistant.
Click here for more details.
I’ve mentioned this
service before, but in case you’re looking for a new job in the non-profit
sector, the one best source of information in Rhode Island is the RI Community
Jobs listserve being run by the Swearer
Center at Brown University. I’ve only been
mentioning the jobs in southern RI in Charlestown Tapas, but they’ve got
postings of new jobs from all over in their daily e-mails and on their website.
To sign up for daily e-mails of job openings, click here.
Get Well wishes to Richard Hosp
Former Town Council member and member of the
Charlestown Budget Commission Richard Hosp has been struggling with a lot of
health problems lately, but on July 1, he nearly died of a heart attack.
His wife Martha wrote a wonderful letter to the editor of the
Westerly Sun to
talk about what happened and to praise the “seamless work” in saving Richard
that started with Charlestown Volunteer Rescue’s prompt respond and coordinated
care at Westerly Hospital and its parent, Lawrence & Memorial in New
London.
According to Martha’s letter, Richard survived and
was healthy enough to come home on July 6. We all wish him a speedy recovery.
Charlestown residents with electronic waste:
go somewhere else
Up until recently, you
could dispose of your electronic waste (TVs, computers, etc.) which is
potentially harmful to the environment if simply dumped in your regular trash
at the Charlestown trash transfer station. You could do it for free and didn’t
even need a residents’ transfer station permit sticker.
According to Town
Administrator Mark Stankiewicz, in his July
report to the Town Council, the state has decided
to consolidate its E-Waste program so that e-waste will only be accepted at a
few regional collection points. The one closest to us is Narragansett’s Public
Works Department at 260 West Moreland, between 7 PM and 3:30 PM, Monday through
Friday.
Colors for a Cause gets its IRS go-ahead
Congratulations to Ray Dussault and the board of Colors for a Cause, a cancer victim support group, for getting official IRS non-profit recognition under section 501(c)(3) of the tax code. This permits donors to the group to deduct their contributions from their federal income taxes.
Ray made the announcement at the Charlestown Town Council's July 17th meeting.