Let
them do odd jobs for the summer people!
 |
| Even the kids can help bring in family income by doing yard work for the folks down in Quonnie |
By
Neniu Sciu
I’ve
long since forgotten most of what the late, great Harry Staley, godfather of
the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA Party), said that night back in December
of 2011 when he drove here in his Lexus[1] to
orchestrate the Riot
of the Rich to drive a stake into the heart of the Democrats’ proposed
homestead exemption.
But I do distinctly recall how he bellowed threats against
the town if we dared to enact such a proposal, including withdrawing donations
to local nonprofits[2]
and refusing to hire locals[3]
for home-repair and improvement jobs on the oceanfront mansions. If you were
there that night and heard a “thud” at that point, it was my jaw landing on the
floor. I never expected rich people would ever do their own dirty work like
that, frankly.
But
I’ve since learned that in Plantation Charlestown, the rich folk aren’t like
normal rich folk.
Fast-forward
to this week and the arrival in my mailbox of the six-page glossy[4] campaign
mailer from the CCA Party, the official mouthpiece of the beachfront property
owners. On first glance, much of it appeared to be boilerplate from 2012, the
usual Pablum®. And I completely understand if most of you didn’t actually read
it all; as the kids say, tl;dr[5]. But
one tidbit immediately sent me time-traveling back to that painful night in
2011:
Seasonal homes provide the largest income stream to the town in the form of property taxes paid against low demand for services.[6] Those same summer homes that subsidize our tax base[7] also provide jobs to skilled workers for maintenance and remodeling. It is an economic model that other towns in Rhode Island envy.
Holy
crap, I thought to myself. The CCA Party has finally come out of the closet
about their endorsement of the Staley employment plan. Harry must be smiling
down on them from up in heaven.[8]
 |
| Maybe you can get a job as a town mulch inspector |
Regular
readers know that Will has been tracking Charlestown’s unemployment numbers and
has proposed a number of sensible
ways the town could help people find jobs. Part of the problem, as Will has
written about, is that a significant chunk of the Charlestown workforce is
employed in the construction industry, which was hard-hit by the downturn in
the housing market and still hasn’t recovered. And it of course doesn’t help
that the CCA Party actively puts barriers in place preventing our “downtown”
Cross’ Mills from becoming a thriving village center.
Instead, the CCA has
imposed a whole raft of tediously detailed building requirements for our small
businesses in town, like the color and depth of mulch in flower beds, the color
of outdoor electrical plugs, and lighting (which they tell us harms the dark
skies while all-night mercury vapor lights on houses somehow do not). And their
anti-sign ordinance quite literally drove
a small business, Thrifty Sister, out of town.
Yet
now, a week before the election, the CCA Party finally unveils its employment
plan: We can all just get jobs working for the out-of-state owners of vacation
homes!
 |
| No insurance? No problem. |
Never mind that there aren’t enough high-value properties to employ
every Charlestown resident of working age. Pay no attention to the fact that such
jobs are not year-round and pay no benefits, and that if you fall off a ladder
and break a leg you’re sh*t out of luck. Sure, you can sue, but they’ll have a
higher-priced lawyer I guarantee you.
And if you’re not in physical condition
or don’t have the requisite skills for such work, I guess you’re also SOL.
But
sure, if you’re willing to forgo such luxuries as a steady salary, paid time
off, health insurance, and retirement benefits, you’re golden here in
Plantation Charlestown! Just sit back, relax, and enjoy that subsidy! After
you’re done shingling that roof, that is.
And
this, according to the CCA Party, is an “economic model that other towns in
Rhode Island envy.” Seems to me the rest of the state is actually trying to
attract jobs with a future, high-tech white-collar type jobs like CCA folk
have. But here in Charlestown we’re not like the rest of the state, are we.
Then there’s the
Filippi jobs plan
 |
| From Blake Filippi's mailer. Ballard's settled with the feds for more than $200,000 in back wages and a $42,000 fine for cheating its workers out of overtime and failing to pay minimum wage. It then turned to hiring foreign workers on visas since, if they complain, they can be deported. |
Blake
Filippi, the ostensibly “independent” candidate who seeks to unseat our Representative
Donna Walsh, who is widely acknowledged to be one of the hardest-working, most
honest and effective state legislators, has an interesting business model for
one of his family’s businesses, Ballard’s Inn on Block Island.
Ballard's track
record shows that they hire workers who are either underage or “exchange”
students or both, pay
them less than minimum wage, don’t pay overtime, and lobby
the state to relax the minimum wage laws[9]
based on an obscure provision in the law regarding employees of “resort
establishments” that operate less than six months out of the year. Of course
he’s running as a “job creator,” natch. Yes, he creates jobs, just not for
adult Rhode Islanders.
Filippi,
I might add, has been all but endorsed by the CCA Party. But of course they’d
endorse a turnip if it were running against Donna. In the 2012 election, they
threw in their lot with serial
check-kiter and former exotic dancer Tina Jackson. Only in Charlestown…
Things the CCA
Party could do to promote jobs if
they actually gave a crap about working people
| Here's a concept being used in Wisconsin. Imagine our town as a year-round destination for nature, arts, food and culture. |
For
starters, we could really nurture the whole vacation economy. But of course
this is actively opposed by Charlestown’s
vacation home owners, who buy property here specifically so they don’t have to
rub elbows with the unwashed masses at Misquamicut or Matunuck. Hell, they
didn’t even want us having public
toilets at the town beaches because they could just go home to use the
toilet.
Aquaculture
is a no-brainer—or would be if Leo Mainelli, CCA Party candidate for Town
Moderator, didn’t object
to it because he feels it spoils his view.
Promoting
rural tech (with our fiber-optic high-speed Internet service that lets
information workers work anywhere) is another possibility that would be fully
in keeping with our fabled rural community. Or how about enabling that fabled mixed-use
vision for Cross’ Mills as both a historic village and a small-business haven
and dining destination.
Coincidentally,
two of the Democratic candidates’ Snack and Chats were held during the weekend
of the HopArts
Trail. Which got me thinking, why is there nothing similar to promote
Charlestown artists?
As it happened, one of the attendees at the Snack and Chat
took advantage of the opportunity to personally thank Representative Donna
Walsh for the fact that there is no longer any state sales tax on
original artworks by Rhode Island artists, which the attendee said allows her
to indulge her fondness for artisan jewelry a bit further than she would be
able to otherwise.
Why is the town not doing anything to leverage this to our
advantage? Oh right, because the vacation homeowners are “subsidizing” us, so
no need to do anything further!
[1] No
word of a lie, outside of a dealership I’ve never seen as many Lexuses (or
should that be Lexi?) in my life as there were in the Town Hall parking lot
that night. I had to park my pickup in the grass.
[2]
Although as far as I can tell, the only “causes” the nonresidents contribute to
are those that perpetuate their wealth (i.e., the CCA).
[3]
Although who they’d hire instead was somehow never explained. Or perhaps he
meant they’d simply stop their endless remodeling and learn to resign
themselves to having out-of-date décor. Somehow I don’t see that happening.
[4]
Not even suitable for reuse as toilet paper, sadly. I don’t think I can even
compost it. So much for CCA environmentalism.
[5] “Too
long; didn’t read.” I likely wouldn’t have read it myself except that as I was
about to toss it aside I felt the call of nature, so I took it with me to the
bathroom to read. Yeah, I know, “TMI” (too much information…).
[6] Of
course, those “low-service” homes are the ones with monitored alarm systems
that are set off for no reason on a regular basis when unoccupied, causing
police and fire responders to go there and peer through windows waiting for
someone with a key to arrive.
[7]
Presumably, they somehow manage to get around town without using Route 1 or
Route 2, which are state roads and paid for through state taxes—that they don’t
pay.
[8] Or
maybe not. After all, he would’ve had to somehow pull off that whole
camel-through-the-eye-of-a-needle thing.
[9]
This, apparently, is the centerpiece of his plan to "reduce the cost of
doing business."
