Friday, May 29, 2015

UPDATED: Charlestown Financial Election news bits

As the clock ticks down to Monday’s vote, the bovine excrement flies!
By Will Collette

The update adds information on the Attorney General's office decision on Jim Mageau's open meetings complaint against the Town Council and also adds links to Sun letters to the editor that appear in Saturday's edition.

 On Monday June 1, a small portion of Charlestown’s electorate will turn out at Town Hall between 8 AM and 8 PM to vote on the town’s budget and on three hot ballot questions. Campaigning is intensifying.

The supporters of Petition #1 to authorize $1 million to act on the long-delayed Ninigret Park Master Plan have their yard signs out. Hopefully, this is generating more support from voters for work on the Plan and on long neglected maintenance problems at Ninigret Park, Charlestown’s Jewel in the Crown.

Turn out will be critical next Monday to pass this measure to support Ninigret Park and to block the CCA Party’s Terrible Two warrant questions.

UPDATED:Mageau claims Council violated Open Meetings Act, but the Attorney General disagrees

According to the Westerly Sun, Jim Mageau has filed a formal complaint against the Charlestown Town Council for stonewalling questions from the public at the special hearing the town held on the budget and ballot questions. As you may recall, Council Boss Tom Gentz and his Greek chorus of fellow CCA Party Councilors essentially turned away public questions on the two CCA warrant questions, basically saying they didn’t have to answer.

The CCA Party Councilors’ conduct was so awful, it was singled out for criticism in a Westerly Sun editorial. The Sun rightly noted that this is the kind of arrogance that arises from one-party rule.

In his complaint, Mageau is arguing that, yes, they do have to because that’s the whole idea behind a public hearing. However, the Attorney General's office says that public officials are NOT required to answer or engage in any exchange with citizens. Mageau told the Westerly Sun that he will look into filing suit in Superior Court.


The Councilors were especially adamant about not answering any questions about Warrant Question #1 to authorize another $2 million to buy more open space and Warrant Question #2 to authorize giving away control of the 75 acres of land the town recently bought using the last $2 million in open space/recreation funding. The Council/CCA plan is to give those rights to their friends and donors at the Charlestown Land Trust.

Whether Even though the Attorney General's office rejected Mageau’s complaint that the Council’s stonewall tactics violated the Open Meetings Act prevails or not, he raises an important point about the way the CCA Party, which controls each and every single Council member, ramrods its will down the throats of the taxpayers.

 What the CCA Party Town Councilors did isn't illegal, according to the Attorney General's office, it still reflects that arrogance of power that was condemned by the Westerly Sun in their editoral.

Non-resident buys ad supporting CCA initiative

Here is D'Alcomo's Charlestown Press ad.
She ALMOST pulled off the Y-Gate con
job and now she's pushing this!
Some of you may remember Joanne D’Alcomo, the de facto mayor of the Sonquipaug neighborhood, from the Y-Gate Scandal. D’Alcomo is a Boston lawyer and Massachusetts resident. She owns one of the houses in the Sonquipaug neighborhood adjacent to the old abandoned Westerly YMCA campground that almost ended up being bought by Charlestown taxpayers and then given away to the Charlestown Land Trust. 

The mostly non-resident Sonquipaug people wanted that land bought with everyone’s money except their own to keep it as a free extension of their backyards.

D’Alcomo was in on the backdoor deals that were the hallmark of the Y-Gate Scandal and the reason why there was such an uproar that actually forced the CCA Party to back down. She is also a major donor to the Charlestown Citizens Alliance.

D’Alcomo has re-surfaced by paying for the placement of a display ad in support of Warrant Question #2, another sleazy CCA Party land deal this time involving the former Whalerock property that the town purchased for $2.14 million. Interestingly enough, although in the ad the couple identifies themselves as Charlestown homeowners, in the posting on the CCA website about the ad, the CCA elevates them to “residents.”

We’ll see whose campaign finance report her expensive, in-kind donation ends up being listed on. The last time she did something like this, the expense was listed on the CCA Party’s report to the Board of Elections.

CCA doubles down on anti-family rhetoric

From the CCA Party's mailer: their "proof" that open space saves money
while eradicating those pesky rug-rats
You probably received the 8.5 by 11 inch chock-a-block full CCA Party mailing about Warrant Questions #1 and #2. 

It looks to me like Planning Commissar Ruth Platner and her husband, Zoning Commissioner Cliff Vanover, did this piece without an editor. They really got carried away both on the dense verbiage and on the rhetoric.

Especially their continuing claim that open space reduces taxes because otherwise the land would automatically be used for high-density housing for families with school age children, which they claim would increase taxes. As the lawyers would say, all this “assumes facts not in evidence.”

We’ve been calling out the CCA for weeks to produce evidence that by taking land off the tax rolls, you reduce tax burden. They finally posted a 2010 study from Long Island that supposedly supports their position. Except the report has little to do with Charlestown, given that it addresses open space’s effect in an area that is heavily developed and where open space is rare.

Charlestown could actually be used as a case study for the bad things that happen when you pass the point of diminishing returns and end up with too much untaxed land (we have more than 50% of the town’s land as open space, not counting at least 400 additional acres recently added).

Our assessments around those open space lands have not risen. We have built no affordable housing for families. Our Chariho student population has declined and so has our Chariho cost. Our overall population has declined. We have more deaths than births. Our average age is increasing. Despite all these factors and having more than 50% of our land as open space, our taxes have gone up every year for the past seven years. If more open space is so good for the taxpayers, why is that?

Mike Chambers claimed that properties within 2.5 miles of open space benefit from the presence of open space. Well in Charlestown, Mickey, everybody is within 2.5 miles of open space and that has neither changed our assessments nor prevented seven years of tax hikes.

Here’s the dirty little secret the CCA will never tell you: Yes, open space does lower taxes—for the large landholders among them, their friends, and supporters who either play the easement game to get reduced taxes on their land (like Platner and Vanover) or claim the Farm, Forest, and Open Space exemption like CCA Town Councilor George Tremblay, all the while continuing to get to use and enjoy their land at a fraction of the taxes. For the rest of us, taxes go up to make up for what the large landholders aren’t paying.

Links to Sun opinions supporting Petition #1 to fund maintenance and improvements at Ninigret Park

On its official website, the CCA Party only presents opinions supporting its two Warrant Questions (give Ruth Platner $2 million more to play with and give away the rights to the Whalerock land we taxpayers purchased). A lot of that stuff was printed in the Westerly Sun.

However, the Sun also ran a lot of opinion pieces supporting Petition #1, the ballot question asking you to authorize $1 million to give Ninigret Park a desperately needed face lift. Here are links to those pieces:
The CCA Party is in a tough position when it comes to Petition #1. First, they made the Petition necessary by excluding funding for recreation when they crafted Warrant Question #1 as exclusively for open space. Planning Commissar Ruth Platner tried to paper this over by saying that passive recreation in open space areas is recreation, too.

Sure, that’s true to an extent, except if a bunch of little kids decided to start running, racing and playing in her beloved open spaces, you can bet your ass she’d make sure there was an age limit and rules of conduct for those areas.

Anyway, the CCA Party knows it is vulnerable for sitting on the Ninigret Park Master Plan and doing virtually nothing to implement it for the past seven years. 

When former Town Administrator Bill DiLibero and former Parks and Recreation Director Jay Primiano tried to move pieces of the Master Plan forward, the CCA Party forced them out of their jobs … with the addition insult to the taxpayers of needing to pay Jay and Bill large severance packages because there really was no good cause for the town to push them out.

So what’s the CCA Party position on Petition #1 – opposition disguised as tepid support. They say the general concepts in the Ninigret Park Master Plan – which, by the way, has been kicking around for more than 10 years now – are OK, but that more time – much more time – is needed to hold meetings and study.

Links to Sun opinion pieces opposing CCA Warrant Questions #1 and #2

Don’t forget to vote!

Special elections, especially town financial elections, tend to draw very few voters. Charlestown has over 6,000 registered voters – actually, we have more registered voters than the number of adults over 18, according to the Census Bureau. But we’re lucky if 700 come out to vote in a special election – 702 came out to vote to pass the Chariho School District’s budget this year.

We have a bad budget in front of us, one that raises taxes for the seventh straight year with no apparent justification, given that our Chariho bill is smaller by more than $87,000 and so is the town payroll.

When Planner Ashley Hahn left, she was replaced by part-timer Jane Weidman, and when Jay Primiano was pushed out as Parks & Rec Director, he was replaced by his deputy, Vicky Hilton, and his job has not been posted (the word is that it won’t be). That's a big cost savings right there.

We’re unnecessarily increasing the amount of capital expenditures we’re making – paying cash instead of using low-interest financing like most towns, indeed most households do. Oh, and hey, does anyone remember two years ago when the CCA-controlled Budget Commission recommended paying cash to retire the low-interest federal loan on the Police Station? They said that was going to save the taxpayers money, too.

I swear that if they keep saving us all money this way, we’re all going to be bankrupt before they’re through.

We’re setting aside an added $250,000 because our Budget Commission thinks that Chariho made a mistake by dipping into its surplus so it could present a budget voters would approve, unlike last year.

I can find no good reason to vote for this budget. If voters turn down the budget proposal on June 1, Charlestown will operate using the same budget as last year which, I believe, would have no effect on town operations or employees.

Then there are the Terrible Two CCA Warrant Questions. We’ve covered those. You can expect a block turn-out of YES voters for the CCA proposals from Precinct Three (Quonnie and environs), the CCA’s stronghold.

Finally, there’s the great Petition #1 item to fund what all the people in town need at Ninigret Park.


See you at the polls!
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