The “dissident minority” is growing
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| Is this really the face we want to show to visitors? (Photo from the Ninigret Park blog) |
I used to think that keeping up with the Charlestown Citizens Alliance’s (CCA’s) spin machine would be a full-time job. But then I realized all their sturm und drang can be summarized as “CCA good, Progressive Charlestown bad!” Which makes the rebuttals a lot easier to write.
Take the magisterial “guest commentary” by “King Tom” Gentz, the autocratic leader of the Town Council, a wholly owned subsidiary of the CCA, published recently in the Westerly Sun. In it, Gentz tells the CCA’s usual origins myth, stating that “The CCA political action committee that swept all 13 elective offices in Charlestown last November was formed in 2008 to put an end to the locker-room conduct that characterized public meetings.”
Which is actually pretty easily debunked given that that’s not how they stated their purpose to the Board of Elections when they first organized.
They told the Board of Elections they wanted to elect their own slate of council candidates and to oust then-Town Council President Jim Mageau and his Democratic colleagues. They also specifically wanted to oust then-Representative Donna Walsh and replace her with Matt McHugh, who advocated voting rights for nonresidents, a pressing issue for the CCA given where the majority of their funding comes from.
But that would make them look too much like a political party, you see, and their shtick is that they’re “nonpartisan.” Hence the origins myth.
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| The entrance to Ninigret Park is not nearly as attractive as the park itself. Plus it creates an unintentional choke-point for traffic entering and, more importantly, leaving. (Photo from the Ninigret Park blog) |
Another way of looking at that “locker-room conduct” is that it’s democracy in action. But of course the CCA has never had any taste for democracy. They are neither big-D Democrats nor small-d democrats. They fight dirty, cut backroom deals, brook no dissension, and practice a scorched-earth, winner-take-all politics—all the while hiding behind lofty rhetoric about “civility.” Which frankly is a load of manure, since they were mud-slingers from the get-go.
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| The road leading to the Ninigret Dog Park. Maintenance can't be ignored for many more years or we'll be losing cars in the potholes. (Photo from the Support Charlestown's Ninigret Park Facebook page) |
CCA civility extends to their own supporters and no further. Gentz consistently indulges CCA supporters in smearing other citizens during council meetings and public hearings, allowing them to continue speaking well past the time limit, and yet will cut off anyone whose opinion he doesn’t want to hear before their time is up. Gentz has also publicly berated any number of private citizens from the council bench, as well as Chariho Superintendent Barry Ricci and Ken Burke of the Water Resources Board, although in Burke’s case Gentz was forced to publicly apologize.
So the CCA is clearly feeling the heat if they felt the need to take to the pages of the Westerly Sun to explain themselves. Here’s how Gentz excuses the CCA’s refusal to engage with the public at the public hearing on the upcoming ballot questions[1]:
“A public hearing generally draws fewer than 1% of active voters, and these are the most invested political operatives in town affairs, jockeying for pole position in the next race.”
Now, I don’t go to town council meetings or public hearings anymore because I couldn’t find an antiemetic strong enough to get me through them. But I do know for a fact that not everyone who attends them is running for office, because I never had any intention of doing it myself. Members of town staff and the various town commissions regularly attend. Business owners and event planners are forced to bow and scrape before the council for licenses, and business owners and residents also regularly attend in a usually vain effort to block or roll back some onerous, nitpicky ordinance or another. And of course members of private organizations seeking favor from the CCA have also been known to attend. So the idea that people attend hearings because they’re running for office is just laughable on its face. And even if we suppose that public hearings are, as Gentz writes, “a tinder box,” might that in fact be the result of the way the CCA has used its power to shut out opposing voices?
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| Surely we could provide some bleachers for spectators. (Photo from the Support Charlestown's Ninigret Park Facebook page) |
One very large portion of the audience Gentz forgot to mention is the Greek chorus of CCA Party supporters who are expected to step up to the microphone to automatically attack any person who speaks out against the CCA Party line.
Yet along with Gentz’s commentary, the Sun published a letter from a self-proclaimed CCA supporter expressing dissatisfaction with the CCA’s lack of openness and transparency on the ballot questions and on the ouster of Jay Primiano. The writer closed by saying “I expected better.” Which is understandable given that the CCA runs on a platform of openness and transparency.
So I’d say there’s some buyer’s remorse out there.
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| If the CCA had gotten its way in 2011, we’d still have this … |
By virtue of both his position and his style of being a very hands-on, active director of the Parks and Recreation department, Primiano came in contact with a broad swath of Charlestown residents. And it appears that Primiano’s firing is making people look more closely at just who the CCA is and what they do. And what they’re seeing is the vast gulf between the CCA rhetoric and the reality. One resident has expressed anger about Primiano’s firing in a comment on my Sun letter, dubbing the CCA the “Charlestown Carpetbaggers Alliance.” (How I wish I’d thought of that one myself.) It appears that after all the CCA’s high-handed treatment of residents, stonewalling on public records, and backroom wheeling and dealing, Primiano’s firing may be what finally turns the voters against the CCA. I’d put some links in that last sentence but there’s too many to choose from.
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| … instead of this. |
Indeed, if I had to choose one link to demonstrate to my fellow town residents what I think epitomizes everything that’s wrong with the CCA, it would be the video from the public hearing on the beach pavilions in which a snarling, sneering Cliff Vanover—CCA Steering Committee member and appointee to the Zoning Board of Review—derides the very idea of anyone wanting to expend town resources on “rec projects,” a phrase he pronounces with such venom that you’d think he was discussing some sort of foul misdeed. Except you know what? I can’t even give you a working link for it. The links in the story I wrote about it don’t work anymore, and when I go to the town website I can’t get the video link to work. The best I can do is refer you to my description of Vanover’s rant. So much for that “open, transparent” CCA government.