The CCA goes there….Anti-family all the way.

The CCA Party says open space is the way to get rid of children by denying them places to live. Seriously.

By Will Collette

The CCA Party is out of the closet...they want to ban
school age kids from Charlestown. Seriously.

For years, CCA Party leaders and pundits Ruth Platner, Cliff Vanover and Mike Chambers have been making the outrageous claim that taking more and more land off the tax rolls as open space will actually reduce taxes.

For years, we’ve been asking for proof, or at least something resembling a cogent explanation since Charlestown taxpayers have had to endure an increase in the town property tax rate each and every year in the seven years since the Charlestown Citizens Alliance took power.

Finally, we have an explanation. Platner, Vanover and Chambers, each in his or her own way, say that by taking more land off the tax rolls as open space, we are actually saving money by blocking high-density residential development, as if that automatically happens to any property not zoned open space.

As the CCA Party has been saying for years, it’s a terrible thing to allow more family housing to get built because, well you know, families will live in them. And families mean children. And children mean Chariho students. And Chariho students mean higher costs to the taxpayer, in perpetuity, with no benefit to the community. I mean, why doesn’t the CCA Party just have its rubber-stamp Town Council pass an ordinance banning children?

They even published a gibberish math formula that is supposed to prove their assumption that children are parasites. See below for the link.

Again, I will remind you that the CCA Party has raised taxes every single year while they’ve been in power.

The new budget proposes a tax hike to $10.10, the highest since

2004 and the seventh tax hike under the CCA Party.

SOURCE: Town Tax Assessor

During that same period, Charlestown’s population has shrunk and so has our tax base. Plus Charlestown’s population has also gotten older. We have not added to our stock of affordable family housing (we may even have lost ground).  

So why do taxes keep going up?

I have regularly reported that Town Clerk Amy Weinreich’s monthly reports to the Town Council consistently show Charlestown deaths exceed the number of Charlestown births. Two weeks ago, new Census estimates came out showing that Charlestown has lost more people and is down to 7,782.

Plus, we’ve added more open space. 

So why do taxes keep going up?

Several years ago, Tax Assessor Ken Swain estimated that more than 50% of Charlestown land was some form of open space and either not taxed at all or taxed at incredibly low amounts.

Since he made the prediction, we added more than 200 acres of former commercial/residential space at the former United Nuclear toxic waste site to our list of protected open space when the Nature Conservancy purchased it. The town added 75 acres by purchasing the proposed site of the Whalerock wind farm. The Water Resources Board just closed another deal that converts nearly 20 acres of commercial and residential acreage into open space.

The state Department of Transportation took another 105 acres of land zoned R3A (residential) when it bought the Camp Davis property which it intends to give to the Narragansett Indian Tribe.

That’s more than 400 acres added to Swain's 50%+ plus estimate and I’m sure there were many others, including new Farm, Forest and Open Space deals that would swell the numbers even higher.

So how come Cliff Vanover’s prediction that more open space would save us taxes hasn’t come true? Yeah, I think we all know the answer to that question.

Then there’s CCA Party pundit Mike Chambers claim that open space acquisition will save the town money by boosting the value of abutting properties. Oh yeah, Mike? 

We paid $2.14 million for a 75 acre addition to your back yard. Did you and your neighbors see a $2.14 million increase in your tax assessments? Do you really have any data, any proof, any anything that that’s going to happen?

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

I have to wonder if Cliffie, Ruth and Mike really believe the bovine excrement they are spreading. Or do they see it as a plausible lie they can use to sell their June 1 Warrant Questions? That’s Question #1 to put another $2 million on Ruthie’s Open Space Platinum card and Question #2 to give away the town-owned Whalerock property to Ruth’s friends at the Charlestown Land Trust. 

I urge you to vote NO to both questions.

And also NO to the Town Budget which contains the unwarranted CCA Party’s seventh annual tax increase. I have seen no justification for the tax hike other than they can raise taxes, so they are, telling us we should be grateful we’re not paying city taxes, omitting the fact that we don’t get city services.

If you think I am making any of this up, exagerating or cherry-picking, you can go to the CCA website and read Ruth's, Cliff's and Mike's convoluted logic in all its glory.

CLICK HERE for Mike Chamber’s treatise.

Key quote: “One final benefit to the town that lies locked into the intrinsic value of the Moraine Preserve is that preserving this land can lead to proportionally higher tax revenues. In several studies in Oregon, Maryland, Texas, and Minnesota, it was determined that the larger and more natural the open space, the greater the positive impact on nearby (within 2.5 miles) property prices.”

But note that (a) Chambers does not link to any of those alleged studies even though it’s easy to do so (we do it all the time at Progressive Charlestown), (b) where is the promised hike in tax assessments for abutters to offset the $2.1 million we spent, and (c) where is the lowering in our tax bills?

CLICK HERE for Ruth Platner’s treatise.

Key quote: “In addition to providing public access and great opportunities for outdoor recreation, these [open space] lands provide critical wildlife habitat, protect our drinking water, give our town its beautiful natural character, and many of the parcels have already more than paid for themselves by stabilizing our tax rate.”

All of Platner’s statements about the merits of open space are true, especially about wildlife and habitat and natural beauty, except for the last claim about “stabilizing our tax rate” which is a whopper of a lie. Like Chambers, she provides nothing to counter the plain fact that she and her Party have raised town tax rates every year since they’ve been in control.

I also found her remark about water protection to be baldly hypocritical, given Platner’s role in attempting to block the state Water Resources Board from buying 20 acres of residential-zoned property that will now be set aside as open space specifically to protect the groundwater beneath. 

Why is it that the open space that Platner has had a hand in protects water, but the Glista Family property just recently acquired by the Water Resources Board, doesn’t? Answer: Platner considers Frank Glista to be her political enemy so she is willing to throw her stated principles out the window.

CLICK HERE to see Platner’s defense of Question #2 which proposes to give control of the town-owned former Whalerock property to the Charlestown Land Trust because, as we all know, you can’t always trust your Town Council. And she gives this example….

Key quote: “In 2010, a previous Town Council proposed placing three 400-foot tall wind turbines in Ninigret Park on the border of the National Wildlife Refuge. The proposal was stopped by the National Park Service who wrote, “This project is not a recreational use for the property, and therefore is prohibited.” 

That “previous Town Council” Platner refers to was a Council 100% comprised of CCA Party endorsed members! All of them. Back then, the CCA Party was an official and enthusiastic supporter of large wind turbines and Council Boss Tom Gentz pushed for one in Ninigret Park. 

Of course, the CCA Party expunged that history from their records and now denies it. They even excommunicated that 2010 CCA Party “previous Town Council” for their pro-Whalerock efforts and ran Dan Slattery, Boss Gentz and Cliff Vanover against them.

The CCA Party may think they have done an ISIS move to destroy their own history, but we still have it HERE on Progressive Charlestown. Yeah, I know. Boss Gentz and John Goodman are going to be very pissed about the comparison to ISIS. Boys – deal with it.

The other outrageous part of Platner’s remark is the role she attributes to the National Park Service. First, the National Park Service had nothing to do with Whalerock. Nothing. 

It was National Fish and Wildlife Service local manager Charlie Vandemoer who wrote a letter of objection early on in the process that also made the case for the town buying the land. It was a great letter but it had no effect in blocking Whalerock. 

Whalerock was stopped because the town of Charlestown used $2.1 million of your money to buy the property.

I just can’t figure out why Ruth would make something like that up…and even name the wrong agency.

CLICK HERE for Platner’s husband Cliff Vanover’s letter to the Westerly Sun where he too makes the argument that any land left available will automatically be used for residential development. Of course, that leads to families which leads to kids which leads to more Chariho students which leads to higher taxes. If you really believe that, then please, vote for the CCA and their budget and their tax hike and their warrant items and while you're at it, vote to give them more money to exterminate those child parasites and let it all be on your head.

Now we come to the good part, the CCA Party’s pièce de résistance….

CLICK HERE to see the CCA Party’s “Cost of Development Calculator” which proves beyond a doubt, provided you are incredibly gullible, that families with children are a plague and that we need to not only buy more open space but also expel families with children for the sake of the tax bills of the CCA Party’s major donors.

This calculator assumes that residential property will automatically generate a certain number of children who will automatically go to Chariho and spend the rest of their lives there as parasites on the town and never contribute anything at any time to the commonweal of Charlestown.

Essentially, it is a cultural suicide pact that condemns Charlestown to an existence without children. As the old CCA Partiers die out, their homes will be bought by wealthy New Yorkers.