This special election is really about family values

The CCA Party wants it to be about fear and false information

By Will Collette

This budget proposes a tax rate of $10.10, the highest since
2004 and the seventh tax hike under the CCA Party.
SOURCE: Town Tax Assessor

Tomorrow, Monday June 1, you should go to Town Hall between 8 AM and 8 PM to cast your ballot in Charlestown’s special financial election.

You need to decide where you stand on four separate issues:

TOWN BUDGET – this budget will increase your tax rate to $10.10, the highest it’s been since 2004. It will be the seventh straight tax hike.

WARRANT QUESTION #1: Authorizes another $2 million to buy yet more open space even though more than 50% of Charlestown is already open space.

WARRANT QUESTION #2: Authorizes the CCA Party-controlled Town Council to give away property rights to the last big bloc of open space that town taxpayers paid $2.14 million to buy to an outside organization largely run by cronies of the CCA Party. Classic pay to play.

PETITION #1: Authorizes $1 million to commence with long-neglected maintenance at Ninigret Park and long-stalled improvements. This item was put on the ballot as the result of a petition by a non-partisan group of citizens.

Personally, and speaking for no one else but me, I will be voting NO to all the above items, including the budget, except for Petition #1 where I will vote YES to carry out work that desperately needs doing at Ninigret Park.

Just about every household has gotten mailers, maybe some e-mails or saw the opinion pieces run in the Westerly Sun or on-line that make arguments for and against all of the various items. You will need to sift through all the material, weigh the facts (hopefully checking to see which come with sources and proof and which are just opinion masquerading as fact), check your gut, use your common sense and decide.

Curiously, though very little attention has been focused on the budget which is, to me, one of the worst of the three items coming before the voters.

The Budget – I will vote NO

The CCA Party has raised taxes each and every single year they have controlled Charlestown government. Their own members get their own tax deals through exemptions, conservation easements, the Farm, Forest and Open Space program, lower assessments and fake fire districts while working families have to find more money every year to pay their property taxes.

The CCA Party has rebuffed efforts to bring tax relief to working families in order to defend the interests of wealthy non-resident property owners. Those wealthy non-residents supply 60% of the CCA Party’s funding.

For some reason, we pay cash for capital improvements. For some reason, we paid cash to pay off the low-interest federal loan that built the Police Station. Every year, they tell us this is a good thing because it lowers taxes. It never does.

There is no justification for this year’s tax increase, especially since the Chariho School District is charging us less than they did last year.

Voting down this budget will cause no harm to the town’s operations, since the town would simply operate on last year’s budget. Maybe we’ll have to use low-interest financing to carry out some of those capital projects.

I am voting no on the budget until we get a budget that is family-friendly and a tax structure that favors working families, not the CCA’s cronies.

Warrant Question #1 for $2 million to buy more open space – I will vote NO

I like open space. I am glad that more than 50% of Charlestown is already open space. But I believe we have reached the point where we really need to stop and examine how much more open space we need and how much land we can afford to take off the tax rolls.

Yes, I know this is the second time I have used this chart.

Please identify the years when newly acquired open space

led to a drop in Charlestown's tax rate. Time's up...it never

happened. SOURCE: Town Tax Assessor

The CCA Party has been pushing the lie that more open space means lower taxes. Really? And just how has that worked out for Charlestown over the past 7 years where our tax rate has gone from $7.16 to $10.10 (an increase of almost 30%)?

Not only did we start out with over 50% of the land designated as open space, we added at least another 400 acres, and yet we’ve still seen none of the promised tax benefits that the CCA Party claims are part and parcel of open space. 

Charlestown's actual experience supports the logical conclusion that the more land you take off the tax rolls as open space, the smaller the tax base and the higher the taxes for everybody else.

The CCA Party's whole theory on how buying more open space reduces taxes is that if land isn't turned into open space, it will automatically turn into high-density development for families with children. And, so the CCA story goes, the kids will go to Chariho and jack up everyone's taxes. 

That's an anti-family crock unsupported by our actual experience of the last seven years. I don't know which is worse - that the CCA would simply make this up since it fits their politics or that they actually believe it.

See also Maggie Hogan’s excellent description of how much in debt service it costs Charlestown taxpayers to pay for that land we took off the tax rolls. Then re-read the pieces produced by Ruth Platner, her husband Cliff Vanover and CCA Party pundit Mike Chambers and ask yourself who makes the most sense.

The other reason I am voting NO to more money for open space is that I do not trust Planning Commissar Ruth Platner to use the money without playing favorites. 

The current controversy over giving away property rights to town-owned land to her friends at the Charlestown Land Trust is the second time in three years (remember the Y-Gate Scandal?) that Platner has played crony politics with open space. One of these days, Ruth is going to fail to cover her tracks and this will be a matter for the Government Corruption Unit of the Attorney General's Office. 

Meanwhile, Platner and her husband, CCA Steering Committee Member and Zoning Board of Review member Cliff Vanover, bitterly opposed the sale of Frank Glista’s family’s property off of Old Post Road to the state Water Resources Board to preserve its water resources—something Platner, Vanover, and the CCA loudly proclaim themselves as protectors of. 

This deal cost the town nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Why the opposition? Frank is not a member of the CCA, plain and simple. Vanover, obsessive crank that he is, actually went so far as to show up to the closing on the deal to make his one last attempt at scuttling it. So much for our protectors of Charlestown’s natural environment.

Let’s wait until Ruth Platner is a distant memory before refilling the open space coffers.

Warrant Question #2 to give a conservation easement to the Charlestown Land Trust – I will vote NO

It’s a shame that a once widely respected organization like the Land Trust would debase itself by becoming a political crony of the CCA even to the point of violating campaign finance law. 

This is the second time the Trust has partnered with the CCA Party in a major land scam, the first being the Y-Gate Scandal.

Charlestown bought 75 acres of undeveloped land on the moraine along Route One to put an end to the divisive Whalerock wind farm proposal. Even though I am a fan of wind power, I was one of the first to advocate for the purchase even though the main beneficiaries were members of a weird, anti-wind power NIMBY cult living near the site.

That 75 acres belongs to all the people of Charlestown—the people who paid for it, and will be continuing to pay for it until 2025. Not to the CCA Party. Not to Mike Chambers and the rest of the NIMBY "anonymous abutters". Not to Ruth Platner and her cronies at the Land Trust. That land will stay as it is unless and until the people decide otherwise. I will vote NO to Warrant Question #2 because I trust the people. Platner, Chambers and the rest of the CCA Party, I don’t.

Petition #1 to fund improvements at Ninigret Park with a $1 million bond. I will be enthusiastically voting YES

I am voting yes to this petition because it makes sense and it is the only family-friendly item you will see on tomorrow’s ballot. This petition item was presented because the CCA Party deliberately decided to exclude recreation from its requested Open Space bond proposal, a sharp break from tradition where voters have approved bonds for open space and recreation.

In their campaign rhetoric for this special election, the CCA Party has presented their most candid position yet that families with children are about as good for Charlestown as ticks. 

They talked repeatedly about how important it is to acquire more open space because any unused open space will automatically be used for high-density residential developments which will be occupied by families with children. Those children will automatically go to Chariho, apparently for their entire lifetimes, and will cost the CCA Party base a terrible amount of money.

Boss Gentz transporting Mr. Fluffy in one of his tax-free Porsches

I just don’t understand what the Charlestown Citizens Alliance has against children. Is it because children laugh and the CCA Party has no sense of humor? They do have a scorching case of Humorous Dyscognition. Or it is something else?

If you go on the CCA website, you’ll see that they practically never talk about children or families – except to call them parasites – and almost never show children. 

A recent “outside source” posting on springtime featured a photo of a kid. But if you’re looking at “official” CCA postings featuring kids, the only ones you’ll find are their annual coverage of the Easter Bunny’s arrival in Charlestown.

My theory is the only reason they cover that is because Council Boss Tom Gentz transports the “Easter Bunny” in one of his vintage Porsches (he has several and pays zero car tax on all of them).

My favorite shot from this year’s coverage was this:

This is taken so far away from the kids, it’s as if the photographer felt the kids might be carrying radioactive cooties.

Normally, I like to say that it’s the CCA’s problem that they don’t like families with kids, but the sad truth is their pedophobia has a direct impact on town policies.

I don’t know how the Monday special election will go. The CCA Party is very good at winning elections. Using fear, distortion and lots of out-of-state money, they won every one of them since 2008 with only one exception – the time they got beat when they tried to stop the bond issue that funded the beautiful beach pavilions that serve the thousands of residents and visitors who use the town beaches.

By the way, of the four current municipal bonds the town is paying for, the one for the beach pavilions is the only one that actually pays us back, through revenues from the town beaches, one of the town’s largest revenue sources after property taxes.

Other than that one loss, the CCA Party has used fear and lies, and lots and lots of out-of-state money, to tighten its grip on Charlestown government, which they run largely for the benefit of their wealthy retiree and non-resident base.

Will tomorrow be another big score for the CCA Party and the special interests it represents or another upset win for working families like the beach pavilion vote? We’ll know after tomorrow.