Saturday, May 30, 2015

Time to get our spending priorities straight

Enough of lost opportunities for recreation
By Maggie Hogan
Photo from Support Charlestown's Ninigret Park
This article originally appeared in the Westerly Sun as a letter to the editor. It appears here with the permission of the author.

Fourteen years ago, while pregnant with my second and youngest child, I completed a term on the entertainment subcommittee of the Charlestown Parks and Recreation Commission. The major item of discussion before the subcommittee was the feasibility of a fixed entertainment venue, such as a concert “shell,” and the viability of a new concert event called Rhythm & Roots.

While Rhythm & Roots has thrived, there is no concert shell. Indeed, the park has changed very little since those days, despite the creation of a Master Plan, as supported by the surveyed members of the Charlestown community as a whole.

In those same 14 years, we have authorized a total of $5 million for acquisition of “Open Space.” The Charlestown Town Councils have readily spent those funds and now seek authorization to spend an additional $2 million on more “Open Space.” While I do not know anyone who dislikes open space vistas and forests, there is a real cost to all of us each and every year. This cost has been ignored and glossed over by many of the open space advocates on these pages.

Indeed, some have gone so far as to say that voting for the open space bond won’t cost us a dime. Such statements are a bold and phony advertising come-on and fail to reveal the “fine print” of what it will cost when the bonds are actually issued. We can get an idea of what it will cost if we vote to approve more bonds this year, by looking at the costs of existing bond issues.


According to Section 900 of this year’s Charlestown Town budget (page 16F), we are currently paying down four municipal bonds for a cost of $425,000 (principal) and $106,228 (interest) for a total this year alone of $570,215. These four bond issues are more specifically identified as:

(1) $2 Million Open Space Bond — authority given in 2004, bond issued 2014. The principal on this bond is $180,000 and the interest this year is $41,065. This bond is payable through 2025.

(2) $3 Million Open Space Bond — authority given in 2000 for $2 million and in 2002 for an additional $1 million; bond issued in 2004. The principal on this bond is $160,000 and the interest this year is $32,400. This bond is payable through 2024.

(3) Affordable Housing Bond — authority given in 2006, bond issued in 2014 and payable through 2034. The principal on this bond is $38,813 and the interest is $32,763.

(4) $1.19 million Beach Pavilion Bond — authority given in 2011. The principal on this bond is $46,187 and the interest is $38,987.

Thus, of the total debt expenditure (or mortgage payment) for this year of $570,215, 72.5 percent ($413,465) is for the Open Space acquisitions we have already made. The bulk of the properties purchased with these funds have primarily, if not exclusively, passive use — walking trails and scenic vistas. According to the published budget, we can expect to pay approximately this amount each year through 2025. (One bond is finished in 2024.)

If voters approve this year’s request for an additional $2 million in bond authorization, and the council spends it, we can expect another $225,000 (approximately) to be added to next year’s budget and for well past the foreseeable budget years as well. I would urge all residents to vote no to the additional $2 million requested this year. We can always revisit this issue in future years and authorize more bonding, after we have paid down some of the existing $5 million of indebtedness.

In addition to us paying $400,000 toward our open space mortgages this year, the Town Council also seeks authorization to simply give away an unnecessary conservation easement to a local land trust for the land that we purchased just last year with open space funds. Proponents of this question call this “partnering.” 

I fail to understand how giving away this asset, for which we will continue to pay $221,065 for the next 10 years, makes any fiscal sense whatsoever.

Why are we not seeking to recoup our funds by engaging in a true “partnership” with one of the usual entities such as The Nature Conservancy or the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management? The answer is that neither entity is interested in purchasing a conservation easement from us because we bought the land with open space bonds and therefore, the lands are already protected. There is no need to give this land, already designated as open space, to a private land trust to “protect” it. 

Please vote no to this fiscally unsound question.

Finally, of the debt expenditure to be made in this year’s budget, a mere 14.9 percent will be for active recreation at our fabulous beach pavilions now enjoyed by thousands of our residents and visitors. If we are to authorize more bond monies this year, let’s do so for active recreation facilities at Ninigret Park, where the improvements can be enjoyed by thousands of residents — young and old, able-bodied and non-able-bodied alike. 

There is a citizens’ petition for bonding authorization to make the Ninigret Park Master Plan a reality. The Ninigret Park envisioned by so many of us for so many years will not be a reality during either of my children’s youth; my youngest will be entering high school this fall. 

Nevertheless, I support this petition for the good of all of us and our town. Let’s not let yet another generation of Charlestown children and families miss out on the benefits of the approved Master Plan

Please vote yes, for Petition number 1.