New
Steering Committee roster posted with no fanfare
By
Will Collette
 |
| New information emerges from the CCA Party's secret clubhouse |
The
Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CA Party) is all about restoring Charlestown to roughly
the 1920s and 30s. Yes, the 1920s and 30s were the halcyon years and also when
most of the current CCA
Steering Committee members were born. The average age for the ten Steering
Committee members is 76 years old, with the youngest at 63 and oldest at 87.
They
would love to restore things to the way it used to be. The times after the
Narragansett Tribe was declared extinct by the General Assembly in 1880 and 1882
when Charlestown’s leading families grabbed all their land but of course before the Tribe won federal recognition and a major part of its ancestral lands.
The time before the
Ninigret Navy Auxiliary Air Field was built. The time when wealthy gentlemen
farmers ruled the roost with their farms covering most of the land. If your
family couldn’t trace itself back to the town’s first settlers, you were
nobody.
The
CCA Party does not make a big deal about its Steering Committee, even though
they meet monthly to presumably decide the organization’s priorities. These
meetings are not public and not announced. I’ve often speculated
that they meet in a little hut in the reeds in the salt marsh or maybe a tree
house in the woods, but no one outside the CCA Party inner circle knows.
How
these meetings are conducted and how decisions are made is totally secret, even
though the CCA Party controls every elected office, important commission and
the hiring and firing of Town Hall Staff.
Who
attends those meetings is also secret. I guess it has to be considering that
they hold all five Council seats and all eight Planning Commission seats. If
those members came to Steering Committee meetings and discussed anything
related to Charlestown, they would be violating the state Open Meetings Act.
 |
| The CCA Party holds its meetings in secret and, I am certain, it is there that the decisions that affect the whole town get made |
In fact, I’m willing to bet they violate OMA every time they meet, but getting the proof
of that will take an insider with a pang of conscience. I am not willing to bet
on that happening.
The
CCA Party also controls comfortable majorities in the Zoning Board of Review,
the Charlestown delegation to the Chariho School Committee and the Budget
Commission. Again, if those individuals turn up at Steering Committee meetings
and talk town business, that’s an OMA violation.
But
of course, we don’t know that for sure because we can’t know that for sure, since the meetings are secret.
The
newly announced roster of the CCA Steering Committee includes Town Council Boss
Tom Gentz, Budget commissioner and former Town Councilor Dan Slattery who also
is the CCA Party Treasurer. There are two Zoning Board members: Cliff Vanover
and one of the CCA Party’s chief fundraisers, Joe Quadrato. There’s Town
Moderator Leo Mainelli, former Planning Commissioner Jan Knost and Virginia
Wooten who holds no post other than figurehead CCA President.
So
even if there isn’t a quorum of each of the public bodies they control –
Council, Planning, Budget, Zoning, etc. – at each CCA Party secret Steering
Committee meeting, we still have an open meetings problem. I suspect that that
those Steering Committee meetings serve as a Super-Council for the
town with at least one ranking member of each of those bodies present. The
entire agenda for town governance is set at those monthly secret meetings.
And
that’s wrong, if not illegal.
Of
the ten Steering Committee members, there are three former Charlestown residents
who now live out of state: former CCA President Bernice Krantz, former Zoning
Board member Milton Krantz and former Town Council member Kate Waterman.
That
means non-residents are under-represented on the Steering Committee given that more than 60% of the CCA Party’s funding comes from non-residents. By that reckoning, six out of the ten CCA Party
Steering Committee members should be non-residents.
Planning
Commissar Ruth Platner is an advisor but not an official Steering Committee
member but doesn’t need to be, since she pulls all the strings. Town political
curmudgeon, Nazi-hunter and hate-baiter John Goodman also is an advisor without holding an actual seat. I'd love to hear the advice he gives.
Given
this line-up, how is it possible for this group to meet and not
violate the state Open Meetings Act?
The
only change in this year’s line-up is that Faith LaBossiere is off while Dan
Slattery and Jan Knost are on. I guess the reasoning behind the tight-knit,
rarely changing Steering Committee is that the CCA Party thinks this is a
winning formula, and they certainly have the election results to prove it.
Maybe
LaBossiere lost her spot for her advocacy
of a bike path in Ninigret Park at a time when the prevailing mood within
the CCA Party is to curb human activity in the park, with positive disdain for active recreation.
The
Charlestown Democratic Town Committee (CDTC), compared to the CCA Party, had a lot of
major changes to its roster. Three of the CDTC officers stepped down. My wife
Cathy O’Reilly Collette stepped down as chair but remains on the committee.
John Hamilton replaces her as chair.
Tim
Quillen stepped down as vice-chair for health reasons. Former state
Representative Donna Walsh replaces Tim in that position.
Suzanne
Ferrio stepped down as Secretary and Dawne Burns stepped up to replace her.
I
resigned last July and Frank Glista resigned in November. Henry
Walsh died in March.
Plus,
according to its latest campaign finance report, town Democrats are low on
cash.
Usually
after an election, the CDTC has more cash on hand than the CCA Party but not this time.
According to the CCA
Party’s most recent campaign filing, they have $6,523.97 on hand, compared
to the $2,306.78 reported
by the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee.
I
didn’t mention the Charlestown Republican Town Committee because it has
pretty much gone dormant; they did fill a first quarter report showing no activity and $395 in the bank. The CCA Party pretty much fills the niche Republicans
would usually fill.
Charlestown used to have a Moderate Party Town Committee
(back when Dan Slattery and John Goodman were among the 11 registered Moderates
in town), but it has long since gone out of business.
The
June 1 election is bound to have an effect both on the CCA Party, which
experienced its first electoral losses since losing the vote on the town beach
pavilions in 2011.
The
Democrats haven’t had much to celebrate in a while, but they mounted a
successful campaign to block Warrant Item #2 which would have given a
conservation easement to CCA Party ally, the Charlestown Land Trust, and
effective control over the town-owned former proposed site for the Whalerock
wind turbines.
 |
| Donna Chambers is NOT happy with how June 1 turned out |
Then
there’s the ad hoc group, Support
Charlestown’s Ninigret Park, whose slam-dunk 2 to 1 victory in getting
voter approval for $1 million in improvements to Ninigret Park. It’ll be
interesting to see what happens next with them – other than, of course, a fight
with the CCA Party-controlled government to actually spend the money as the
voters intend them to.
CCA
Party Chariho School Committee member Donna Chambers was nonplussed by that $1
million Ninigret bond issue and the loss of the conservation easement to the
Whalerock land. She told the Westerly Sun:
“I think voters were very misinformed about the truth of the easement and thought that the property was just going to be given away, when in fact the easement would be protecting the land from future development and conserving the nature on it….And we will see what the intentions are for the Ninigret Park bond.”
I have a suggestion for Ms. Chambers to help her
clear up her questions about the “intentions” for Ninigret Park. Read the Ninigret
Park Master Plan. Or get somebody to explain it to you.