… but the fingerprints of CCA School Committee member Donna Chambers are all over it
By Linda
Felaco
Editor’s Note: A version of this letter recently appeared in
the Westerly Sun, and the virtual ink was not yet dry upon
it when a scathing comment was posted from none other than Michael Chambers,
resident pundit of the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) Party and patronage
appointee to the Zoning Board of Review. He ended his rant by referring to my
letter as “a spectacularly bland piece of tripe.” Leaving aside the oxymoronic
concept of spectacular blandness, to be bland is by definition to be
inoffensive, so how could my letter possibly have caused such offense? Unless
Chambers was in fact reacting to my “Sore
losers” piece about his and his wife’s reactions to the conservation
easement on the Charlestown Moraine Preserve being voted down in the financial
referendum, which by sheer coincidence ended up being posted at roughly the
same time. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
In all the sturm und drang over the recent budget vote,
folks might not have noticed that tucked into the dead-tree version of the
“Pipeline” newsletter explaining the ballot questions—but not in the electronic
version, strangely enough—was a one-page survey about the Comprehensive Plan,
which is currently undergoing revision by the Planning Commission.
The introduction (which is longer than the survey itself)
explains that the Comp Plan is intended to “provide a guide to sustaining and
growing the community while promoting the health, safety and general welfare of
the residents.” Yet for such a large remit, a grand total of five questions are
asked, one of which is demographic. Three of the questions are vague and
subjective to the point of near meaninglessness (“What do you value most about
Charlestown?,” “Do you have concerns about the future of Charlestown?,” and “Is
there anything you would change in Charlestown?”). Only one question can
actually be tallied or scored: “On a scale of 1-5, do you feel Charlestown is
changing for the better or worse?”
Stranger still, not a single question even mentions “open
space” despite it being an obsession of the ruling Charlestown Citizens
Alliance (CCA) Party, which controls the Planning Commission as well as every
single lever of town government and most seats on all the volunteer commissions.
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| “But how do you feel about open space?” |
A cynic might conclude that the vague, open-ended,
essay-style questions were designed for easier cherry-picking of the responses.
Sort of like the way publicists selectively excerpt neutral or even negative
film reviews to come up with enthusiastic-sounding endorsements for the
advertisements.
The lack of a deadline for responses could also lead a cynic
to conclude that the Planning Commission plans to declare “mission
accomplished” on the survey as soon as they’ve received enough responses
endorsing whatever they planned to do in the first place.
I suppose piggy-backing the survey on the financial
referendum Pipeline saved the town money. Though the CCA didn’t have any
problem whatsoever sending out that “special edition” Pipeline last summer for
the sole purpose of terrorizing people about the mythical prospect of the
Chariho “single-taxing
district” when it suited their purposes. Anyway, if the concern really was
saving money, even more money would have been saved by not killing trees to send
out a “survey” that isn’t even as detailed as the ones used by fast-food
establishments to increase sales.
The comp plan survey also makes no mention whatsoever of
priorities, despite the fact that the CCA tried to scuttle the $1 million bond referendum
to implement the Ninigret Park Master Plan because according to them the plan
contains no “priorities.”
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| This single page is supposed to tell our town leaders everything they need to know in order to guide Charlestown's land use policies for years to come. |
Still, I wanted to give the CCA the benefit of the doubt, if
for no other reason than to close off potential avenues of rebuttal for CCA
pundit Mike Chambers.
So I took a look at previous comp plans surveys both in
Charlestown and other neighboring towns. Come to find out, Charlestown’s 1990
comp plan survey contained four pages
of detailed, quantifiable questions asking people to rank specific items on a
scale of 1 to 5 in terms of importance or priorities.
And when Richmond last updated its comp plan, the town
conducted a survey with a grand total of 34 questions—quantifiable enough
questions to make pie charts from the responses, to boot. The survey was
conducted online over a two-month period and the results are available on the
town’s website; see Appendix A here. Plus Richmond
held a workshop.
Perhaps in anticipation of the upcoming burden of having to
conduct the comp plan survey, the CCA made sure the first bill
introduced in the General Assembly by our new CCA-supported state representative,
Blake Filippi, would exempt
the Charlestown Planning Commission from having to process any comprehensive
permit applications from for-profit developers while the commission is in
the throes of revising the comp plan. Except strangely enough, the bill would
apply only to Charlestown, not any of the 38 other RI cities and towns that are
also currently revising their comp plans, despite the fact that New Shoreham
(Block Island), which is also part of Filippi’s district, just eliminated
their town planner position and folded it in with the job of GIS
specialist, so you’d think their planning department might need to be relieved
of some duties as well in order to complete their comp plan in a timely
fashion.
(For the uninitiated, comprehensive permits are the dastardly
plans those evil developers are constantly afflicting the Planning Commission
with seeking to—brace yourself—enlarge the town’s housing stock. Dealing with
said permits is pretty much the entire job of the Planning Commission. When
they don’t have enough permit applications to occupy their time, they tend to
get up to nonsense like regulating
shrubbery and mulch.)
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| And of course not a single question was asked about the town’s recreational opportunities, surprise, surprise. |
So it seems clear that the purpose of this current “survey”
is not to actually obtain information about the needs and preferences of
ordinary non-CCA-affiliated residents and that the actual decision-making about
the comp plan will take place at the closed CCA steering committee meetings and
not in open view of the public.
I don’t have any illusions about the CCA changing course and
deciding to respond to the will of the people. The CCA has always had its own
priorities and has never shown any inclination to compromise on any of them. If
we’re to wrest control of town government back from their authoritarian hands,
we’re going to have to turn them out in the next election.
But in the meantime, now that the CCA is on the ropes a bit
after their bogus “conservation easement” on the Charlestown Moraine Preserve
was voted down and the Ninigret Park bond won—despite CCA opposition—by a
resounding 2-to-1 margin, let’s take this opportunity to let the CCA know what
else we want to see happen in the rest of town. Fish that survey out of your
recycling bin and fill it out. Make sure to add any questions you think should
have been asked but weren’t. This is a democracy, after all.