Another CCA deal looks to overcharge taxpayers for purchase of open space
By Will Collette
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| This is the photo used in the tax assessor database to represent the property (assessed at $312,800) that the CCA wants to buy at a likely price in excess of $800,000 |
What makes this land deal shadier than usual is that the
authority to seek the funding was granted last October on a party line vote of
3-2, with all CCA-sponsored Councilors voting yes, even though the name of the seller, the location
of the land and the actual asking price was deliberately withheld from the
public.
The CCA has pushed Charlestown deeper and deeper into secret
government. We have decisions for the Council made by the CCA Steering
Committee which meets in secret. We have systematic hiding of public records by Town
Administrator Mark Stankiewicz. But I have never seen a land deal like this one that is so cloaked in secrecy.
Now we have winkled out the location of the land –
Charlestown Map 25, Lot 10 – and with that information we can now reveal the
seller’s name and the town’s assessed value for the property.
The property is owned by Carl E. Richard of Shannock and is located at 66 Carolina Back Road. The assessed value of this property is $312,800.
There is a garage on the property that was assessed at
$110,900 in 2011 but is now assessed at only $9,000. The photo of the property
posted on the town’s Tax Assessor website shows what looks to me like a paved
vacant lot with a pile of junk (photo, above left).
The assessed value of the land alone only went up modestly
in the past decade from $299,500 in 2011 to $303,800 in 2020. Most of us who
live north of Route 1 have seen our land assessments climb sharply, but not
this land.
The total assessed value of this property declined from $410,400 in 2011 to $312,800
making this land we are about to buy for $800,000-plus one of the few in
Charlestown to see a significant drop in value.
We're still waiting to see the proposal the CCA/Town Planner submitted to DEM and what fantasy they concocted to justify a $400,000 grant on a $800,000+ purchase price for this property worth only $312,800.
The total property is 102 acres but the DEM news release
about the grant says the town plans to acquire only 90 acres. That raises the
question: what happens to the other 12 acres?
The last piece of the puzzle is the actual asking price for
the land.
But it seems pretty certain that Planning Commissar Ruth
Platner and the CCA Town Council majority are determined to rip off Charlestown
taxpayers again.
If you have any doubts about my analysis, read on to see screenshots from the Tax Assessors database the shows you all the detail and more.
From Charlestown’s Tax Assessor’s database:
§ 11-18-1 Giving false document to agent, employee, or public official. – (a) No person shall knowingly give to any agent, employee, servant in public or private employ, or public official any receipt, account, or other document in respect of which the principal, master, or employer, or state, city, or town of which he or she is an official is interested, which contains any statement which is false or erroneous, or defective in any important particular, and which, to his or her knowledge, is intended to mislead the principal, master, employer, or state, city, or town of which he or she is an official.
(b) Any person who violates any of the provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, upon conviction, shall be imprisoned, with or without hard labor, for a term not exceeding one year or be fined not exceeding one thousand dollars ($1,000).