Mixed up Council listings and 11 Charter revision questions make it hard to make informed choices
By Will Collette
If you are a Charlestown voter, you face a daunting challenge of figuring out how to make intelligent decisions in the face of a ballot that doesn’t really tell you what you need to know.
Two sections of the ballot are especially cumbersome: (1) the
Town Council race and (2) the 11 proposed revisions to the Charlestown Town
Charter. Today, we’ll deal with the Council.
The Town Council
Several factors make your choice harder. First, you won’t
see the CRU or CCA labels on any of the candidates. The CRU and CCA are both
PACs with radically different visions for Charlestown.
After losing power in 2022, the Charlestown Citizens
Alliance (CCA) broke its longstanding promise to run its candidates strictly as
independents. All their newcomers are running either as Republicans or
Democrats even though none of them have any actual connection to either party’s
town committee.
Neither the Republican nor Democratic Town Committees made
candidate endorsements in time to affect ballot placement, leaving the individual
placement to a lottery.
In other words, a mishmash. Sometimes well-placed campaign
signs can help with such confusion. This year, I’m afraid both the CRU and CCA
wasted their money. Their signs are similar in appearance and crowded-with
lists of names that are almost unreadable to passing motorists.
The mailers are somewhat more helpful because at least you
can see the names of the officially endorsed candidates though the effect is
diminished by the excruciating amount of detail crammed into each mailer.
In Charlestown, party labels (i.e. D versus R) matter less
than CRU versus CCA. There are sharp differences on important issues between
the two political committees that should guide your choice.
The Big Issues
Let’s review.
Taxes. Everyone’s
favorite. The Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) claims to be the party of low
taxes. Their
record shows the contrary. Under ten years of CCA rule, Charlestown’s tax
rate grew steadily and the actual tax paid by households increased as the CCA siphoned
off town money to make shady land deals, allowed town municipal costs to climb
to the highest in the state, and strangled small business growth.
The tax rates from 2011 to 2023 show a steady rise
under the CCA. Source: Charlestown Tax Assessor.
In the two years since Charlestown Residents United (CRU)
ousted the CCA from power, the tax rate is down. So is the actual tax residents
have had to pay.
NOTE: To get much more detailed analysis of Charlestown taxes, financial
management and the differences between the CRU and the CCA on these subjects, CLICK HERE.
I include links backing up each detail as well as to the state Auditor General
who supported my assertations that the CCA messed up the money and the CRU has
been effectively fixing it.
Town Financial Management. This
was the major factor that led to the CCA’s defeat in 2022. They
messed up the money. They misplaced $3 million for almost two years, ran up
a huge deficit, and, instead of fixing the problems, they spent the past two
years denying the problems existed, blaming the messenger and mourning the
departure of the individual town officials most responsible for the problems.
According to the Rhode
Island Auditor General, the CRU wiped out the CCA deficit, reduced town
debt by 25%, reduced expenses by $1.5 million, increased town savings by 17%
and improved pension funding. These are hard, documented facts showing a
remarkable turnaround in town finances under the CRU’s leadership.
Charlestown Economy. The
CCA covers its fanatical devotion to expanding open space by claiming this is
good for tourism and, by extension, the town economy. They’re fine with Charlestown
perking up on Memorial Day and then dying on Labor Day.
While tourism does boost seasonal businesses, it forces
Charlestown to pay for a bloated infrastructure designed to handle a summer
population that triples the town’s size. What jobs are created are low wage
with no benefits and held by folks who can’t afford to live here. That’s really
all the CCA’s got on the economy. If you don’t believe me, check
the town Comprehensive Plan, hand-crafted by CCA leader Ruth Platner..webp)
No matter how tasty, burgers are not
the key to Charlestown's prosperity
The CCA still uses Planning and Zoning to torture small
businesses. Because of CCA restrictions, Route One still remains our Boulevard
of Broken Dreams with its array of empty businesses.
For a preview of what a new CCA term of power would do to
small business, check
out their new “Design Standards.” If the CCA regains power, these
micro-managed minutiae will become law and further destroy small business. The
CRU by contrast, blocked Planning Commissar Ruth Platner (now a Town Council
candidate) from making these “standards” an ordinance.
The Environment. The
CCA claims supremacy on all matters environmental, but do their claims pan out?
They claim they are responsible for Charlestown’s dark sky, yet they diddled
for years on a draconian but unenforceable anti-light ordinance when they could
have gotten much
better lighting compliance by helping businesses and residences convert to
low-impact lighting.
They added some more open space even though more than 60% of
Charlestown land is a protected from development. Many of the CCA’s
land deals were with insiders, mainly CCA supporters, and nearly all at way
over assessed value and even land that was already classified as open space. Despite
their open space zeal, the CCA bitterly opposed, and tried to block Frank
Glista from selling 20
acres to the state Water Resources Board as a protected water resource.
The CCA concocted multiple fake issues about Ninigret Park
conflating plans to provide temporary portable lights at the field behind Town
Hall to allow Peewee Football to go a couple more hours in the fall into a
major crisis. The CCA forecast such lights would shut down the Frosty Drew
Observatory and trigger the federal government to take back Ninigret Park. Utter
nonsense.
The CCA has shown little interest in any
other environmental issue other than open space. They routinely ignored
hazardous waste problems, especially at Ninigret Park dating back to the
decommissioned Ninigret Naval Air Field. They effectively
banned all wind power, even small residential units. They
botched the fight against the Copar Quarry and even allowed the
mob-connected owners to acquire a second quarry in Charlestown.
They claim they are leaders in the climate change fight,
even though they have done nothing, other than to claim credit. Real
credit goes to our state
Senator, Victoria Gu, and state Representative, Tina Spears, both Democrats,
for getting legislative passed and funding for climate resilience.
Charlestown Residents United (CRU) in its two years in
office has not caused the environmental disaster predicted by the CCA and, in
fact, kept a steady, even hand on environmental matters and clearly states it
intends to protect our rural community.
Housing. The CCA has opposed all forms of new housing. Period.
They have been tolerant toward some building by rich people in their voter
strongholds along the shoreline, but remain adamantly
opposed to affordable housing, workforce housing, family housing or senior
citizens housing.
Former CCA
leader George Tremblay even claimed that building elderly housing will only
attract rich senior citizen speculators who will buy affordable senior
housing and then flip it as market-rate housing. He based this on a debunked
story out of New York City.
The CCA’s primary weapon to block housing has been
exclusionary zoning accompanied by nitpicking and delay to drive up costs.
Planning Commissar Ruth Platner, now running for Town Council, was the master of
exclusionary zoning. She covered her practices by claiming that families with
children were a plague because they would cost taxpayers beaucoup cash when the
kids attend Chariho, even concocting
a mathematical formula to “prove” her thesis.
Charlestown Residents United (CRU) has not been able to
overcome Platner’s roadblocks, though a lot hinges on the November election.
The CRU’s stated position is to support affordable housing for Charlestown’s “workforce,
seniors and adult children.” Getting this done will require the CRU to hold the
Council majority and change the majority on the Planning Commission.
Secrecy and cover-ups, panic and
alarm. Under the CCA, we saw one shady land deal after another,
often overshadowed by fake alarms and outside threats, whether from the Tribe, Amtrak
or “others.” Often the truth behind these deals and bogus alarms was uncovered
by diligent investigation through the town’s public records.
The CCA figured out they might get less grief if they had
their stooge, ex-Town
Administrator Mark Stankiewicz “weaponize” the Access to Public Records Act,”
RI’s open records law. Starting with “SPAgate,” Stanwiewicz slowed responses to
records request to the maximum allowed by the law, used every exemption to
withhold records, blacked out vast amounts of text in whatever records were
finally released, and charged the maximum fees they could get away with.
Stonewall Stankiewicz
The CCA says it is pledged to “provide open, honest,
responsible leadership. Their track record says otherwise.
The candidates
Both the CRU and the CCA are running full slates of five
candidates for Town Council. Both are a mix of Democrats and Republicans. The
only two “independents” are hardline CCA people, the aforementioned Ruth
Platner and her puppet, former town Council member Bonnita Van Slyke.
Four of the CRU slate – Deb Carney, Rippy Serra, Steve
Stokes and Peter Slom – are already on the Council and have a commendable
record as previously discussed. The fifth CRU candidate is well known Breachway
Grill restauranteur Craig Marr.
Based on their records, characters and the strength of the
CRU’s performance in its first term, they’ve got my vote.
I’ve already given you ample reasons why Ruth Platner is not
qualified to serve on the Town Council. Her pal Bonnie Van Slyke holds all the
same beliefs, but with an added deficit of consistently making goofy arguments
that are filled with lies and nonsense.
I wrote an entire series labeled “Slyke of Hand” devoted to
fact-checking and rebutting Van Slyke’s nonsense. CLICK
HERE for the final installment.
About the remaining three CCA candidates, to paraphrase
Donold Trump, some might be “very fine people,” but all I really know about
them is that they were willing to run as CCA candidates while appearing on the
ballot under their registered parties, despite having no actual ties to the
local Democratic or Republican committees.
I can say this about them: if you run under the CCA label,
you are not a free-thinking individual. You must toe the CCA party line,
meaning strict obedience to Ruth Platner, or you will be punished.
The CCA set their Politburo style right from the start by
purging their first elected Town Council. They won a clear majority but turned
on their own people. Why? The CCA Councilors supported wind power development
in Charlestown largely because at that time, the CCA was pro-wind, especially
their leader Tom Gentz.
But after the Sachem Passage Association made a political
deal with Gentz’s partner in crime Dan Slattery to do a 180-degree turn to
oppose wind power in the form of the Whalerock wind development, the CCA
Council majority couldn’t keep up with the shift. The CCA excommunicated them.
In its second run for power, the CCA ran a brand new slate,
led by former wind-supporter but now opponent Tom Gentz and Dan Slattery and
ousted all but two of the former CCA apostates.
On those rare occasions when a CCA Council member has failed
to obey Platner, they usually come to the next meeting to push for an opposite
position. For example, CCA’s Susan Cooper initially voted her common sense to
end anti-Indian Joe Larisa’s contract, but at the next meeting, after a trip to
the woodshed, Cooper pushed a “Motion to Reconsider” to reverse her own vote
and rehire Larisa.
Van Slyke actually
said “One would hope that the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee
might put an end to the telling of whoppers such as this one spouted by someone
who is a CDTC member.”
That may be the way the CCA operates, but that’s not how it
works in a democracy. And that’s the last reason I offer for voting to keep the
Charlestown Residents United (CRU) majority.
