UPDATED: RI and local politics, in brief

DC impasse could cost RI $400 million; mapping road fatalities….Will Schilling go back to Massachusetts?....Sonquipaug neighborhood wants a $430,000 xmas present….Mageau-gram….Setting the record straight

By Will Collette

Higher taxes on working families? At the end of December, federal legislation will expire that gives every working person a 2% cut in their payroll tax. That saved the average worker $1000. Also in that expiring legislation are federal extended unemployment benefits. 

Members of Congress generally want to extend this legislation but cannot agree on how to pay for it. Democrats want a one-year 2% surtax on the top 1% wealthiest Americans. Republicans are united in opposing a tax hike on the rich, but divided on whether they want to cover the cost of the legislation by either (a) simply tacking it on to the deficit or (b) making even more cuts to social programs. And there are the members of the Republican Tea Party caucus who want to end federal unemployment benefits and don't really care about the payroll tax cut.

The estimated cost of failure to pass the extension on Rhode Island: $400 million in higher payroll taxes. 

Mapping tragedy. There is a new interactive map that allows you to see exactly where people have been killed and how.  It shows road fatalities from 2001 through 2009. Sadly, Charlestown has had more than its fair share. So when we debate issues like red light cameras, speed bumps, harder penalties on repeat offenders and for DUI, it’s good to keep in mind that lives are truly on the line.

Will Curt Schilling run for Barney Frank’s seat in Congress? There is a lot of lively speculation in southeast Massachusetts about who will run for the new, open 4^th District House of Representatives seat now that Barney Frank has announced his retirement. Barney was a great Congressman and a defender of progressive causes, but redistricting made him decide it was time to retire after decades of service.

One of the names that has popped up as a potential Republican candidate is ultra-conservative former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling.   

Schilling is Rhode Island’s reigning corporate welfare queen for taking $75 million from Rhode Island  for moving his video game company from Massachusetts to Providence.  

  

He has yet to actually create a product – his first actual video game is supposed to go on the market “soon.” We’ll see whether the game succeeds and Schilling’s company 38 Studios survives. I doubt RI will ever see its $75 million again, but hey, that’s Curt Schilling!

According to the Boston Business Journal, “Schilling and his wife Shonda Schilling own a home in Medfield that used to belong to former Patriots quarterback Drew Bledsoe. The Schillings bought it in 2004 for $4.5 million, according to public records. They then listed it for sale in 2008 for $8 million, but dropped the price the following April, to $5 million.” So Schilling still has a residence in the district.

But the biggest impediment to a Schilling run is that he took Rhode Island’s bribe money and moved his 38 Studios out of Massachusetts. That one action pretty much makes a Schilling candidacy for any office in Massachusetts pretty much a non-starter.

“How will the town benefit?” That’s the title of a page one story in the Westerly Sun  The article reports the latest in the plans for the abandoned YMCA camp on Watchaug Pond – the camp where a proposed conservation development was defeated by the Charlestown Citizens Alliance and the Sonquipaug Neighborhood Association who both wanted the land converted into open space.

The defeated proposal meant millions less for the town
tax base - now Sonquipaug Assn wants us to pay more

So instead of adding several million dollars to the tax base – which is what the defeated conservation development would have added, the Y camp property stays off the tax base. Plus, the Charlestown Land Trust intends to ask Charlestown to give it the remaining $430,000 they need to buy the land.

Let’s review the math. The land, as it is, is owned by the YMCA, is covered with 15 derelict buildings and leaking cesspools, and is not taxed.. 

Ted Veazey proposed to buy the land for around three-quarters of a million to build 10 or 11 market priced homes on the 27.5 acres. He would have provided public access to Watchaug Pond and lots of open space. See the site plan, above. This plan would have taken what is now non-taxable, badly abused land and turned it into a nice little development that would add at least $6 million to the tax base.

The CCA/Sonquipaug plan is for the Charlestown Land Trust to take the land for open space. They have already gotten a $367,000 “matching grant” from RIDEM and they want the town to come up with $430,000 more. But, as the article asks, for what?

To the Sonquipaug Neighborhood Association, the idea was to block Ted Veazey’s plan so that the Y camp could continue to be a de facto extension of their own space. Most of the Sonquipaug houses are small vacation cottages on tiny lots owned by non-residents.

This whole process is a gift to them.

Will the town get recreational opportunities? According to the Sun article, Planning Commissar Ruth Platner got the Town Council to agree to go the open space route by “repeatedly stressing the need for active recreation camps in town.”

However, the grant money from RIDEM – given as the result of an application written by Platner – restricts the use of the land to passive recreation only.

Did Platner lie to the Town Council? You be the judge.

As for the idea of Charlestown taxpayers making a $430,000 gift to the non-resident property owners in the Sonquipaug neighborhood, I say NO. Not a nickel until the Sonquipaug neighborhood property owners pony up at least half of the money needed from their own pockets.

Since the land use will be sharply restricted, and only they will benefit – plus instead of gaining $6 million in taxable properties, the town takes the land off the tax rolls entirely – it’s only right that they pay their fair share. Like half of the remaining $430,000. 

Mageau-gram. We just received another pretty nasty e-mail “letter to the editor” from Jim Mageau. He’s already gotten his one free shot so we’re not going to publish this one, too. He has also sent it to the Westerly Sun and Chariho Times – maybe their standards for printing slanderous material are lower than ours. Anyway, while most of Mageau’s venom is aimed at me personally, he takes more shots at Frank Glista and, surprisingly, comes out against giving a property tax break to permanent Charlestown homeowners – you’ll be surprised to see his reasoning.

Speaking of journalistic standards…. Hats off to the Westerly Sun editors for admitting and correcting errors they made in an affordable housing article on page one last week. And they almost - but not quite - got it right. Their correction regarding Progressive Charlestown being independent and not a subsidiary of the Democratic Party is correct. But they didn't accurately correct the mistake regarding Deb Carney - she raised the issue of the town's commission appointment process twice, not once - in September 2011 and again in November 2011. Here's what the Sun published last Saturday (page A-10)::