It's Ground Hog Day! Planning Commission tonight!

Just can’t get enough

My backyard ground hog loves
Planning Commission meetings

By Will Collette

Following the principle that you just can’t have too much root canal work done, the Planning Commission will hold a Special Meeting on tonight, February 2. They need to finish the agenda they couldn’t complete on January 25^th. And what more fitting day than Ground Hog Day.

We predicted the Planning Commission wouldn't be able to complete its January 25 agenda because with three major housing developments and advisory opinions on the Dark Sky ordinance and the YMCA campground scam, it seemed very unlikely they could finish. Indeed, after four hours, the Commissioners' exhaustion really showed. The finger-drumming on the microphone stand made the Clerkbase recording all but inaudible.

Not so bad if you get enough nitrous oxide

So here’s what’s left to be done at Thursday’s meeting:

A.         Subdivision/Land Development Regulations & Zoning Ordinance Re-Write 

B.         Low and Moderate Income Housing – Program Analysis

C.         Memo to Town Council – Impact of H-5554 and S-533  Rhode Island House & Senate bills

D.        Discussion – Comprehensive Plan Amendment – Future Land Use Map & Advisory Map Zone Change –  Ranalli - AP 13 Lot 96 – 2183 Matunuck Schoolhouse Road

Agenda item A. promises to be a deadly dull discussion of a draft revision of the Planning Commission’s scope of authority over developments, written by the Commission’s consultant, the Horsley Witten Group. While I know the devil is always in the details, and that it’s through technical revisions like this that Planning has assumed autocratic control over Charlestown citizens, I would opt for root canal over this discussion.

One reason (among many) why Planning Commission meetings are so awful is that Ruth Platner is a terrible chair. She has no sense of time management. Typically, the first item on the agenda, regardless of the merits or importance, gets the most time. This meeting was made necessary by her indulgence of a two-hour long discussion of the first item on the January 25 agenda, an innocuous development proposal that she and the other Commissioners liked.

By the time the Commission gets to the end of its agenda, where the most controversial items are heard, the Commissioners are slap-happy and George Tremblay is drumming so loudly on the mic stand that the Clerkbase tape is almost inaudible. Maybe that's on purpose. Not that it really matters.

Agenda Item B is yet another discussion, and another new angle, by which the Planning Commissioners will tackle the deadly menace of affordable housing. They are going to do a detailed analysis of the state of affordable housing in the Chariho towns. You don't have to be Rev. Harold Camping to predict the outcome of this analysis.  The results are a foregone conclusion: they will say that there is no need for affordable housing effort on the part of Charlestown or its neighbors. “There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

Oh no! It's H-5554 and S-533!

Agenda Item C is another favorite Planning Commission red herring. Last year, Hopkinton and Charlestown whipped themselves up into a state of hysteria over concurrent legislation introduced in both Houses of the General Assembly at the behest of the RI Builders Association.

Though it was bad legislation, it was also DEAD legislation – neither bill ever got out of committee. 

There was virtually no activity on either bill indicating the proposed legislation had any signs of life. But attacking home builders is how the Planning Commission appeals to its NIMBY base, even if you have to make up issues. Or maybe there really are monsters under the bed.

Agenda Item D is a proposed change to the Comprehensive Plan to benefit the Ranalli family. There are some in town who feel the Town Comprehensive Plan is written on stone tablets handed down to Ruth Platner on the slopes of Mount Cliffy. There are others who feel the Plan is a live document that not only can but should be changed when needed. By law, the Comp Plan must be periodically reviewed and updated. We’re at the point right now where that needs to happen.

Planning Commission is like Ground Hog Day -
condemned to repeat the same mistakes

Let's not forget that we are currently embroiled in the controversy over the YMCA camp because Planning, and others, opposed changing the Comprehensive Plan so Veazey could build his proposed conservation development. The grounds for rejecting the requested zoning change were (a) the Comp Plan is a sacred document that cannot be changed (not true) and (b) it is wrong to change the Comp Plan to benefit one property owner (there doesn't seem to be any basis in law - or logic - why that should be a hard and fast rule).

If Charlestown's Planning Commission believes in equal treatment - and I'm still waiting to see signs that they believe in that principle - then the Ranalli proposal should be dealt with as they dealt with Ted Veazey's proposal.

But there's no way to predict what our wild and crazy Planning Commissioners will do, especially since Platner has this hot button item as the last item on the agenda when this Commission is usually at its worst.