Deputy Dan emerges from his hideout

Just when you thought he was on the lam, here he is again
By Will Collette

On Monday night, Charlestown will be treated to what looks like the last act in Charlestown’s own Deputy Dan Slattery’s final Crusade. Yep, on Monday, the Town Council will vote on a “Memorandum of Understanding” (MOU) with Charlie Vandemoer, our federal overseer and head of the National Wildlife Refuges in southern Rhode Island.

After several months of laying low, apparently hoping that Charlestown voters would forget all the crazy stuff he has done (e.g., his unauthorized investigations, his nonexistent documents, studies and evidence, search for “phantom properties,” the “Kill Bill” Campaign, his attack on Chariho, RHOTAP and his attacks on Charlestown working families, censorship of political opponents, not to mention his flat-out lies), Slattery will have another moment this Monday to wrap up his quest for the Ninigret MOU.



The MOU crusade began last winter when former CCA President and Town Council Vice-President Dan Slattery became alarmed that somehow, we had offended the federal government by even thinking about putting sports lights in Ninigret Park to accommodate little kids playing Pop Warner football who wanted to get a couple of extra practice hours in during the fall.

The “Battle for Ninigret” began last January when Vandemoer wrote a letter to the RI Department of Environmental Management to kill a grant proposal Parks and Recreation Director Jay Primiano had written to try to raise money for dark-sky-friendly sports lights.

Vandemoer told me that he wrote the letter because Primiano had failed to call him to discuss the lights, so rather than call Primiano himself to find out what’s what, Vandemoer wrote the letter to DEM. Vandemoer told me he wasn't trying to kill the grant, just hold it up (a distinction without a difference).

Looks like Charlie Vandemoer will finally get his MOU.
At what cost?

When Deputy Dan heard about this, he leaped into action. Rather than stick up for Charlestown and town staff, retired federal bureaucrat Slattery decided this needed decisive action.

To wit, we had a “moral, ethical and legal obligation” to fire our Town Administrator for allowing his staff to think creatively, to supplant the Parks and Recreation Commission with a new “stakeholders” group comprised largely of CCA supporters, and to hand over control of Ninigret Park – all of it, including the town’s 55 acres that belong to us, free and clear – to the federal government, and more specifically, to Charlie Vandemoer.

After a series of bizarre e-mails between Slattery and Charlie Vandemoer – documented in detail here in Progressive Charlestown (click here, here and here) – Slattery and Vandemoer recruited Town Council Boss Tom Gentz (CCA) to their cause that because we were under this perceived and, as it turned out, imaginary attack from the feds, we needed to immediately surrender.

Listening to his Master's Voice - no sports light for these kids
Tom Gentz gets his instructions from Ruth Platner

The Battle for Ninigret Park went public at the surreal March Town Council meeting where Boss Gentz announced that he, by fiat, was outlawing any new lighting in Ninigret Park. He felt compelled to seize dictatorial powers because, if he didn’t, he claimed, the federal government was going to take back Ninigret Park.

Not only did he make this completely uninformed and illegal decision from the dais, he also decreed that there would be no discussion, no debate and no vote. He, Gentz, was declaring that he is indeed the Boss of us. Thankfully, he stopped short of declaring martial law and calling out Deputy Dan's posse of CCA volunteers to defend the perimeter of Ninigret Park.

Well, as most people in Charlestown learned, this whole flap was imaginary. Indeed, I learned from interviewing Charlie Vandemoer myself that the likely instigator of a painful – and profoundly stupid – episode in Charlestown’s history was most likely Planning Commissar Ruth Platner.

Platner was the likely instigator who made
her CCA colleagues look foolish

So now we finally have what appears to be the last iteration of this “MOU.” It has devolved from being a package of MOUs as introduced by Slattery last March that gave veto power to Vandemoer, Frosty Drew Observatory and the Arnolda neighborhood through various stages of denial. At one point, Slattery denied what he had plainly written in his March MOUs, only to be called on it by Paula Andersen and Cheryl Dowdell of Parks and Recreation and by former Town Council President Deb Carney.

And what does this latest version of the MOU say? Well, of course you should read it for yourself (click here), but in a nutshell, it says that when Charlestown wants to do something new on the restricted 172-acre portion of Ninigret Park (not the 55 acres where all of the festivals and active recreation takes place), the town and Charlie Vandemoer should talk to each other to make sure the town isn’t violating what actually IS a legal obligation, on the 172 acres only, to only use the land for passive recreation and in a manner that “is not inconsistent with” the wildlife refuge.

DiLibero - a sacrifice to appease the federal gods?

From January to September this has been going on. We lost a dedicated, hard-working Town Administrator, one who had earned lavish praise from Slattery and Gentz only months before they decided they hated him.

A representative from Frosty Drew finally had to tell Deputy Dan that Frosty Drew never asked for nor wanted any sort of formal role in determining what happened in the Park.

Indeed, Deputy Dan NEVER EVEN TALKED TO THEM before putting their name in one of his MOU resolutions.

Charlie Vandemoer put a lot of his own personal capital on the line, too. And he told me he regretted ever getting into this mess or suggesting the MOU (he even wrote the first draft).

But on Monday, it looks likely that he’s going to get one. And we all get to remember the awful and ridiculous ride Deputy Dan took us on, and the terrible toll it took.

And what we end up with is one patently silly, pathetic and pointless MOU that expires in 12 months.

Sure, Dan, that’s gonna get you lots of votes on November 6.