How business friendly is Charlestown?

GoLocalProv scores Charlestown's business appeal

By Will Collette

Ask the shopkeepers on Crossland St. how business
friendly Charlestown is

GoLocalProv.com loves to run stories on how things score in polls and ratings. They do it to the state all the time (i.e. how Rhode Island rates for food, tourism, love, hate, happiness, taxes, etc.) and from time to time, the rate towns for their ranking in various categories.

Last June, I noted that Charlestown scored #19 among Rhode Island’s 39 cities and towns, for example. such rankings are, at best, a very subjective exercise.

In yet another one of these rankings, this time on how well Rhode Island cities and towns rate in terms of business appeal, Charlestown managed to just make the list of top 25 (out of 39), coming in at 22^nd place.

Frankly, Charlestown’s score was much higher than I had expected, given Charlestown’s often open hostility to business and the CCA Party’s anti-business policies.

Take, for example, how Charlestown’s commercial signage policy is driving small businesses on Crossland Street out of town. We’ve even seen ordinances and Town Council actions by the CCA Party majority that were aimed at punishing specific small businesses.

Or how, under town ordinances, any new business construction (limited to 10,000 square feet or less) would have to get past ruthless Planning Commissar Ruth Platner.

Note to businesses considering a move to Charlestown: make sure your business plan accounts for no town water or sewage, includes a gravel parking lot, short light poles and that the covers for outdoor electrical outlets conform to Platner’s color scheme.

CCA Party platform on small business

But it was our low personal and business property tax rate that kept us from falling off the list.

By contrast, Hopkinton came in second statewide, while Coventry and North Kingstown came in fourth and fifth, respectively. Little Compton came in at #6. South Kingstown was #9. Westerly was #13.

Indeed, it was surprising to see how many towns that defend their atmosphere and character at least as fiercely as Charlestown (e.g. Barrington, Jamestown, Portsmouth) came in ahead of Charlestown on business appeal.

GoLocal says it gave second place ranking to Hopkinton because it has the state’s highest projected job growth potential (29.4%) which greatly boosted its overall economic outlook.

By contrast, Charlestown’s unemployment rate has continued to climb, even while the employment picture for the rest of the state improves. The state just posted the lowest unemployment rate in four years at 9.4%. In the latest figures, for February 2013, Charlestown’s unemployment rate is 11.5%.

Click to enlarge

Yes, Charlestown, retirees only comprise a fraction of the town’s population, around 20%. Most Charlestown residents (almost 60%) actually work for a living. Or they try to.

Most Charlestown workers have to get in their cars and drive out of town for work since (a) we don’t have the jobs here in town and (b) we have no public transportation.

One of the things that made the GoLocalProv ranking of Charlestown even more suspicious was the way they chose to illustrate the Charlestown profile. Each of the ranked cities and towns had a similar thumbnail that featured key statistics and a photo of an iconic local business.

Look at the Charlestown profile and see if you can spot anything amiss: