CCA tries to deny and deflect its fiscal failings
By Will Collette
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For continued good government in Charlestown,
elect endorsed Democrat Jill Fonnemann for Town Council |
Call it click-baiting if you will, but there’s a remarkable
similarity between the way the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) treats
Charlestown’s financial meltdown that led to their 2022 and 2024 election
defeats and the way Donald Trump is dealing with his friendship with pedophile
Jeffrey Epstein.
I have been urging the CCA to come clean on how they managed
to lose $3 million dollars used to fund CCA leader Ruth Platner’s shady land
deals and then ran a cover-up campaign to hide what they did.
After two straight election drubbings, you’d think someone
in the CCA might have figured out that rather than deny, distract and deflect, maybe the
CCA should admit and apologize.
A key figure in those scandals is one of the December 2
candidates, Bonnita B. Van Slyke. Van Slyke was on the Charlestown Town Council
throughout the 2022 scandal but bailed out before the 2022 election rather than
be on the CCA ticket rejected by Charlestown voters.
She tried a comeback in 2024 but ran in last place, 10th
out of ten, as the CCA tried to make that election about dark skies (seriously,
the darkness of the sky was their big issue) rather than address the financial
mess they caused. The CCA lost the last of their Council seats in that election.
And now, here comes Van Slyke again.
In this special election, Van Slyke and the CCA again want
to focus voter attention on “issues” where there is no disagreement among the
three candidates – how much we all love Charlestown and its beauty, and clean
water, green forests, dark sky, and golden beaches. And critters ranging from wildlife to
dogs. She wants to talk about “over-development in sensitive areas” but without
talking about how the CCA allowed shoreline property owners to do anything they wanted.
Why does Van Slyke want to raise these issues? Because she
and the CCA want to distract voters away from other important issues the CCA doesn’t
want to talk about. These include:
· Who
can voters trust to properly manage their money?
· Who
will do the better job of keeping administrative costs and taxes down while
providing effective government services?
· Who
will run an honest and open government, free of shady deals, secrecy and
attempts to cover up mistakes?
· Why
pile up money in surpluses by over-taxing residents?
· Who
will do better at ensuring fair taxation?
Voters sent the CCA a message in 2022 and 2024: if
you screw up the money, you can’t run the town.
Obviously, they didn’t get the
message by running Van Slyke, a key player in their financial SNAFU, as their candidate in this special election.
The heart of the CCA’s money management deficiencies is its
obsessive effort to turn Charlestown into an exclusive retirement enclave for
the independently wealthy while driving out families, mostly those living north
of Route One, while erecting barriers to any new families moving in.
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All the gray-marked areas in the center of the map are
Narragansett tribal land - i.e. open space |
According to data from the town’s Comprehensive Plan, belatedly
submitted by CCA and Charlestown Planning Commissar Ruth Platner, around
60% of Charlestown is tax-exempt or tax-favored open space. See map 👉. But that’s not
enough for Platner, Van Slyke and the CCA.
Through a series of shady land deals, Charlestown expanded
the amount of town-owned open space often by buying property at much higher
than its assessed value. CLICK
HERE for a prime example.
They usually paid cash despite a voter-approved referendum
that called for the town to use low-interest municipal bonds. Paying cash meant the cost of major capital expenditures were dumped on taxpayers that year instead of being amortized over time.
Several of their land deals were blocked by public pressure
after we dug up public records exposing the details. Click on the links to see
what we exposed in two of those deals: the SPA-Gate scandal HERE
and the Saw Mill Pond scam HERE.
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Under the CCA, this was the typical response
you got after paying for a public record |
After these records wrecked the sweetheart deal behind
SPA-Gate, the CCA made their lapdog Town Administrator Mark Stankiewicz clamp
down on public information. Requests under the state’s open records law were
routinely delayed. Records requested were subjected to careful legal and staff
review to make sure that everything that could be withheld was indeed withheld.
The town charged the maximum amount it could.
The result was that records about land deals were then
offered with cost estimates of several hundred dollars payable in advance. If you paid the money, all
you eventually got were pages almost totally blacked out. See sample 👈to the left.
I believe these secrecy practices not only contradicted the CCA's claims about "open and transparent government," but also contributed significantly to Charlestown's out of control administrative costs (see table below).
Van
Slyke herself was behind the most outrageous abuse of the open government
norms when she introduced a resolution to buy a land parcel but insisted that the
name of the seller, the location of the property and the price for the purchase
were withheld from the public!
The CCA Town Council majority approved the deal to proceed.
We later discovered the land in question was the Saw Mill
Pond property that was already classified as open space and taxed accordingly
by the town. The proposed purchase price was never actually disclosed but based
on the paperwork, it had to be at least $800,000. The assessed value was only
$312,800.
Van Slyke and her CCA Council colleague Susan Cooper voted
yes to proceed with the deal. However, they were thwarted by no votes from late
CRU council member Grace Klinger and Council President Deb Carney plus the recusal ofCCA council member Cody Clarkin on ethical grounds.
If Van Slyke really wants to talk about land use, these
concrete cases of waste, fraud and abuse need to be part of that conversation.
While debates over land use raged, the town’s administrative
functions were undergoing some serious dry rot. Town Administrator Mark
Stankiewicz geared Town Hall to serve the CCA’s political agenda. Under Stanky
and CCA leadership, Charlestown racked up the worst administrative costs in the
state. That’s according to the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council. Check out Charlestown at the very bottom of this 👇table. More details
HERE.
Aided by former Budget Commission chair Dick Sartor,
Charlestown accumulated a massive surplus far in excess of what was needed.
Here’s what the Rhode Island Auditor General wrote in his report on Charlestown
about that surplus during the CCA’s final years, saying "unrestricted fund balances significantly exceeded the GFOA reserve recommendation (17% of fund expenditures/other financing uses)."
The CCA's policy resembled putting taxpayer money under the mattress.
Apparently, that excess surplus was moved around from pocket to
pocket without proper management. In early 2022, the town’s auditor reported
that $3 million had apparently been misplaced for an almost two-year period.
This came to be known as the “$3 Million Oopsie.”
Van Slyke was the public voice of the CCA in trying to deny,
diminish, deflect then ultimately attack critics of the “Oopsie.” Behind the
scenes, Stanky and Budget chair Sartor worked hard to come up with any
answer that didn’t involve blame falling on them or the CCA.
Van Slyke’s only glancing mention of this whole mess has in her most recent mailer
where she continues to plug an unnecessarily high surplus fund to deal with “hurricanes
and other crises.”
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| From Van Slyke election mailer, received November 22. |
The state Auditor General has already criticized the
inappropriately high fund balance salted away by the CCA when it ran the town. (See above). Remember: it’s your tax dollars being put away in Bonnita’s mayonnaise
jar.
I could go on but suffice to say that since the Town Council
control shifted from the CCA to Charlestown Residents United (CRU), things have
gotten a lot better. Don’t take my word for it, look at what the RI Auditor General reported:
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| Note that the final column on the right is the first year (2023) that Charlestown began to be managed by the Charlestown Residents United Council majority. The previous four years were under the CCA's control |
Cathy and I have already voted by mail for endorsed
Democrat Jill Fonnemann who is also supported by the Charlestown Residents
United. She manages a large chunk of the Rathskeller’s business which makes her
far more qualified than Van Slyke to be diligent about protecting the
taxpayers.
You can meet Jill and see for yourself why she is the best choice
for Town Council at the General Stanton Inn Tuesday night.
Let’s turn out for Jill and make her Charlestown’s next Town
Council member.
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