With only days before Charlestown’s December 2 Town Council special election, CCA candidate dodges the real questions

CCA tries to deny and deflect its fiscal failings

By Will Collette

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, 10^th 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.

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.

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.”

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:

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.