Charlestown Citizens Alliance has another phony issue

Platner has a million dollar grievance…it’s about her million dollar grift

By Will Collette

After a period of quiet, the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) de facto leader Ruth Platner has gotten around to complaining about a November vote by the Town Council to issue a $1.05 million bond drawn from the voter-approved 2015 $2 million open space bond fund.

Platner has been kvetching about this matter for the past few months indicating that only she has the right to make any decisions about this bond funding.

That bond referendum was approved by the narrowest of margins - 11 votes. Rather than use the bond authority for the purpose voters intended, Planning Commissar Platner went on a buying spree, spending more than a million dollars in CASH from the town's General Fund to shop for land usually at inflated prices and often as a favor to a CCA client.

Around 60% of Charlestown is already protected

Platner’s actions were contrary to what the bond referendum actually said. However, that didn’t matter since the CCA-controlled Town Council gave Platner anything she wanted from the town's deliberately bloated surplus, essentially Platner's slush fund.

In 2022, CCA financial mismanagement – which included Ruth’s slush fund and shady land deals – led voters to strip the CCA of Town Council control. No more blank checks. Voters completed the CCA’s ouster in 2024.

The winners of the 2022 and 2024 elections, Charlestown Residents United (CRU), worked diligently to repair the financial damage caused by 10 years of CCA reign. According to data from the RI Auditor General, they succeeded.

However, there was a remaining piece of unresolved business - the over a million in cash taken from the town’s General Fund for land deals, instead of using the bond as intended by Charlestown voters in 2015.

Town Council President Deb Carney (CRU) sought to redress these improper purchases by pushing for the town to issue a million-dollar bond from the 2015 open space bond authorization to pay back the town’s General Fund. Her resolution passed by a 3-1 vote.

Platner (left) giving former Town Council President
Tom Gentz his instructions. Photo by Will Collette

Contrary to the foggy claims made by Platner (and dissenting Council member Stephen Stokes), this is NOT new spending. It balances the books and corrects the CCA’s mistake, putting the money back where it belongs.

Platner says – with no evidence - the CRU majority has some nefarious scheme in mind for the $1.05 million.

This latest CCA-concocted phony issue is entirely of Ruth Platner’s creation. She was the one who decided after the 2015 bond passed not to use it and instead draw cash for her land grabs. 

Her motive? Clearly, she wants to keep that $2 million bond authority untouched as a future source of cash for her shady land deals.

Each time between 2015 and 2022 that Platner came up with a new land deal, she proclaimed voters had given her a mandate (by 11 votes) to buy land regardless of need or, most tellingly, the price. Leaving the bond authority untouched permitted Platner to use it as her excuse for more land deals, provided of course that the CCA held a Town Council majority.

Just about everyone in Charlestown loves open space. I know I do. That's why Charlestown has so much of it - about 60% of all land in town. See the town map, above.

But few, other than the CCA, want to continue to add more land blindly and stupidly. Opponents of Platner's open space Über Alles approach want future town land deals to be strategic and priced right.

Platner pines for the days when the CCA controlled the Council because that meant that SHE controlled the Council. In this year’s election, she hopes to get that control back.

She just managed to get her stooge, Bonnita Van Slyke, back onto the Council by getting 39% of the vote in Charlestown’s December 2 Special Election.

Consider this the opening salvo for the 2026 Charlestown municipal election. As they have during their history in Charlestown, expect the CCA to fire off more lies and concoct more fake issues to retake power. Let’s not let them get away with it.