CCA Town Council mouthpiece warns spending emergency money on an emergency will decrease the amount in Charlestown’s emergency fund
By Will Collette
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| Joined at the hip |
Her latest nonsense is a critique of Charlestown’s
proposed budget, due for a vote on June 1 to take effect July 1. In it, she argues that
the town should defer major spending to repair significant winter storm damage
to Town Hall until the Town’s 5-year capital improvement plan is adopted.
She criticized an April 27 decision by the Town Council
majority to transfer $650,000 from the town’s bloated emergency fund (a.k.a.
Unassigned Fund Balance) to deal with short-term costs exceeding the town’s
Capital Maintenance account.
To understand why this gives Van Slyke agita, remember that
the CCA holds as a sacred principle that we must accumulate a very large, unassigned fund balance – their goal seems to set a target of 100% of town operating costs– to deal with unforeseen emergencies.
Apparently, the extensive, costly damage done to Town Hall
by our recent brutal winter doesn’t qualify as “unforeseen” and thus does not
warrant drawing down emergency funds. As Van Slyke puts it:
The Town Council cannot draw down Unassigned Fund Balance year after year to lower/maintain a relatively low tax rate without jeopardizing services and /or without, eventually, services being reduced or the tax rate increased substantially. [Emphasis is Van Slyke’s]
During the Charlestown Citizens Alliance decade of control of the Town Council and Planning Commission, the unassigned fund balance was often used to fund over-priced land acquisitions by the CCA’s de facto leader, Charlestown Planning Commissar Ruth Platner.
They would pay cash so they could argue that paying way over assessed value for Ruthie's deals was somehow offset by not paying interest on voter-approved $2 million Open Space bond. Also, Platner could keep buying land using the excuse that there was still leftover open space bond money even though that was a fiction.
The open space bond fund is still a sore subject for Platner and the CCA, especially after Town Council President Deb Carney moved to correct the misuse of funds. Carney’s motion directed that just over one million dollars be transferred from the open space account back to the unassigned fund balance.
That’s the amount the CCA lifted from the unassigned fund
balance to fund Ruth’s shady land deals instead of using the bond fund the way
voters intended. But OMG, you would think that someone pissed on Platner’s
petunias! Oh the horror!
Other than that, Van Slyke’s and presumably her master’s
voice Ruth Platner, haven’t got much to say about the substance of the budget.
Expenses are increasing modestly, requiring 2.5% more tax revenue. Despite that, the Budget Commission projects that
our tax rate will actually DROP from the current $5.93 to an estimated
$5.07.
Van Slyke asks the obvious question: how can expenses go up
and the tax rate go down? For once, she actually gives the accurate answer: the tax base, i.e. property values, went way up.
There was a time when all the CCA cared about was the tax rate. They took credit for Charlestown’s comparatively low rate even though actual taxes people paid during their reign constantly increased.
Now that the Town Council
is controlled by Charlestown Residents United (CRU) and tax rates have dropped
dramatically, the CCA no longer cares about tax rates.
It’s an election year and you can be sure the CCA will make
another run at regaining control of the Town Council. But they haven’t got much
to go on when it comes to local issues.
Their main theme so far this year seems to be “local control
over zoning,” a flawed local campaign issue for two reasons. First, it’s a
dispute between Ruth Platner and the state legislature. Second, there’s no one
arguing AGAINST local control in zoning although the subject is not as black
and white as Platner and Van Slyke would have you believe.
We still have a while to see whether voters care as much
about zoning as Platner hopes they will.
