The final month before Charlestown town elections - early voting starts next week

Lowkey campaigns, but stark contrasts and high stakes

By Will Collette

This is the endorsed slate of Charlestown Residents United town office candidates

Early and mail-in voting starts on October 14 for the November 3 General Election. This year’s perennial struggle between Charlestown’s former rulers, the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA), and the current majority faction, Charlestown Residents United (CRU) has been pretty low-key compared to prior elections. Fewer yard signs, fewer mailers, less fireworks.

That’s because Charlestown’s new CRU leadership for the past four years has brought more competent, responsible government after 10 years of CCA chaos. Gone are the CCA’s mismanagement, secrecy and paranoia. The craziness has been turned down to a mere background buzz. Not surprisingly, the CCA has failed to come up with a full slate of candidates for town office for the first time in memory.

When Charlestown Residents United ousted the CCA’s Town Council majority in 2022, they did so after the CCA demonstrated it could not properly manage the town’s finances. The highest visibility evidence was a “misplaced” $3 million that for almost two years was somehow lost in the Byzantine system the CCA created. That's the “$3 million Oopsie” that no one in the CCA would accept responsibility for causing.

It didn’t help the CCA’s cause that they used that money, and more, to finance questionable land deals. And, completely missing the Watergate lesson that “it’s the cover-up that gets you,” the CCA tried to prevent the public from knowing what they did by having their lapdog Town Administrator Mark Stankiewicz use every trick in the book to keep the records out of public view.

The CCA learned you can’t screw up the money and stay in office. The CRU by sharp contrast, resolved the financial mess the CCA created to the point where a detailed report by the Rhode Island Auditor General showed how the new CRU majority improved Charlestown’s fiscal systems:

The four years of Council control by Charlestown Residents United have been largely drama-free. Under the CCA, Charlestown seemed to be continuously assailed by “threats,” often imaginary, that supposedly only the CCA could handle.

Under the CRU, it seems the only chronic emergencies are weather related – drought, wildfires, sea level rise and severe storms – and this council has shown its ability to proactively handle these problems.

Here's a typical example of how CCA's flunky
Stankiewicz responded to open records requests. He actually
made you PAY to get records like this.

Gone is CCA lapdog Town Administrator Mark Stankiewicz who told me to my face that he worked for the CCA not the people of Charlestown. He showed his mettle by covering up public records that showed how badly he and the CCA-controlled Town Council and Planning Commission screwed up the money and conducted shady land deals.

The CRU replaced Stanky with highly respected former Charlestown Police Chief Jeffrey Allen who has managed the town’s business without rancor or controversy.

The CCA first took total control of the Town Council in 2010.
Tax rate = $7.48. Under the CCA, it rose steadily to a
2016 peak of $10.21. When the CCA was booted in 2022,
the rate was $8.17. Under the CRU, the rate has dropped
to the current $5.05. The CCA's claims about the tax rate
are untrue. Source: Charlestown Tax Assessor.

During the CCA’s decade of control, they constantly touted Charlestown’s low tax rate, while failing to acknowledge that the tax rate is only one of two major factors determining how much property tax you pay. The second factor is property valuation.

But if you look at the actual numbers, under the CCA, tax rates went up every year as did the actual tax Charlestown property owners paid. 

Under Charlestown Residents United, the much-touted tax rate went down dramatically due to the sharp rise in property values.

The CCA, and especially its leader Ruth Platner who also has run the Charlestown Planning Commission, has continually tried to convince Charlestown voters that we are on the brink of environmental disaster. 

Again, says the CCA, only the CCA can save the town. This year’s theme has been “local control.” 

That’s Platner’s code for the threat that “people from Providence” might diminish her long-held sole control of what gets built in Charlestown.

To put it bluntly, Platner equates “local control” with control by her.

Charlestown property taxes are affected mostly
by market swings. Source: GoLocal

It’s been a challenging four years for Ruthie. Loss of control of the Town Council meant that she could no longer direct her Council majority to support her own anti-family, pro-nonresident agenda. And it could get worse if she loses her CCA-majority on the Planning Commission.

In the November 3 General Election, Charlestown voters could quite easily vote Platner off the Commission – she and her minions face a strong challenge from the CRU slate for Planning. With four seats on the ballot, obviously Platner needs to finish in the top four. Plus she needs to get her slate elected to maintain her majority. Otherwise, she can no longer tell any of her minions who get more votes than her to step aside so she can continue her reign as Planning Commissar.

I’d love to see Charlestown voters send Ruth Platner into retirement once and for all.

I also hope that with another term for the Charlestown Residents United Town Council majority, we can see the resolution of some unfinished business. These include:

Homestead Tax Credit. The CRU majority succeeded in getting the General Assembly to authorize Charlestown to change its tax code to grant yearlong residents a break on their property taxes as other RI shoreline communities do. The CCA long opposed the Homestead tax break, arguing that this would somehow be “unfair” to nonresident homeowners, who coincidentally finance much of the CCA’s political activity. A CRU majority needs to write the ordinance to enact this long overdue tax relief.

Tax Fake Fire Districts fairly. Many coastal towns have homeowner associations (HOAs) who have found a legal loophole to style themselves as “Fire Districts” even though they have no ability to fight fires. Charlestown has two: Shady Harbor and Quonnie. Between them, they own millions of dollars in prime shoreline real estate yet pay little or no property tax, shifting those taxes on to the rest of us. These two neighborhoods are solid CCA territory so naturally they were protected while the CCA ran the town. A CRU majority needs to end the privileged tax treatment enjoyed by fake fire districts and tax their property as they would any other HOA.

Adopt prudent Bad Actor policies and practices. Charlestown buys goods and services from a variety of businesses and also awards lucrative permits and licenses to a variety of others. It does so without any policies to judge whether those businesses are honest and ethical. The CCA’s Town Administrator Mark Stankiewicz actually granted the notorious Mob-connected Copar Quarry a business license to operate a quarry right off Route 91 on the bank of the Pawcatuck River. The CCA spent thousands of your tax dollars to fight the Dollar Store’s effort to site a store in the Cross Mills village district. These and other questionable businesses would have been blocked if Charlestown had enacted a policy that barred doing business with companies or individuals with bad track records. We can set our own criteria so long as they are reasonable and fairly applied. We can stop doing business with crooks. A CRU majority should make sure Charlestown does not do business with criminals.

Tax breaks for volunteer firefighters. The Charlestown Fire District is currently in another drive to recruit more volunteer firefighters. This is a regular problem when we ask people to step up for the hard and dangerous work of protecting people’s lives and property. I am in awe of those who do this and think they should be rewarded. One straightforward way to do that is to give them a generous tax break on the property or auto tax. We can work with the Fire Districts on a fair formula for earning the tax cut (i.e. length of service, response to turn-out calls, etc.) but let’s do it, both out of gratitude and to help with recruitment. A CRU majority needs to act.

All of these ideas have been kicking around a while. During the decade of CCA reign, they were all non-starters. The CRU majority has now had enough time to study these issues and, if they receive a continuing mandate from the voters on November 3, they should act posthaste.