Taking a short break

Message from the Editor

By Will Collette

I'm taking a bit of a vacation from Progressive Charlestown. I'll still post important announcements, but I am taking a break from the pace of fully stocking the site with articles every day. I don't expect this to be a long break, but who knows?

The people want bread and circuses. They will definitely get a circus

It's hard to accentuate the positive, but I will try

By Will Collette

The Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) got whipped again by Charlestown Residents United (CRU). All five CCA Council candidates were rejected. All five CRU candidates were elected.

The CRU picked up another Planning Commission seat.

The CCA's consolation prize, for what it's worth, was getting voters to reject most of the Charter revision questions the CCA opposed.

I am unspeakably shaken by Trump's win and the apparent loss of Congress to the MAGA mob, but there's nothing I can do about that except urge you all to get vaccinated and make whatever energy-saving improvements you need in your house before Bobbie Kennedy Jr. abolished the national vaccine program and the MAGA's wipe out green energy programs.

Over the coming weeks, we'll have time to ponder what else we must do, but for now, let's review the state and local results where for the most part, the good guys won.

Charlestown Town Council

Rippy Serra (CRU) edged out Deb Carney to win the right to the Town Council President's chair. Unless he declines, Deb would move to the VP slot. Voters re-elected 3rd-place finisher Steve Stokes, elected new Councilor Craig Marr of Breachway fame and gave Peter Slom his first full term.

The best CCA finisher, is Sarah Fletcher who ran as a Democrat and had the good fortune to appear first on the ballot. She finishes in 6th place and out of the money.

Planning Commission

CCA leader Ruth Platner and her dog's body Bonnita Van Slyke were soundly rejected by Charlestown voters, with Platner finishing 9th and Van Slyke in last place. Platner seems likely to stay on in her role as Planning Commissar where she can continue to terrorize small businesses and homebuilders. Maybe she'll let Van Slyke take notes for her.

Platner tried to make dark skies the town's marquee issue, but it clearly bombed with the voters.

 

For Planning Commission, the top vote getter was CRU candidate Glenn Babcock. Here are the Planning Commission results:

Charlestown Charter Revision Proposals

Charlestown voters voted on 11 proposed amendments to the Town Charter. Charlestown ballot questions. The CCA opposed five of those questions and had reservations about Question 8 which would prevent Council majorities from blocking the Council minority from putting items on Council meeting agendas. 

The CCA got their wish on four of the five questions they opposed. 

Voters rejected Question 7 and Question 15. Together, those questions would have equalized the terms of office for the Town Council and Planning Commission at four years, staggered. Voters also rejected Question 10 which would have made the use of a Search Committee to fill Town Administrator vacancies optional. 

In a victory for the Westerly Sun, voters turned down Question 9 which would have made it optional for the town to post notices in a print newspaper. Yeah ok, the Sun needs the revenue.

Voters ignored CCA opposition to Question 14 by approving it by almost 20 points. This vote means that emergency rescue services will now be included in the Town Charter as a basic municipal service. Why the CCA opposed this question is beyond me.

Instead the CCA devoted so much of its energy to trying to make Charlestown's dark sky this year's imaginary political crisis. They tried to convince voters that only they, the CCA, can protect our wonderful dark skies by blocking all development and buying more open space, even though more than 60% of Charlestown's land area is already protected open space. 

They also put a lot of energy into pushing their point of view on the Charter revision questions, perhaps at the expense of actually getting their people elected. Maybe this will work out for them in the long-run, but short-term, the voters inflicted a crushing blow to CCA power.

State Results 

As expected, Rhode Island voters have re-elected Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Rep. Seth Magaziner and Gabe Amo by comfortable margins which is very good news. Their work in the new MAGA Congress will be a key part of any strategy to defend democracy, our basic rights and the environment against the attacks to come.

Controversial state Question 1 to convene a state Constitutional Convention lost big, as hoped. The other four state ballot questions, all for good job-creating programs, were approved by comfortable margins.

In local General Assembly races, all of South Kingstown's Democratic women won either by default or by wide margins. 

In the rematch for Senate District 38 between incumbent Sen. Victoria Gu and MAGA dude Westin Price, Victoria won by a handy 15 points. This district includes the southern half of Charlestown.

Charlestown's state Rep. Tina Spears was unopposed and thus automatically re-elected.

In Senate District 34 which includes the northern half of Charlestown, MAGA state Senator Elaine Morgan (R) beat Democrat Steve Moffitt. Last night, her margin seemed insurmountable at over 20 points, but by morning, that lead was trimmed to 8 points. Still, that doesn't count so she wins and will continue to grace the State House with her toxic personality for another term.

In neighboring House District 39, there was another rematch. Hardworking state Rep. Megan Cotter (D) faced MAGA insurrectionist Justin Price. Pundits predicted this race would be very close since Megan only won by 22 votes in 2022 and the district is one of the most conservative in the state.

They were wrong. This time, Price was sent home to watch The Price Is Right by a margin of 8 points and 654 votes.

What's next?

On the national level, I really don't know except to know that it's going to be bad.

I just turned 75. After a lifetime as an activist, it's hard to face this kind of loss though I am happy at what's happened here at home. Almost 15 years ago, Tom Ferrio and I started Progressive Charlestown as a counterweight to the Charlestown Citizens Alliance.

We did a lot of other stuff - lots of national politics, environmental news, weather reports and public service announcements, cartoons, science and astronomy. Basically whatever interested us and might interest you. A total of almost 30,000 separate posts.

Over 15 million people clicked on our posts, 2 million in the past year alone and almost 42,000 just yesterday. We never considered "monetizing" the site and just did it as a combination public service and source of entertainment for us as well as for you.

We accomplished the main thing we wanted to do when we started this thing: to bust the CCA. Now that this has been done, I am trying to decide if I want to continue and, if so, how much I am willing to put into it. I'm talking to family and friends but would also like to hear from you. 

I would really like to see others step up to keep the site going. 

Please e-mail us at Progressive Charlestown with your thoughts about its future direction. On

Progressive Charlestown readers ask: “Where’s my daily summary?”

It’s still there, but different

By Will Collette

This is the top part of the last daily summary sent out with
the old system

Last summer, readers stopped getting daily summaries of articles posted in Progressive Charlestown. Instead, they started getting a thing called “follow.it” with “Progressive Charlestown – New Message” in the subject line.

With my deepest apologies, please accept my belated explanation of what happened and why.

What happened is the old tech gadget we used to automatically send out daily summaries went so obsolete that its owners simply dropped it. 

PC Supreme Tech Master Tom Ferrio found a substitute, “follow-it”, and made the swap, transferring the addresses of all PC subscribers to the old system to the new one. I don't say this often enough, but thank you, Tom, for the role you play to help Progressive Charlestown survive.

This is the new vehicle

Anyway, that was supposed to generate an e-mail to you to ask you if you were OK with the switch. Many of you didn’t notice this among all the other spam-like garbage you see every day. Perfectly understandable.

While Tom did his end to set up the new (and frankly better looking) alternative notice, I didn’t post any sort of notice to warn subscribers of the change and to invite new subscribers. My bad.

This is the new look (sample)

You can get the new “follow-it” daily summaries whether you subscribed before or want to start getting it simply by using the box in the right hand column that says “GET NEW POSTS BY E-MAIL.”

Just add your e-mail and click on “SUBSCRIBE.”

When you subscribe, you will receive notices like the one below, with links you can use to connect to specific articles. 

It’s free and if you don’t like it, you can unsubscribe.

Reflections on 2018

An awful year and 2019 could be worse
By Will Collette

As most Progressive Charlestown readers have noticed, I have written far less than I have in past eight years.

In this past year, I have spent less time focused on Charlestown politics and more on the existential threat posed by the unindicted co-conspirator occupying the White House, Individual One.

He has done and continues to do many terrible things to this country and to much of the world. His dementia has become so apparent that only his die-hard supporters continue to believe his lies.

On the local front, Charlestown remains its own little island, deliberately aloof from the rest of the state and the world. The ruling Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) has campaigned - and won - again on their record of protecting Charlestown from a wide array of threats, real or imagined, serious or exaggerated.

Their 2018 challengers, Charlestown Residents United (CRU), made a small dent in the CCA hegemony by running on a platform of "transparency" largely focused on criticizing the CCA's style of running town government. For its efforts, the CRU got Deb Carney elected to the Town Council and Charlie Beck elected as Town Moderator.

I found the campaigns run by both the CCA and CRU to be largely absent of ideas for the future, for how to make Charlestown a better place.

Maybe in the New Year, the spirit will move the Town Council to take up forward-looking issues.
 Let's start with tax reform.

Charlestown's tax code is shot through with loopholes, especially on how property is valued, that give breaks to insiders and special interests such as two town Fire Districts that don't actually fight fires but do receive amazing discounts on property taxes. Or dubious open space or conservation property designations that reduce owners' costs to little or nothing.

CCA rejects the idea of the Homestead Credit, where full-time residents receive a tax credit for their commitment to actually living here. Narragansett adopted this in February 2017. Almost every permanent resident applied. It didn't break the bank and there was no rioting in the streets by Narragansett's rich non-resident property owners.

I think it's time for Charlestown to revisit that issue.

Charlestown honors veterans, the clergy, the handicapped and others with tax credits. That's fine, but there is more that could be done with tax credits, such as getting people to do positive things with their property.

For example, Charlestown could build on last year's Solarize Charlestown program by offering tax credits to residents and businesses who install green energy power sources.

This approach could be applied to the myriad of regulations that come out of the Planning Commission governing business lighting, color of switchplates, mulch, parking, shrubbery and more.

Rather than simply impose more costs on local businesses, why not offer credits either as an alternative or as a salve to reduce the sting?

Conversely, the town could create a tax DEBIT, such as an Asphalt Tax when new asphalt, rather than alternative, greener surfaces are installed. And while we're at it, Charlestown should repeal its ban on small wind turbines for residential use.

Charlestown's real fire districts face a chronic shortage of volunteer firefighters. The town of Bristol addresses that problem by giving its volunteer fire fighters tax credits on their home or car taxes and are looking at boosting those credits.

That's for starters.

I'd love the new Town Council to also deal with such neglected issues such as relations with our neighbors, the Narragansett Indian Tribe. They have a new chief sachem. And a certain amount of good will may still linger from cooperative opposition by the Town and Tribe to the deal the old chief sachem made to sell water from the aquifer below all of us to the infamous Invenergy gas plant in Burrillville. Can Charlestown not find a way to reconcile with the Narragansetts?

I'd love to see the Town Council devise restrictions on permitting and contracting to prevent businesses and individuals with shady pasts from causing trouble for the town. Broadly known as "bad actor" laws, we could then refuse to issue permits or spend town money with entities with a record of criminal or other legal problems.

A "bad actor" law would have made it easier to deny the Copar Quarry or Dollar Store permits.

But it's a new year and almost anything is possible.

This is the Gavlebocken in 2016, the last time it was burned. It got
torched on the first day it was completed.

I am pleased to report that our long-featured friend, the Gavelbocken ("Gavle Goat") in Sweden survived for the second straight year. The giant straw goat is erected in the town square in Gavle, Sweden and someone came up with the idea that it would make a great bonfire.

So in most years, the Gavelbocken is usually reduced to ashes before making it to Christmas. But not this year.

And speaking of bonfires, once again Frank Glista will be bringing some warmth to Charlestown by lighting up Charlestown's New Year's Eve bonfire at sundown in Ninigret Park.

If we try, maybe we can carry that glow into the new year.

Are Google and Facebook Responsible for the Medical Quackery They Host?

They make it easier for fake science on vaccines, AIDS, autism to spread.  
Who’s really to blame? 
By Michael Schulson
Biswaroop Roy Chowdhury is an Indian engineer with, he says, an honorary Ph.D. in diabetes science from Alliance International University, a school in Zambia that bears many of the hallmarks of an online scam. He runs a small nutrition clinic near Delhi. 

Two months ago, Chowdhury posted a brief video on YouTube arguing that HIV is not real, and that anti-retroviral medication actually causes AIDS. He offered to inject himself with the blood of someone who had tested positive. 

Within weeks, the video had more than 380,000 views on YouTube. Tens of thousands more people watched on Facebook. Most of the viewers appear to be in India, where some 60,000 people die of HIV-related causes each year.

After the March video, Chowdhury kept on posting. Follow-up videos on HIV racked up hundreds of thousands more hits. He also distributed copies of an ebook titled “HIV-AIDS: The Greatest Lie of 21st Century.”

When I spoke with Chowdhury by phone last month, he claimed that 700 people had gotten in touch to say they had gone off their HIV medications. The actual number, he added, might be even higher. “We don’t know what people are doing on their own. I can only tell you about the people who report to us,” he said.

Chowdhury’s figures are impossible to verify, but his skills with digital media are apparent — as are the troubling questions they raise about the role of Silicon Valley platforms in spreading misinformation. 

Such concerns, of course, aren’t new: Over the past two years, consumers, lawmakers, and media integrity advocates in the United States and Europe have become increasingly alarmed at the speed with which incendiary, inaccurate, and often deliberately false content spreads on sites like Facebook and YouTube — the latter a Google subsidiary.

Studying the death of democracy

Universities join forces on Brown-led course on why democracies fail

Gillian Kiley, Brown University

Shortly after the 2016 presidential election, Brown faculty member Robert Blair was enjoying lunch with colleagues when the conversation turned to the wealth of alarmist news reports about threats to the health of American democracy under President Trump. 

Op-eds in major newspapers and analyses in scholarly publications were warning that in America, parts of Western Europe and elsewhere, democracies were backsliding or teetering on the brink of tyranny.

Blair, an assistant professor of political science and international and public affairs, and the group — which included political science professors Jeff Colgan and Nicholas Miller of Brown and Dartmouth, respectively — began debating ideas for how they could use the tools of political science to contribute meaningfully to the discussion.

“We wanted to critically adjudicate between those alarmist reports,” Blair said, “which ones were worth taking seriously and which ones were really not. And there was a lot of enthusiasm for doing something collaborative.”

What emerged from that lunchtime conversation is “Democratic Erosion,” a cross-university collaborative course organized by Blair that aims, according to its website, “to help students critically and systematically evaluate the risks to democracy both here and abroad through the lens of theory, history and social science.”

Yeah, they’re pigs

How social networking sites may discriminate against women

Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science

Social media and the sharing economy have created new opportunities by leveraging online networks to build trust and remove marketplace barriers. 

But a growing body of research suggests that old gender and racial biases persist, from men's greater popularity on Twitter to African Americans' lower acceptance rates on Airbnb.

Now, using the photo-sharing site Instagram as a test case, Columbia researchers demonstrate how two common recommendation algorithms amplify a network effect known as homophily in which similar or like-minded people cluster together. 

They further show how algorithms turned loose on a network with homophily effectively make women less visible; they found that the women in their dataset, whose photos were slightly less likely to be 'liked' or commented on, became even less popular once recommendation algorithms were introduced.

We Need Journalists

Real reporters who do real news

By Will Collette

In this commentary, I’m going to piggy-back on a great piece by Providence blogger Beth Comery on the need for a revival of good journalism.

To me, the main role of the journalist is to find not just the facts, but the truth. 

A good journalist needs either the memory or the capacity to find the background and context of the stories he or she is presenting to the public.

The ranks of professional journalists, here in Rhode Island and across the country, have been decimated. As more of American media get swallowed up by corporate giants, profits take preference over content – as if content had no relationship to subscriber rates and advertising.

In Beth’s piece below, she focuses mostly on Providence-based statewide media. But South County’s media shrinkage is, in my opinion, even more pronounced.

Serve them with fava beans and a fine chianti

What Do You Do with Trolls?

By Diane Ravitch

Long-time readers of this blog know that we have had a more or less steady procession of trolls who have inhabited these precincts. They lurk. They come and go. Some are grumpy. Some argue; some take a thread and take it off point. 

Some are annoying. I leave them alone so long as they live within the rules of the blog (no insulting your host because you are in my living room, no cursing, no conspiracy-mongering, a basic level of civility—and no monopolizing the comments section).

I have never asked others who blog what they do with their trolls. I just play it by ear. On severe; occasions, I have banned them when they broke the rules. 

Sometimes I put them in a queue to moderate their comments before they are posted to make sure they don’t continue their bad behavior. I give them a warning before there are consequences. But I am generally very tolerant.

It turns out that there are people who actually study troll behavior and offer advice about how to deal with them. The New York Times recently published an article on “the epidemic of facelessness.” This is a phenomenon new to our age, in which people communicate without having face-to-face contact. 

Much online interaction is between complete strangers. Online interactions can sometimes allow people–in their anonymity–to unleash a level of rage and hostility that they would never express in a face-to-face encounter. Some people have received death threats or rape threats online from total strangers, which happens to be criminal activity.

Stephen Marche writes:

Wonder if the CCA blog is a target?

Justice Dept Takes Aim At Violent ‘Far-Right Extremists’ On Social Media

By Charles Topher

We’ve all seen the hateful posts, despicable memes and blatant calls for the execution of elected officials, Muslims, and “thugs” in our Facebook and Twitter feeds. It’s no secret that in promoting an atmosphere of hate and intolerance, the Republican propaganda machine has created a sub-culture of “patriots” who believe violent uprisings, coordinated attacks on Muslims and organized militias to fight the gub’mint are the only way to return America to 1789.

The pages and groups dedicated to such philosophies have attracted the attention of the Justice Department. A study grant for more than a half million dollars has been awarded to Michigan State University, aimed at combating violent extremism.

The study will concentrate on the far-right as well as extremist Muslims, with more focus on the far-right.

Conservatives are about to lose their minds, having been grouped together with the only demographic they despise more than peace-seeking liberals.

Job opportunity for Mike Chambers

StudentsFirst Launches Astroturf Group to Write Blogs and Be Trolls on Social Media

By Diane Ravitch

AlterNet reports that StudentsFirst has found a new project. It is seeking people willing to flood social media with anti-union, anti-public school, “reform” views.

The new group is called “The Truth Campaign for Teachers.” The email that landed on AlterNet’s doorstep is targeted on New Mexico, but the writer assumes that other states may have the same campaign.

Here’s a copy of the email we received from a source who says it appeared over the summer:

The Truth Campaign for Teachers (TCT) is looking for:

·3-5 New Mexicans who are willing to blog at least twice/week on a variety of pro-reform issues

·3-5 New Mexicans who are willing to comment on/promote content on social media

Bloggers

April Fool!

We'reeeee BACK!

OK, maybe a few of you figured out that last night's post was actually this year's April Fool's joke. Good for you because that's what it was.

Progressive Charlestown lives and will hopefully be around to get up in the face of our local aristocrats for a good deal longer.

We now resume our normal programming....

UPDATED: Goodbye and Good Luck!

Progressive Charlestown – the Final Edition

By Will Collette

The Gray People have finally won....

Well, we made it just past four years. Tom Ferrio and I put up the first Progressive Charlestown articles in January 2011. Since then, we have published more than 7,800 pieces that attracted two million page-reads.

We did our best to give you a different point of view than the one pushed by Charlestown’s landed gentry and rulers in the Charlestown Citizens Alliance. 

We also did our best to entertain and inform with everything from cartoons and Henri the Cat videos to serious articles on health, the environment and the economy.

We covered local events, promoted local non-profits and small businesses and tried not to miss any of Mystic Aquarium’s rescued seal releases.

Attention Cyber-bullies

Degradder, the wearable insult watch

By Jen Sorenson

Hey Mike, Cliff! You need this! Click here for the details.

Do NOT let Jenny McCarthy use the internet

Opinions on vaccinations heavily influenced by online comments

Washington State University, Science Daily

An example from Facebook claiming 108 deaths from vaccine (bogus)
versus zero deaths from measles that
fails to note that vaccines had eradicated measles in the US in 2000.
Now measles deaths are rising because of the LACK of vaccination.

With measles and other diseases once thought eradicated making a comeback in the United States, healthcare websites are on the spot to educate consumers about important health risks. 

Washington State University researchers say that people may be influenced more by online comments than by credible public service announcements (PSAs).

Writing in the Journal of Advertising, WSU marketing researchers Ioannis Kareklas, Darrel Muehling and TJ Weber are the first to investigate how Internet comments from individuals whose expertise is unknown impact the way people feel about vaccines.

Their study, "Reexamining Health Messages in the Digital Age: A Fresh Look at Source Credibility Effects," comes after a recent outbreak of measles linked to Disneyland parks in California has affected at least 100 people in the United States and Mexico.

A full plate of Charlestown Tapas sizzle

News briefs from Progressive Charlestown

By Will Collette

• Yet more problems at nearby Millstone nuke
• Conservancy closes land deal, but what about the Comprehensive Plan?
• Earthquakes: is the Big One on the way?
• Jobs: more than 50 new South County listings, prospects at Electric Boat and at Cape Wind
• New ordinance idea for the CCA Party

Feds find more safety problems at Millstone and administer a wicked harsh slap to the wrist

Local and state officials in Connecticut are dismayed that the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, when confronted with the Millstone Nuclear Power plant’s intransigence in fixing faulty cooling pumps, only issued the lowest level notice of violation.

According to state Nuclear Energy Advisory Council (NEAC) chair Bill Sheehan, Millstone’s violations are "at least a yellow flag, if not a red flag. Why suddenly does it look like they're having performance problems?"

The NEAC was set up to monitor the plant when there was, as New London Day editor Paul Choiniere put it, “a culture that discouraged plant workers from speaking up about technical problems, punishing those who did point to performance errors, while rewarding those who kept such issues covered up.”

Nukes, numbers and nuts lead off this week's Tapas

Charlestown Tapas - tasty nuggets of news

By Will Collette

NRC finally steps up oversight of Millstone nuclear plant

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued yet another notice of violation to Virginia-based Dominion Energy, owner of Millstone, our local nuke. However, this time they are also putting Millstone’s Unit 3 reactor under added scrutiny.

The plant operator has had on-going problems with maintaining a steady, reliable flow of cooling water without which a disastrous accident could occur – as happened at the Fukushima plant in Japan after an earthquake knocked out that plant’s coolant system. Dangerous levels of radiation were released over a 50-mile radius. Note that Charlestown is only 20 miles downwind from Millstone.

Last summer, nearby residents of Millstone were given free potassium iodide pills to be taken if Millstone should have a radioactive release to prevent thyroid cancer. Charlestown didn’t get any, though you can buy it without a prescription.

There’s another report out that suggests you should also stock up on beer. One can of beer can cut your dosage to beta radiation from tritium by roughly half. The Environmental Protection Agency's guidelines for tritium safety recommend staying well hydrated if you are exposed to radiation so your body can flush some of it out of your system. With Millstone as a neighbor, that’s good to know.

When good news is bad news

Why DOES that cat want dilithium crystals?

Captain Kirk versus the Internet
By Tom Tomorrow

Click here for my favorite Tom Tomorrow cartoon to date. OMG! ROTFL! NSFW! ICYMI! EOD!

Charlestown Tapas

Fourteen Fifteen quick takes for busy readers

By Will Collette

Where are the red light cameras?

I passed along a Channel 10 report over a month ago that said Charlestown’s long-delayed red light cameras for the intersections of Route One and East Beach and Route One and West Beach would be up and running by the end of August. 

They weren’t, plus there was no sign that the town’s contractor was doing anything to install them.

So I asked Town Administration Mark Stankiewicz wuzzup with the system and, on September 5 he said via e-mail:

“In regards to your inquiry, the best information I have is Sensys America will have the roadside equipment installed within a week. Sensys is also waiting on National Grid to connect the electric lines. The “best guess” is the system will be operational in approximately 2-4 weeks.”

Jobs

The Tomaquag Museum in Exeter is looking to hire a Marketing Associate to start work on October 1. The application deadline is September 19. Click here for details or contact director Loren Spears.

South County Community Action here in Charlestown is looking for a Special Needs/Mental Health Coordinator to work in their Head Start program. Sorry for the short deadline – September 10. Click here for details or send a cover letter and resume to jsimone@sccainc.org ASAP.

If you’re looking for work, you should sign up for daily e-mails from RI Community Jobs, a project of Brown University’s Swearer Center. Click here.

DEM is hiring 20 to 30 seasonal workers to staff the state parks, campgrounds and Goddard Park golf course this fall. They are hiring now and the jobs will run up to November 30. 

VIDEO: Charlestown Tapas

Lots more tasty tidbits of local news

By Will Collette

Misquamicut Beach project starts late

As of April 23, no sand had been moved from Botka’s sand pit at the north end of Pasquiset Pond down Routes Two and One to Misquamicut. The federally-funded beach restoration project requires 84,000 cubic yards of sand mined in Charlestown to be moved via thousands of truck round-trips to the beach by June 1 via Route Two to Route One and back again. Click here for earlier details.

They were supposed to start in early April but blew at least two weeks of an already tight window of time. They’ve finally started moving the sand and, so far, plan to work Monday through Friday, though they just got Westerly's approval to work on Saturday too. The contractor, MZM Construction of New Jersey, is subject to daily penalties of $2,385 if the job isn’t done by June 1.

Charlestown unemployment dips slightly