The Charlestown Town Council December 2 Special Election

Who is best for Charlestown?

By Will Collette

Now that the Blue Tide has swept over Nov. 4’s off-year elections, it’s time for Charlestown to focus on its December 2 special election to pick a successor to Rippy Serra whose unexpected death created a vacancy.Rippy served as Council vice-president, was a stalwart in the Charlestown Republican Town Committee (CRTC) and a leader in the non-partisan Charlestown Residents United (CRU) that ended the long rule of the Charlestown Citizens Alliance with landslide wins in the 2022 and 2024 elections. The December 2 election features three women who will appear in the following order on the ballot. 

At the top of the ballot is Democrat Jill Fonnemann well known to patrons of the Rathskeller where she works as beverage director and has organized numerous community fund-raisers. She is endorsed by the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee (CDTC) and the CRU. Spoiler alert: Jill is also my personal choice. Second on the ballot is Laura Rom, chair of the CRTC, who wants to keep Rippy’s seat Republican. She currently serves on the town Planning Commission and chairs the Charter Revision Commission. She is endorsed by the CRTC and shares a joint endorsement from the CRU with Jill Fonnemann. In a statement, the CRU explained why it issued this unusual joint endorsement:

A Message from Charlestown Residents United (CRU)

As many in the Charlestown community know, Council Member, Rippy Serra passed away this past August.  His dedication, integrity, and commitment to serving all residents left a lasting impact, and his loss is still felt by many in our town.

As we look ahead to the upcoming election to fill this important Council seat, Charlestown Residents United (CRU) recognizes the contributions that both candidates - Laura Rom (R) and Jill Fonnemann (D) - could bring to the Council.  We believe each candidate offers valuable experience and a strong commitment to serving our community.

Consistent with our mission as a nonpartisan, community-focused organization, CRU supports both candidates equally and remains committed to a respectful, informed and inclusive process.

We hope every resident will take the time to learn about each candidate’s vision, values and priorities and vote in a way that best reflects their hopes for Charlestown.

Together, we can continue fostering respect, transparency and collaboration in our community.

Charlestown has the distinction of being governed effectively and without drama – despite the partisan rancor roiling the country – by the CRU’s bi-partisan coalition. Together, they ended the financial mismanagement, shady land deals, secrecy and cover-up that marked the 10-year reign of the CCA. Thus the dual endorsement.

The third name on the ballot is a familiar one to any resident who follows local politics, Bonnita B. Van Slyke who is endorsed by the CCA.

Van Slyke on the right. Her puppet master
Ruth Platner to the left

Van Slyke has become the CCA’s main spokesperson, delivering the script prepared for her by the CCA’s de facto leader Planning Commissar Ruth Platner.

I’ve devoted a lot of time to debunking the endless stream of false statements that came from the Platner-Van Slyke duo over the past 10 years. There are a total of 62 articles so far featuring Van Slyke. You can read them all by CLICKING HERE.

The CCA is already cranking up its propaganda machine. As usual, they seem compelled to lie, even when it is so easy to disprove them. Here’s a “whopper” (one of Van Slyke’s favorite words) in their latest piece about the CCA and Van Slyke’s greatest claim to fame:

“Reduced the tax rate to one of the lowest in Rhode Island and adopted a policy to reserve sufficient savings to protect taxpayers in the event of emergencies.

This is a two-part false claim. First, the CCA did NOT reduce the tax rate and certainly not during Van Slyke’s tenure from 2014 to 2022. Simply look at the tax rate table from Town Tax Assessor Ken Swain that shows the tax rate steadily increased when the CCA took power in 2008 and dropped dramatically when the CRU kicked them out in 2022.

The CCA took power in 2008 and
were kicked out by the CRU in the
2022 election.

While Charlestown’s tax rate is very low compared to other municipalities, property values driven by non-resident purchases, not anything the CCA did or didn’t do, that determined your property tax bottom line.

Second, the CCA policy of raising the actual taxes you pay to pad the town’s surplus fund account spawned such scandals as the $3 million that went missing (“misallocated” was the term the CCA used).

It drove a series of shady land deals where Van Slyke acted as Platner’s puppet plus a systematic cover-up campaign by CCA tool, former Town Administrator Mark Stankiewicz.

Van Slyke's other recent campaign pieces are also packed with easily disproved and discredited claims as we'll be showing you over the coming weeks.

Over the month of November leading up to the December 2 special election, we’ll be covering these issues and more. 

We’ll look at why Charlestown needs Jill Fonnemann, a young, fresh new face, on the Council. 

We’ll also examine Van Slyke’s past record and current claims to see what Charlestown will get if she is returned to the Council.

Here are the ways you can vote:

You can also get an application for a mail ballot by e-mailing Town Clerk Amy Weinreich at arweinreich@charlestownri.gov. Amy turned my own request around very quickly.

Last Tuesday, November 4, record numbers of Americans turned out for off-year elections. “No Kings” translated into a Blue Wave that swept from Virginia to California sending a clear message that Americans do not want a corrupt, inept and repressive government.

We had that in Charlestown for 10 years under CCA rule. Your vote for Democrat Jill Fonnemann keeps Charlestown on a forward track for the benefit of all Charlestown’s people.

Van Slyke launches comeback with another installment of “Slyke of Hand”

CCA Council candidate deploys her usual mix of twisted history and blatant false statements

By Will Collette

Ruth Platner (l) and Bonnie B. (r)

Former Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) Town Council member Bonnita B. Van Slyke wants to return to the Town Council by winning the December 2 Special Election to fill the void left by Council Vice President Rippy Serra’s unexpected death. This is her second comeback attempt after her last place finish in a field of ten in last November’s General Election.

During her 8-year run on the Council, she served as CCA founder and de facto leader Ruth Platner’s reliable lapdog, often taking ridiculous positions that Platner herself wouldn’t say publicly.

For background, Ruth Platner uses her perch as chair-for-life of the Charlestown Planning Commission to wield power over land use decisions. When the CCA controlled the Town Council, she used them to rubberstamp her shady land deals.

Platner also used compliant CCA acolytes to publicly promote her more extreme positions. Mike Chambers from the CCA client group, the Sachem Passage Association, used to play that role but in recent years, the job shifted to Bonnie B. especially after she left the Town Council in 2022.

Her positions were so outlandish that I began a popular series I dubbed “Slyke of Hand” to refute, with documentation, her CCA propaganda. Here’s one of my favorites where Van Slyke tries to justify secret shady land deals.

Another favorite was a yarn she spun having to do with a ladder she bought when she was young. This story is supposed to explain how the CCA-run town government managed to “misplace” $3 million in town funds unnoticed for almost two years but nonetheless needed to put even more taxpayer money in various random surplus fund accounts. Her explanation:

“When I consider what is prudent, I think of the time I rented an apartment on the third floor of a 100-year-old building. The building had no external fire escape and one staircase. The building had survived 100 years; however, I purchased a foldable metal fire escape that could be lowered out a window, hoping that I had planned well enough.”

Her most recent efforts have focused on an especially peculiar CCA practice of over-taxing Charlestown property to build up vast amounts of surplus cash. Here’s the backstory:

In 2015, the Platner-led CCA won a squeaker of a victory, winning voter approval by eleven votes to issue $2 million in bonds to acquire land for open space. Van Slyke cites the language of that ballot measure:

“Shall the Town of Charlestown finance the acquisition, preservation or protection of open space or any interest therein alone or in conjunction with federal agencies, state agencies, land conservancies, land trusts or preservation organizations for preservation and approve the issuance of bonds and notes therefor in an amount not to exceed $2,000,000?” [Emphasis added (by the CCA).]

Van Slyke ignores the part of the ballot measure that says “…approve the issuance of bonds and notes therefor in an amount not to exceed $2,000,000.” That’s me adding the emphasis because as a taxpayer and voter, I think part about how the land will be purchased is the essential part of the measure.

Platner giving former Town Council Prez. Tom Gentz
his instructions before a Council meeting
(photo by Will Collette)

After the bond passed, Platner went on a buying spree. But instead of using low-interest bond funding that voters authorized, Platner used the compliant CCA-led Council to do the deals in cash, using uncommitted surplus funds – your tax dollars. Most of Platner’s deals were marked by paying far above the town property assessments.

Van Slyke fuzzes over the over-priced deals by noting matching money from DEM except that the ballot measure calls on the town to seek outside funding and partnerships. This is not some brilliant CCA achievement but represents compliance with the direction of the voters.

For reasons that have never been entirely clear, the CCA drifted into a policy that essentially committed Charlestown to pay for capital investments with taxpayer cash rather than low-interest municipal bonds. Maybe in their personal lives CCA leaders don’t believe in mortgages or car loans. They made it clear they didn’t want to issue bonds, despite voter approval. Maybe it’s about Bonnie B.’s ladder.

I wonder why the CCA fought so hard for that 2015 open space bond measure, given they didn’t want to use it.

Anyway, Bonnie B. now accuses Town Council President Deb Carney of cheating the voters by wanting to issue the bonds that voters approved ten years ago.

Van Slyke herself admits the CCA spent a million bucks buying land without issuing the voter approved bonds. That violates what the voters approved in 2015.

She condemns Deb Carney because Deb thinks taxpayers deserve some payback by putting funds misappropriated by the CCA back into the General Fund. There is NO evidence that Deb wants to spend the remaining bond authorization on anything other than what the voters approved in 2015.

Van Slyke now claims “Certainly, the Town Council should not float a bond without taxpayers being able to vote on whether they approve of $1 million to $2 million in new spending in a general election.”

Bonnie – get your story straight. The voters already approved the bonds in 2015. Issuing a bond to replenish the General Fund simply redresses the CCA’s past financial mismanagement; it's NOT about new spending.

But the truth, however inconvenient, has never stopped Bonnie B. from making false claims.

Charlestown’s December 2 Special Election to fill Town Council vacancy

Important vote for Charlestown’s future

By Will Collette

Democratic council candidate Jill Fonnemann

Three women will be running to fill the Town Council vacancy left by the death of CRU leader and Council Vice President Rippy Serra.

We avoided a primary when one of two declared Republican candidates, Sandra Puchalski, withdrew, leaving Laura Rom as the only Republican in the race. Rom chairs the Charlestown Republican Town Committee (CRTC). She currently serves on the Charlestown Planning Commission.

The Democratic candidate is political newcomer Jill Fonnemann. Jill is a member of the Charlestown Parks and Recreation Commission and is beverage manager at the Rathskeller. This will be her first run for elected office.

Bonnita Van Slyke

The Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) is sending in their old warhorse, former Town Council member and the CCA’s spokes-troll Bonnita Van Slyke. This will be her second attempt at a comeback after she finished last in a ten-person field in the 2024 election.

Since Rippy's death, the current council has four members, all endorsed by Charlestown Residents United and evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. The CCA lost its last Town Council seat in the 2024 election.

I can’t remember Charlestown having a special election in the 25 years Cathy and I have lived in Charlestown. Whether the four main town political forces follow their usual election practices in this special election remains to be seen.

Laura Rom, Republican candidate

On Tuesday, Oct. 7, The three candidates must turn in their nomination papers signed by at least 50 Charlestown registered voters. Since they are all collecting signatures, it’s likely all three will qualify for the ballot.

With no primary likely, we get to skip a number of steps to proceed directly to action steps leading to the December 2 election. Key among them is the November 2 deadline to register to vote.

You have until November 12 to apply for a mail-in ballot. That’s also the first day of early voting (at Town Hall). Early voting continues until December, the day before the actual election.

Charlestown municipal elections usually involve lots of yard signs as well as mailers in addition to door-to-door canvassing. How many signs and mailers depends on how much money is behind each candidate.

Generally, candidates count on their endorsers to handle campaign finance and expenditures. As usual, the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) starts with the biggest cash advantage with a current balance of $8,905.85. Throughout its history, the CCA has relied on big donations from non-residents and wealthy property owners. They often raise thousands of dollars in the final weeks of any election.

Their arch-rivals, Charlestown Residents United (CRU) goes into this election with a cash balance of $3,191.90. Their funding is far more grassroots.

The Charlestown Republican Town Committee (CRTC) has the second-largest war chest with $5,438.25 in the bank.

Finally, the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee (CDTC) has the smallest piggy bank - $658.31.

From now until election day, Progressive Charlestown will provide you with news, updates, event notices and pithy commentary. Let the games begin!

Charlestown will soon hold a special election to fill Town Council vacancy

Meanwhile, CCA reminds voters again why they lost the last two elections

By Will Collette

Rippy Serra, RIP

At a December 2 Special Election, Charlestown voters will be asked to pick a replacement for recently deceased Town Council Vice-president Rippy Serra who died unexpectedly on August 8. This means another election pitting Charlestown’s former rulers, the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) against their arch-rivals, Charlestown Residents United (CRU).

Rippy was one of the leaders of CRU who whipped the CCA in the 2022 election, ending their 10-year reign as Charlestown’s rulers. The CRU completed the job by beating all five CCA Council candidates in 2024.

Earlier than expected, we get to see the CCA’s plan to regain Charlestown hegemony when they pick one of their own to seek to regain a seat on the Town Council. The oddsmakers favor CCA warhorse Bonnita Van Slyke who, in the CCA’s Bizarro Charlestown, earned the honor through her last place finish in the 2024 election. But who knows, we could be in for a surprise.

Since getting pounded in 2024, the CCA has been relatively muted, posting mainly public event notices on their website. But occasionally, they post a political piece that touts their core value of stopping all housing development while pushing more town land purchases.

Dark Sky is nice, but not a cash cow

How the CCA views plans for Ninigret Park

In the 2024 election, the CCA made Charlestown’s dark sky their central campaign theme accusing the CRU of wanting to install stadium lights on every street corner, while the CCA wants to keep Charlestown dark, even during the daytime, so we can see distant galaxies with the naked eye.

Of course, I’m exaggerating but so has the CCA every time they have seriously suggested that the CRU wants to despoil Ninigret Park so they can obliterate the nighttime sky. The difference is that I’m joking and they’re not.

The CCA launched a new dark sky offensive right after losing the 2024 election with a piece called Stargazing Tourism: How Charlestown’s Dark Skies Could Boost Our Local Economy under the byline of Sarah Fletcher. Fletcher is a losing CCA Town Council candidate who had a 6^th place finish.

In this article the CCA claims Charlestown is ripe for “astro-tourism” through which Charlestown can emulate England’s northernmost region, Northumberland. The CCA claims Northumberland takes in “an estimated €25 million each year from visitors who come just to enjoy the stars.” As usual, the CCA doesn’t source their claim and I could find nothing to back it up other than articles that discuss the region’s high hopes for tourism.

Northumberland and Hadrian's Wall. From Wikipedia, 
By PaulT (Gunther Tschuch) - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

I’ve been to Northumberland and neighboring Scotland. I went there to walk Hadrian’s Wall, as well as some ancient castle ruins. There is an enormous swath of dour, treeless moorland between Newcastle and Edinburgh, attractive in a Heathcliff-Wuthering Heights sort of way, where indeed the sky is dark and great for stargazing. But there’s no evidence of the CCA’s claimed tourist bonanza.

As if they knew this article was coming, the CCA ran a piece this morning noting a positive mention in Travel and Leisure magazine about the Frosty Drew Observatory in Ninigret Park. My congratulations to Frosty Drew but I remain unconvinced this will have any effect on Charlestown's tourism economy.

Look, I’ve often said I love our dark sky – I wanted to be an astronomer when I was a kid. Relative to Providence, our sky is wonderful. But I’ve travelled enough to know that the CCA’s fetish for dark skies only means they’ve never seen the sky over Montana. Or New Mexico. Or the Rockies. Or Nebraska. Or even New Hampshire and Vermont. Given the multitude of places near and far with darker skies than ours, it’s silly to think our small patch of night sky will make us a tourist mecca.

Unless the CCA manages to black out South Kingstown, Narragansett and Westerly and bans cars from travelling at night with lights on, Charlestown will never be the black hole tourist haven the CCA wants it to be. Besides, given how our population during the summer swells from 8,000 to 30,000, do we really need more tourists?

If the CCA wants to run on the dark sky issue again in the upcoming special election, fine.

The frenzy to buy more open space

The CCA has also ventured opinions about how the CRU is managing the budget and dealing with the balance left in the town’s open space bonding authority.

There’s a tie-in between the CCA’s odd and ultimately dysfunctional management of town finances and their dark sky fetish since it all seems centered on CCA founder and de facto leader Ruth Platner’s fixation on the need to endlessly expand town-owned open space.

According to maps in Platner’s own Comprehensive Plan, more than 60% of Charlestown’s land mass is already protected from development. 

Platner’s iron-fisted control of the Charlestown Planning Commission has made new housing construction as difficult as possible even under new state legislation to alleviate the affordable housing crisis.

In 2015, Platner championed a $2 million bond that Platner used as collateral to acquire land, usually at inflated prices, to set aside as open space. 

Contrary to Platner’s claim that she has the voters’ mandate, the 2015 bond issue passed by only 11 votes. That’s a margin of less than 1%.

Despite the bond authority, the actual purchases of land – over a million dollars’ worth - were made through the use of taxpayer money from the town’s General Fund with some state taxpayer funding. That doesn’t count the $2.14 million that came out of 2004 bonds to buy the moraine property that was proposed as the site of the Whalerock wind turbines.

We’ve been paying cash rather than issue the low-interest municipal bonds authorized in the 2015 referendum. This fits the CCA’s peculiar notion that the town should generally pay in cash for capital investments rather than issue bonds like normal municipalities.

Remember, we all avail ourselves of low-interest financing such as mortgages and car loans to make major capital investments. For normal people, it makes more sense to use credit than saving for years to be able to pay cash for a house or a car or stove.

These days, you only see major cash transactions when money laundering is involved or purchases by elderly folks who grew up during the Great Depression. I don’t propose a spend-and-borrow spree but do suggest we should act like a normal municipality.

The result of the CCA credit-phobia was the creation of various accounts throughout the Charlestown budget to cover various contingencies. The CCA also increased property taxes nearly every year during its reign to pump up the town’s Uncommitted Fund Balance.

They were reluctant to spend any of that money except, of course, on Platner’s shady land deals.

The Saw Mill Pond scam

Ruth Platner complained bitterly after one such deal fell through. She blames CRU Council members for blocking the 2022 Saw Mill Pond deal even though it was one of the CCA Council members who caused the deal to fail. It’s a case worth a closer look especially since it’s a key Platner bullet point in her case against Charlestown Residents United.

This deal began in 2021 with a mysterious, unprecedented motion by then CCA Council rep Bonnita Van Slyke to authorize Charlestown to pursue DEM funding for a piece of property. She wanted the location, name of the owner and even the proposed sale price kept secret from the public. The CCA majority on the Council naturally approved this motion.

In early 2022, DEM approved a $400,000 50% matching grant. That meant the deal price was going to be at least $800,000. We also found out that the piece of property was ALREADY designated as open space and had been getting tax breaks for years under the Farm, Forest and Open Space program. The assessed value of this property was $312,800. 

CRU Council members Deb Carney and the late Grace Klinger pushed for an honest appraisal before buying land for more than double the assessed value since it was already open space. The 3-2 CCA majority usually overrode such objections, but not this time.

Former CCA Council member Cody Clarkin (←left) recused himself because his mom was an abutter. Without his vote, the deal died on a 2-2 tie vote. 

So ended the CCA Council majority’s last shady land deal before voters booted them out of power later that year.

How much is enough?

Generally, the CCA believes you can’t have too much money salted away. The CCA still takes that position, criticizing the CRU-led Town Council for failing to continue to build up the fund balance. For its part, the CRU has held that raising taxes just to salt away cash to never use it except in dire emergencies – or to satisfy Ruth Platner’s land lust - is poor money management.

If they were still controlling Charlestown, the CCA would probably put all of the town's revenue into mayonnaise jars buried in former Budget Commission Chair Richard Sartor's back yard. 

It's a fair question to ask how much the town needs to save especially since the Trump regime has made it clear states and localities are on their own in local emergencies. We already have enough uncommitted cash to run the town for a year with no outside help. But the CCA wants to add more plus some unspecified amount for other catastrophes that might occur over a 10 year period.

Charlestown is lucky to have so much cash that we can even have this conversation, but at what point does it become ridiculous to pay more taxes to soothe the CCA’s anxieties?

The CCA’s antiquated beliefs in squirreling away cash ultimately bit them in the ass. Having so many excess fund accounts led to sloppy money management that culminated in the infamous 2022 “$3 million oopsie.” Town auditors noticed $3 million was missing, later found to have been “misallocated” for two years to a fund where it didn’t belong.

Rather than learn the Watergate lesson that it’s the cover-up that gets you, the CCA tried to lie, deny and deflect their way out of trouble. However, it cost the CCA the 2022 and 2024 elections.

Getting our money back

The CCA has pitched a fit over a proposal from Council President Deb Carney to actually issue the $2 million in open space bonds and use half of it to reimburse the town’s General Fund for the money the CCA spent to buy land for Platner.

Platner says this would violate the will of the 50.9% of the voters who ok’d the 2015 bond issue. Except, as Platner knows, the ballot question read:

“Shall the Town of Charlestown finance the acquisition, preservation or protection of open space or any interest therein alone or in conjunction with federal agencies, state agencies, land conservancies, land trusts or preservation organizations for preservation and approve the issuance of bonds and notes therefor in an amount not to exceed $2,000,000?” 

The CCA used General Fund money to buy the land, not bond money. Deb Carney’s proposal to use the bond authority to put money back into the General Fund keeps faith with the voters’ intention to issue bonds for open space buys.

The key word is “therefor” which means “for that object or purpose.” Voters approved $2 million in bonds to “finance the acquisition…of open space…” not to set up an untouchable cash kitty. Paying for land deals from the General Fund and then failing to use bonding authority to put the money back was not what voters approved in 2015.

I hope Platner and the CCA test their self-serving interpretation of the 2015 bond referendum with today’s voters in the upcoming special election. I also hope Charlestown voters will pay attention and come out to vote. Our town budget only drew 160 voters out of 6,895 active voters on the rolls.

We’ll see how close I’ve come to forecasting how the CCA will approach the upcoming December 2 Special Election. In my opinion, the main issue remains the same as it was for the last two General Elections: who can you trust to manage YOUR money?

It's official: Charlestown Special Election to Town Council vacancy caused by the death of Rippy Serra is December 2

Notice posted by Charlestown Town Clerk Amy Weinreich

Special Election – Town Council Vacancy

A Special Election will be held to fill the vacant Town Council seat.

Declarations of Candidacy

Available at the Town Clerk’s Office (4540 South County Trail, Charlestown, RI 02813)

Also available online at the RI Secretary of State Candidate Calendar

Filing Period

Declarations must be filed in person at the Town Clerk’s Office on:

Thursday, September 25, 2025 – 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Friday, September 26, 2025 – 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Election Dates

Primary Election (if required): Tuesday, November 4, 2025

Special Election: Tuesday, December 2, 2025

Resources

View the full Election Calendar, forms, and FAQs

Request a Mail Ballot

Additional updates will be posted here as they become available.

Questions?
📞 (401) 364-1200
📧 arweinreich@charlestownri.gov

RIP, Rippy Serra

Popular store owner and community leader dies in his sleep

The following is from Charlestown's website: It is with deep sadness that the Town shares the news that Councilman Richard “Rippy” Serra passed away peacefully in his sleep at home in Charlestown.   Rippy was a devoted public servant, a committed member of our community, a loving father, and a proud grandfather. He was also the proud owner of Rippy’s Liquor and Market for many years, a local business that became a familiar and trusted part of Charlestown.   His unwavering dedication to serving others and his kind, generous spirit touched the lives of many and will be deeply missed.   Over the years, Vice President Serra served multiple terms on the Town Council. He was actively involved in the Memorial Day Parade Committee, served for many years on the board of the Charlestown Chamber of Commerce, and acted as the Council’s liaison to the Senior Center.   His legacy of service, community, and compassion will not be forgotten Town Council President Deborah Carney commented:   I knew Rippy for over 25 years, and I am grateful to have called him a friend.  I had the pleasure of serving on the Town Council with Rippy in 2002 and again from 2022 to the present.   Rippy was generous and continually contributed to local groups. He volunteered both his time and made financial contributions to many organizations. Rippy was dedicated to helping others. He was passionate in his beliefs and stood by his convictions. He was never afraid to speak his mind.   Rippy was a tireless advocate for Charlestown, his constituents and friends.     His passing is a tremendous loss to our community and all that knew him. He was a friend and I will miss him. Paid for by Charlestown Residents United P.O. Box 412 Charlestown, RI 02813 Visit our Website   Charlestown Residents United | PO Box 412 | Charlestown, RI 02813 US

Van Slyke ignores more than a decade of CCA’s corrupt and unethical political appointments

Slyke of Hand returns with another fact-challenged gripe from Bonnie Van Slyke

By Will Collette

The CCA's 2024 campaign slogan

Sometimes I feel sorry for the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA). For the first time since 2008 when the CCA won every Charlestown Town Council seat, they have NO CCA-endorsed candidates on the Council. Last November, Charlestown voters elected all five candidates endorsed by Charlestown Residents United (CRU) and rejected all five CCA candidates.

Even though I admit to being biased for CRU and against the CCA, I think the record shows that the Council under Deb Carney’s and Rippy Serra’s leadership has been doing a good job. A major example: the most recent report from the Rhode Island Auditor General shows huge improvements in Charlestown’s finances and fiscal management under the CRU’s leadership.

So I feel sorry the CCA has to twist facts and history like pretzels to come up with some issue that will help them recover their lost political mojo.

The latest is CCA mouthpiece Bonnie Van Slyke’s effort to turn a routine appointment to fill a vacancy on the Planning Commission into a crime against humanity. I've covered a number of previous Van Slyke tomes in the on-going "Slyke of Hand" series.

According to Van Slyke, the Council violated all that is sacred by appointing Laura Rom to fill Lisa St. Godard’s seat after St. Godard resigned just days after winning re-election.  Van Slyke said the appointment was the “reverse the will of the voters.”

Here is the CRU’s crime as presented by Van Slyke:

“For at least 30 years, and likely for the entire existence of the Planning Commission since 1982, resignations have been filled by moving up the elected members and then creating an empty spot at the bottom, in the position of the 2nd alternate. The 2nd-Alternate position is where all previous unelected appointments have been made.”

That's Ruth Platner on the left and her BFF
Bonnita Van Slyke on the right

Except this isn't true. We need to look back no further than 2018, when Van Slyke’s boss and soulmate Charlestown Planning Commissar Ruth Platner finished dead last in her re-election bid and by some miracle, she jumped the line from 2^nd alternate to retaining her position as Commission chair.

Van slyke says appointing Laura Rom to fill the vacancy violated the “will of the voters” especially because she finished last. So, Bonnie, please explain in non-weasel terms, Platner’s rise in 2018 from her last place finish at the polls to being given the top leadership spot.

Also false is Van Slyke’s claim that the CRU “Town Council ignored over 30 years of precedent in how to fill such a vacancy, ignored other language in the Charter that makes clear the intent for such appointments, and chose to reverse the will of the voters…”

In fact, there is no such provision in the Charter. When the Charlestown Charter Review Commission was working on proposals for changes to the Charter, they ASKED the Planning Commission and other town commissions what Charter changes they wanted on the 2024 ballot. Here was the opportunity for Platner and the Planning Commission to codify this sacred order of succession in the Charter. Instead, Platner and her minions responded with crickets.

Why did Platner take a pass? Simple: if this principle was in the Charter in 2018, Platner’s last-place finish at the polls would have cost her the Chair because she would be legally prohibited from jumping the line.

In fairness to Bonnie, just about all of the crazy stuff she claims originated in Ruth Platner’s letter to the Town Council (which was appended to Van Slyke’s article). As usual, Van Slyke did no fact-checking of her own and just went with Boss Platner’s polemic. 

Do as we say, not as we do: a history of CCA political patronage

Patronage has been a hallmark of the CCA since its inception. They enthusiastically apply the spoils system of awarding positions based on political loyalty instead of merit while purging and punishing anyone – even their own people – for insufficient fealty to the CCA’s core principle of doing whatever Ruth Platner tells them.

2008-2010

At the top of this article, I noted that the newborn CCA swept the 2008 Council election and installed the first all-CCA Council.

By 2010, the CCA decided they needed to purge their own Council and ran a true-blue CCA slate to take them out. They succeeded in knocking out three of their own 2008 nominees and gave us the dynastic and spectacularly incompetent leadership of Boss Tom Gentz and his Deputy Dan Slattery.

Here's Deputy Dan Slattery out hustling the
secret anti-wind deal

Why did the CCA purge its own 2008 Council? Because the 2008 all-CCA Council failed to keep up with the CCA’s 180-degree flip-flop on the issue of wind energy. They thought the CCA was pro-wind, based on a November 2009 Council presentation by none other than Tom Gentz showing popular support for wind energy.

Gentz was also an enthusiastic supporter of a test facility called the “Met Tower that operated in Ninigret Park to explore the efficacy of land-based wind energy in Charlestown.

Little did the CCA Council know that CCA leaders Gentz and Deputy Dan had been secretly schmoozing the Sachem Passage Association to line up their financial and political support in return for the CCA declaring its unabashed opposition to the proposed Whalerock industrial wind project. The 2008 Council didn’t know about the secret deal-making and paid the price.

2013-2014

The next big purge also involved the Whalerock wind project and was done as a political favor to the Sachem Passage Association. The CCA targets were Zoning Board of Review members who were insufficiently willing to ignore zoning law to block Whalerock. So in 2014, in an incredible display of nastiness, the CCA dumped ZBR members Dick Frank and William Myers.

They were replaced with CCA stalwarts Cliff Vanover (Ruth Platner’s husband) and Mikey Chambers in a process that violated the Town Charter as well as the CCA’s own policy on appointments. Shortly after that, the CCA made another patronage appointment, naming the Sachem Passage Treasurer Joe Quadrato to the ZBR.

Having the Treasurers of both the CCA and Sachem Passage serving together on the Zoning board looks a lot like an aligning of political and financial interests.

These zoning board maneuvers followed the blatantly political patronage appointment in 2013 of Mikey’s wife Donna Chambers to represent the Chariho School Committee, a position she still holds.

2017-2019

Life-long Charlestown public servant
Frank Glista

Frank Glista wrote a letter to the Westerly Sun in July 2017, describing in detail how the CCA Town Council passed over eminently qualified candidates to bring in a group of CCA loyalists without proper qualifications.

They also blatantly ignored proper procedure. As Frank described it, Council member Steve Williams set the stage:

“He stated, and I quote, "Somebody's going to yell out, real quick, a name to be nominated and that will be the nomination.... I'd like to do a ballot."  Of course, at the council meeting, a name was yelled out, seconded and nominated.... done.  Douglas Randall IV was the new Parks and Recreation Commission appointee without any discussion or debate, no ballot and not one breath of consideration toward any of the other applicants.”

Frank continued, describing the unethical conduct of none other than Bonnie Van Slyke:

“We also learned that Town Council Member Bonnie Van Slyke had a conversation with Mr. Randall, a privilege that was provided only to him.  Again, in fairness all applicants should have been "interviewed" for a position, especially if you are not going to debate their application in public.”

He offered another example the CCA spoils system:

“Th[e] council had a past two term Town Council President apply for a position on the Parks and Recreation Commission and waited 5 months only to have that position filled by a CCA founding member who had applied one week before the appointment was made.”

Finally, Frank described how he himself had been blacklisted by the CCA.

In January 2018, Councilor Steve Williams, noted above, resigned from the Town Council. The all-CCA Town Council did not follow the sacred principle of succession. Instead of appointing the next highest 2016 vote getter, the late Robert Malin (D), to fill the vacancy, they installed CCA personality George Tremblay even though Tremblay didn’t even run in 2016.

2021

Freud knew what was going on

In 2021, the CCA gave us a reprise of their patronage abuse of the Zoning Board of Review, putting CCA loyalist Jim Abbott on the ZBR to fill a vacancy instead of moving up alternate Steve Stokes (now a Town Council member) who was next in line. Abbott was not on the ZBR. 

Bonnie Van Slyke also sought to purge Stokes by replacing him with Joe Pangborn even though Pangborn was not a ZBR member while Steve was. On a 3-2 vote, the Council kept Stokes in place.

I could go on and on to discuss how non-CCA commission members were purged on Parks & Recreation, Economic Improvement, Budget, Affordable Housing, and Conservation and replaced with often unqualified CCA loyalists.

Suffice to say that as usual, Van Slyke, Ruth Platner and the CCA are trying to win political capital by accusing others of offenses they themselves blatantly commit. Sigmund Freud called this “projection.”

Why raise issues that only spotlight your own malfeasance?

I don’t understand why Van Slyke brings up issues that call for a review of the CCA’s own conduct (including her's), other than she was told to by Platner. I understand the CCA needs something to kvetch about, but please quit making stuff up, especially when the facts are so overwhelming.

There’s a reason why Charlestown voters rejected Van Slyke’s 2024 bid to return to the Town Council, giving her a last-place finish – tenth in a field of ten. Platner scarcely did better, failing in her attempt to transition from Planning to the Town Council, finishing in ninth place. Take the hint, ladies.