New Year, New Council, New start

Thinking about ways to make Charlestown a better place for all

By Will Collette

Don't miss Charlestown's 10th Annual (and possibly last)
New Year's Eve bonfire at Ninigret Park at sundown

Since the launch of Progressive Charlestown in 2011, we’ve offered an alternative voice to Charlestown residents.

The Charlestown Citizens Alliance, the town’s dominant political party, started in 2006 to fight then Town Council President and former Democrat Jim Mageau. The CCA had effectively drowned out all other voices.

They still do and as a result, the CCA Party has controlled the town of Charlestown since 2008. CCA endorsed candidates currently hold every elected position in town.

But I have a feeling that this year could be different. For the first time in six years, the Town Council is no longer controlled by CCA Party hardline ideologues.

This could open the door to some honest discussion about issues that have long been ignored, and consideration of ideas that could benefit all in this town, not just those who support the CCA Party.

We also have a recent, unifying issue cutting across political divisions: opposition to Amtrak's proposed rail relocation program.

In the hope that new Town Council leadership will bring a new open-mindedness to ideas not necessarily emanating from the CCA Party Steering Committee, I offer this outline of ideas worth a fresh look.

I have written about most of them in the past and plan to write more about them in the future. But in the meantime, in the spirit of a new year and a greatly re-shuffled Town Council, let’s think about what Charlestown can do to make itself a better place to live, work and play.

Blake Filippi’s first week at the State House

See how well he kept his campaign pledges

By Will Collette

When Blake Filippi ran against Rep. Donna Walsh, he made a lot of promises to inveigle folks like the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA Party), the victims of the Copar Quarry, the elderly and others to support him.

He promised to introduce bills* to stop state interference with local land use, repeal state income tax on Social Security, regulate quarries and mines and exempt consumers from having to pay state sales tax on National Grid’s new rate hike as soon as his feet hit the State House marble floors.

He was sworn in last Monday and his report card for his first week in office bears little resemblance to his campaign pledges.

According to the General Assembly database as of Saturday, January 10, he sponsored no new legislation, even though he told the Block Island Times just last week that he entered the legislature ready to do just that.

He was, however, listed as a co-sponsor on five bills introduced by other legislators. 

The first bill he co-sponsored, HB 5044, is a developers’ bill. According to the official caption for this bill, HB 5044 “Creates an exemption from taxation for certain residential property developments which have not been completed or, not been sold and occupied.”

During the campaign, Flipper won the CCA Party’s covert but substantial support by promising to protect local government from efforts by the state to infringe on local land use policies. This very first bill does the opposite - it directs towns to change their taxing policy to benefit builders and developers who perhaps have over-built and can’t sell the units they have built.

This will provide additional incentives for developers to come into places like Charlestown and throw up buildings before the market need is there because it will reduce the holding cost for unsold buildings.

Whether this is fair or not, I’ll leave to the CCA Party to explain…after they finish throwing up after realizing what a huge mistake they made in backing this guy against Donna (who in a million years would never sponsor or co-sponsor a bill like this). 

Let me offer these words of condolence to the CCA Party – Suckers! You just got Flipped!

Political Cronyism rules under the Charlestown Citizens Alliance

Why does Donna Chambers want to revisit her humiliating performance?

By Robert Yarnall

ZBR Chair Mike Rzewuski tries to explain how the Zoning Board works.
Donna Chambers isn't interested.

This is a reprint of Bob’s Letter to the Westerly Sun which was published in their September 5 print edition, but not the Sun’s public website. It addresses an attack letter by CCA Party appointee and current candidate to the Chariho School Committee Donna Chambers. Chambers’ letter was also published only in the print edition, not the Sun’s public website. Bob Yarnall gave his permission for Progressive Charlestown to publish his original letter.

Clarification is in order with respect to the August 28 Letter to the Sun by Charlestown School Committeeperson Donna Chambers, wife of current Charlestown Zoning Board member Michael Chambers.

Mrs. Chambers identifies me as a member of the Charlestown Charter Review Commission, a supporter of the Democratic Town Committee, and the sole member of the charter review group to “target” exclusively the Zoning Board for term limit restrictions, while ignoring similar considerations for other boards and commissions.

Three years ago I served on the Charlestown Charter Revision Commission with five of my neighbors, including Mrs. Chambers.

We volunteered for the commission in the aftermath of the Whalerock LLC Industrial Wind Turbine Proposal, spurred by our collective concern about zoning decisions that appeared to compromise the quality of life for ordinary citizens living in residential neighborhoods abutting such projects.

We were operating under the premise, later proven false, that a given town’s zoning board rulings were subservient to that town’s Comprehensive Plan.

Chambers appointment to Zoning Board may be illegal

Violates the actual Town Charter and REALLY violates the Charter change he and his wife wanted the Town to adopt

By Will Collette

On Monday night, chief CCA Party blogger Mike Chambers received an honor he has sought for the past couple of years, a Town Council appointment to the Zoning Board of Review (ZBR). 

Chambers, who calls himself “Soxman” in his many comments posted on-line with local media, is a man on a mission to convince the world that he has all the answers.

He is a stickler for the rules. He and his wife Donna not only campaigned against Whalerock but also against transgressions he felt were committed by our former Town Administrator, Town Council members past and present whom he doesn't like, town Democrats, Progressive Charlestown (me, especially) and a host of others.

When his CCA Party colleagues voted him in to to fill a newly created vacancy on the Zoning Board for one of three alternate positions, his dream was fulfilled. 

Or maybe it's just a step toward his real goal of getting the five-year term of William Meyers who was ousted as a ZBR member Monday night by Town Council Boss Tom Gentz (CCA Party). Gentz's unusual move to publicly bounce a sitting town commission member was done with support from his CCA Party colleagues Deputy Dan Slattery and George Tremblay and opposition from Lisa DiBello and Paula Andersen (D). 

Or maybe not, since his appointment seems to be in conflict with the Charlestown Home Rule Charter, and certainly conflicts with a principle that he and Donna fought bitterly to have Charlestown enact.

Let’s look at the facts.

“To the Victors Go the Spoils”

CCA packs Chariho School Committee with another acolyte

By Will Collette

First, my thanks to my colleague Tom Ferrio for his live coverage of tonight’s Town Council meeting. My Cox internet connection is having “issues,” so I just didn’t have enough bandwidth to catch it.

Overall, the Council agenda was pretty light compared to last month when the Council needed two full three-hour sessions to complete its business. 

Tonight, they finished up with 15 minutes to spare.

The big item, at least to me, was the Council’s action on who to name as the replacement for recently resigned Chariho School Committee member Andrew McQuaide. There were three contenders but only one person could be named.

Their ultimate decision led to the title of this article, “To the Victors Go the Spoils,” a phrase uttered in 1828 by New York Senator William L. Marcy to explain the right of President Andrew Jackson to appoint anybody he wanted to, no matter how unqualified or sketchy, by right of winning the election. The "spoils system" - today, we also call it "patronage." 

UPDATED: Nemo forces Town Council postponement

Postponed until Tuesday (click here) Still scheduled for Monday (tonight)

By Will Collette

Given the potential problems the town faced from Winter Storm Nemo – including the possibility of major travel disruption extending beyond the storm itself – and the forecast of more bad weather on Monday, T It’s hard to predict whether this Council meeting will take place as scheduled if the rain scheduled for Monday turns the town into slush.

But, soldiering on, as a public service from Progressive Charlestown, here is the Council’s agenda placed in the actual order in which it will be heard, with my own snarky comments and annotation.

As Town Council goers know, the official printed agenda rarely bears much resemblance to how Council meetings actually go, since the Council members invariably juggle the order of business as the planning meeting. Plus, many items get consolidated into the “consent agenda” – non-controversial items that are voted on as a bloc without discussion or debate.

Without further ado, here’s your monthly preview:

Charlestown news briefs

Town Dems and GOP re-organize….Coastal Ponds Commission meets Monday….Try CRAC – you’ll like it….Larisa’s workload….St. Andrews serves….Chariho kids shovel….Free at last, free at last
By Will Collette

Charlestown Democrats announce committee officers and roster for the 2013-14 term.

The new town Democratic team for the 2013-2014 term was announced by the CDTC. The CDTC has a full roster of 15 members. Cathy Collette and Tim Quillen remain Chair and Vice-Chair, respectively. Tom Ferrio moves to Treasurer and Suzanne Ferrio takes Tom’s former post as Secretary. Details here.

Tina Jackson takes over?

Charlestown Republicans hope to re-organize.

Failed candidate for state Representative Tina Jackson has apparently taken charge of re-organizing the moribund Charlestown Republican Town Committee. She has called a meeting for that purpose for Monday night, 7 PM at the Breachway Grill. Details here. 

There’s an interesting problem with this: under state law, all municipal party committees are required to reorganize every two years in January after each general election. Next Monday is February. But, hey, this
isn’t the first time that Tina Jackson has violated the law - or the most serious.

UPDATED: Town Council meeting highlights, so to speak

At least it was short

The meeting included some light entertainment

By Will Collette

UPDATE: The Clerkbase video links for the various parts of the meeting went on line earlier today (thank you, Amy) so you can see and listen to the discussions described below and decide for yourself if I exaggerated or made anything up.

The meeting was short – one hour and fifty minutes. Not exactly filled with drama, but it did have its interesting, even funny, moments.

Among the items discussed were red light cameras, opposition to commercial shell-fishing in in Quonochontaug Pond, beach clean-up, a bike path to the beach and paying to send students to charter schools.

No lights, cameras or action

The discussion about red light cameras was brief and part of Acting Town Administrator Pat Anderson’s report. As you may recall, the controversial subject of installing red light cameras at Charlestown’s five Route One intersections with traffic lights was resolved when the Council awarded the contract to a company called Sensys, largely on the company’s claim that they are a “local” company, even though they are definitely not. Click here for Pat's report.

There was a very bad accident two weeks ago at the intersection of Wildflower and Route One (at the Hitching Post and the motels) where a red-light runner smashed into and critically injured Melissa Verrecchia of Coventry. This is one of the intersections where a camera is supposed to be installed.

Life's little ironies

Count of absentee ballots bumps Dan Slattery out of Council Vice-President position

Paula Andersen bumps Dan Slattery out of
the Council Vice-Presidency

By Will Collette

In new vote tallies posted by the Secretary of State's office on Thursday, the order of finish in the Charlestown Town Council race changed, with Democrat Paula Andersen catching and passing CCA's Dan Slattery to become the second-highest vote-getter.

Here the irony: one of the four poorly conceived Charter Revisions approved by the voters makes it mandatory that the second-highest vote-getter be given the Council Vice-President position, even if he, or in this case, she is in the minority on the Council.

Lots of questions on this year’s ballot

Along with many candidates, eleven state and Charlestown issues to vote on

By Will Collette

When you go to the polls on November 6, you will be handed a very long and complex ballot. In addition to being faced with choices for President, US Senate, US House of Representatives, State Senate and State House of Representatives, 11 candidates for Town Council and 10 for Planning Commission, there are seven State referendum questions and four proposed charter changes for Charlestown.

Let’s talk about those referendum questions.

Here’s the very, very short version for those of you who suffer from MEGO ("My eyes glaze over"). In my opinion, you should vote YES for all seven state referendum questions. And in my opinion, you should vote NO on all four Charlestown charter revision questions.

Read on if you want to know why I plan to vote that way and why I suggest you might, too.

Another alleged failure of open and transparent government

Jim Mageau files suit alleging Council broke the law when it paid Town Administrator DiLibero to leave

Mageau charges the Town Council broke the Open Meetings law when
it voted on former Town Administrator Bill DiLibero's severance deal

By Will Collette

Independent Town Council candidate Jim Mageau filed suit in RI Superior Court on October 4 against the town of Charlestown and the members of the Town Council.

In his lawsuit, Mageau alleges that the Town Council violated the Open Meetings Act by failing to give public notice that it planned to execute a severance agreement with former Town Administrator William DiLibero at a regular session of the Town Council on April 19^th.

CORRECTED: Four proposed Town Charter changes on the November ballot

How much will these proposed Charter changes change your life?

Donna Chambers
You can't always get what you want

By Will Collette

Correction: I incorrectly listed Gary Fish as a member of Ill Wind RI. He informs me that he was not and is not a member of Ill Wind RI, nor is he in any way affiliated with the CCA. Sorry for the error - wc.

Charlestown had a very close call over the past year. We could have had some pretty terrible stuff on the November 6 ballot, but thanks to some pushback, it looks like we dodged a bullet.

I’m talking about Charlestown’s mandated biennial ritual of considering changes to Charlestown’s Home Rule Charter – our town Constitution – whether or not such changes are needed, useful, practical or desireable.

When it was time to make the appointments for this year’s Charter Revision Advisory Committee (CRAC), the applicants all came from the Ill Wind RI anti-wind energy NIMBY group. All seven Six of the seven members of the CRAC were plaintiffs in the long, messy and ultimately rejected litigation that has tied up the Whalerock industrial wind farm project. 

While I’m no fan of Whalerock – in fact, I’ve written often about its impracticality – it seemed odd to me that the Ill Winders would decide to try to stack the Charter Revision group.

A cautionary tale

By Linda Felaco

CRAC-ers take heed: MercuryNews.com recently reported that the Santa Clara Valley Water District in California may have to wait till next year to get a question on the ballot—an error that could cost the Water District half a billion dollars—because the summary of the ballot question they turned in to election officials went over the allowed number of words. Then in their haste to correct their mistake, the district’s board members violated California’s open meetings law, the Brown Act, by holding a board meeting without posting a public agenda on their website 24 hours prior (they missed the cutoff by about an hour). Now a taxpayer group is threatening a lawsuit unless the measure is pulled off the ballot.

A word to the wise: Always make sure to read directions first.

A Clockwork Charlestown

By Linda Felaco

You may have noticed that Michael Chambers’s rambling, repetitive ruminations on Oppressive Charlestown are confined to two subjects that he erroneously conflates into one, albeit only when it suits whatever “point” he’s trying to make at the moment: Progressive Charlestown (i.e., us) and the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee (CDTC), a much larger group of which we don’t even constitute a quorum. 

For months now, he has been castigating the CDTC for not handing down a platform by diktat, apparently failing to grasp that being both Democratic and a committee, there’s a democratic committee process that must be followed and the platform committee is not obligated to perform on his schedule. 

And he should be aware of this, because by his own confession, up until recently he was a registered Democrat himself. 

CRAC’s not the only town commission with late or missing records

Many town commissions lag on posting their records

By Will Collette

As Deputy Dan would put it, Charlestown has a moral, ethical and legal
obligation to abide by the Open Meetings Act

One reader commented on my article about the Open Meetings Act violation committed by the Charter Revision Advisory Committee (CRAC) that this might not be an isolated problem.

Well, that commenter might have read my mind because, in the course of responding to a request for more information from the Attorney General’s Office, I noted that there may be eight additional town commissions with tardy or missing records. That went out in a June 25 e-mail, cc’d to Town Clerk Amy Rose Weinreich.

Since then, some but not all of the deficiencies have been fixed. Just as CRAC Secretary Maureen Areglado was able to instantly produce the missing CRAC minutes, apparently so did some of those other delinquent commission.

Here’s a run-down:

Town admits the Charter Revision Advisory Committee violated the Open Meetings Act

But claims the violation was “unintentional”

By Will Collette

For the second time this week, Charlestown town government had an “oops” event over its compliance with the state Open Meetings Act.

The first time was Thursday. That’s when the judge in Donoghue v. Charlestown ruled that the Town Council did indeed violate the Open Meetings Act when they failed to properly inform the public that they intended to vote on February 13 to pay to the Charlestown Land Trust in the Y-Gate Scandal.

The second time was Friday when Town Solicitor Peter Ruggiero admitted the Charter Revision Advisory Committee (CRAC) violated the law by failing to file the meeting minutes of its final and decisive meeting on April 30.

Town Council Meeting - June Part Two Play-by-Play

by Tom Ferrio

This meeting is the continuation of the June 11 meeting. But that doesn't mean it consists of boring left-overs.

It seems that the Council grouped the hottest topics together for their second meeting of the month. Going in to the meeting it feels like this will be the title bout after some warm-up matches.

It's 7 pm and here we go...

PREVIEW: Round Two of the Town Council’s June meeting TONIGHT, June 25

Y-Gate Scandal, Platner’s Power Putsch, CRACers and Town Administrator Search Committee top the bill

By Will Collette

This second June meeting was made necessary because the Town Council grossly overloaded the regular June 11 meeting with so many controversial issues that it was simply impossible to finish that meeting at a reasonable. Even with CCA Town Council Boss Tom Gentz’s effort to bully fellow Council members into considering his two resolutions to fork over $398,000 in town money to the Y-Gate Gang.

At this continuation meeting, Y-Gate will once again be taken up near the end of the agenda, meaning late in the evening, long after the time when our Town Councilors lose their ability to concentrate. 

Business as usual, where Charlestown taxpayers, business owners and residents will get screwed with their pants on by the Town Council majority unless there people once again rally around to stop them.

Blockbuster issues on Monday Town Council agenda

Battle for Ninigret Park, the Y-Gate Zombie, Platner’s Power Grab, CRAC Questions and much, much more

Why is it that almost ALL of the Town Council's agenda feels like a
zombie attack?

By Will Collette

The Town Council meeting on Monday, June 11, is a crucial meeting for several of Charlestown’s biggest and most contentious recent issue. On a very long agenda are the following:

• The Battle for Ninigret Park, featuring presentations from National Parks Service Elyse LaForest (whose letters to Bill DiLibero got him fired), our federal overseer from the US Fish and Wildlife Service Charlie Vandemoer (our de facto sixth Town Council member), Deputy Dan Slattery’s motion to give the feds veto power over the town’s use of Ninigret Park and more. Read more by clicking here.

• The Y-Gate Zombie. Will the Town Council majority break its promise to put any payment of tax funds to buy the abandoned YMCA camp in front of the voters for a separate vote, or will they just simply give the money to the Charlestown Land Trust? Read more by clicking here. 

Platner wants more power

• Platner’s Power Grab. Will the Town Council approve Ordinance #349 that could give the Planning Commission extraordinary power over town property owners, including homeowners? Read more by clicking here. 

• CRAC’d Questions: The Charter Revision Advisory Committee has seven suggested changes to the Charter that they would like the Town Council to approve for a November vote by Charlestown citizens. Only one of the seven is really worthwhile. Read more by clicking here. 

• Dark-Sky Friendly Lighting Ordinance. Has the Planning Commission sufficiently watered down the lighting ordinance (Ordinance #347) so that no one opposes it anymore? Was there a better way to do this other than an ordinance that doesn’t really do anything? Read more by clicking here. 

Cracks in the CRAC?

CRACer Donna Chambers lashes out

By Will Collette

Charlestown town government is spending a LOT of taxpayer money lately advertising all the items that will be on next Monday’s Town Council meeting. Lots of full page, paid legal advertising, required by law, containing the text of ordinances coming up for public hearings on June 11, as well as the seven proposed changes to the Charlestown Town Charter being recommended by the Charlestown Charter Revision Advisory Committee (CRAC).

I reviewed these Charter proposals – read the most recent review by clicking here – and have concluded that Questions 1 through 6 do not deserve the Town Council’s authorization on June 11 to be sent to the voters for their ultimate approval in November.

The new Question #7 they added is pretty good, however. This proposed Charter change would create an ad hoc committee that would conduct an on-going review of town ordinances to see which are outdated, redundant, ineffective or unenforceable, and thus need to be changed or repealed.