Holiday greens and help send kids to camp

UPDATED: Follow the money, Charlestown campaign 2022

As usual, the CCA counts on money from out of state as well as its old supporters

By Will Collette

UPDATE: I added an excerpt of the financial disclosure for Trumplican candidate Westin Place who is running for state Senate District 38. He admits he is in debt to the IRS for unpaid federal taxes. See below. - W. Collette

In case you were wondering where Uncle Fluffy Tom Gentz ended up, the Charlestown Citizens Alliance campaign finance reports tell us. Our former Town Council Boss sent the CCA $500 from his retirement home in Sunset City, Arizona. 

Another CCA regular, Peter Hernstein is now in Fountain Hills, AZ and he sent in his check for $100. Former CCA leader and co-founder Kate Waterman sent in her $500 from Connecticut. Nothing from Deputy Dan Slattery wherever he may be (maybe he’s on undercover assignment for the CIA).

As I read through the CCA’s report for the quarter going from July 1 to October, aside from the out-of-state money, I was amazed at how much the CCA took in from its candidates, past and present, various ward-heelers as well as prominent players in many of the CCA’s controversial land deals. Very little money came from newcomers.

People who stood to gain from the aborted Y-Gate Scandal are still giving, including Joanne D’Alcomo of Boston ($300) and Russ Ricci ($250). 

So are Sachem Passage Association folks who benefited from the town’s $2.1 million bailout of their botched resistance to the Whalerock wind turbine project (we bought the land where the turbines were to be built). 

Later on, the SPA tried it again, attempting to get Charlestown to take a bug-infested parcel off their hands for many times its assessed value – we dubbed that one “SPA-Gate.”   

In addition to Peter Hernstein, listed above, the CCA received $100 donations from SPA members Donna Chambers (seeking another term on the Chariho School Committee), Town Councilor Susan Cooper (SPA Trustee for the duration of Spa-Gate), and first-time donor John Kaptinski (SPA founding father), presumably holding out hope that Attorney Cooper can somehow engineer one last CCA bailout for the SPA should she be re-elected.         

Conspicuously absent is SPA El Presidente Ron Areglado, who “managed” the campaign against Whalerock and the bait-and-switch SPA-Gate scam, although his moneyman in both scams, Joseph Quadrato, coughed up $150 to reserve a slot in future CCA cash & carry do-overs.

Arnolda is well represented with donors but oddly, Councilor Bonnita Van Slyke donated nothing. She is not running for re-election, as she is trying to sell her Arnolda estate on the pond for $2.4 million to someone who will develop the land into “your own palatial coastal retreat.” 

Not only did Van Slyke stiff the CCA party, but she actually took $535.72 reimbursement for mailing expenses rather than make it an in-kind donation. 

In past years, the CCA attempted to hide the high level of out-of-state donations by reporting their absentee donors not at their actual addresses, but at their Charlestown vacation homes. 

They only did that once in this election cycle (so far), listing $1000 donor Robert Thavenius at 10 Dudley Lane when his mailing address is listed on the Charlestown Tax Assessor database as Avon, Connecticut. His family owns two properties in Charlestown assessed at $5,071,700.

In sum, the CCA began the campaign season with $7,911.24 and raised another $8,750 for a total campaign war chest of $16,701. Of that, they have spent $9,790 so far, most of it to produce and mail those laughable 6-page, trifold, fine-print graphic novels they’ve mailed to everyone – twice.

Though the CCA seems to be incapable of competently managing Charlestown’s money, they seem to have a good handle on their own cash. 

You can look up campaign finance reports for any candidate on the Board of Elections website HERE. If you enter “Charlestown,” you can see the files for anyone who has run for office from Charlestown going back to when the BOE set up the database. You can also enter a person’s name. 

I think campaign finance reports tell you more about a candidate than any other piece of information. For example, Trumplican Westin Place of Westerly is running for Senate 38 against Charlestown’s Victoria Gu (D) and former Republican Caswell Cooke of Westerly. 

Westin Place started out as a joke candidate, but his prospects came alive when the state GOP did some fund-raisers for him. In last quarter’s financial report, Place says he took in $2,100 from people he can’t identify. He also took major donations from big GOP donors statewide. In his last filing before the election, the only named donor is Gunowners PAC who gave him $200. 

One reason I didn't take Place seriously is that he was late in filing his organization report with the BOE and thus missed the cut-off to file a quarterly report. However, he did file his ethics disclosure statement with the Ethics Commission where he made this disclosure:

It's not a very good look for a candidate for state Senate to start campaigning while showing unpaid federal taxes.

A remarkable amount of money gets spent on political campaigns. It’s only loosely regulated and only occasionally do offenses get caught, like Charlestown’s Sen. Elaine Morgan who ripped off her campaign account to pay for personal expenses. Though she admitted the offenses, she threw her recently deceased husband under the bus by blaming him for her misdeeds. 

She got off with a fine, but I hope the voters will take this into account when they decide whether to re-elect her or replace her with her fine challenger, Charlestown’s Jennifer Douglas (D).

On Monday, CCA will make third attempt to pass comprehensive exclusionary zoning ordinance

UPDATE: CCA's defense from criticism has been to focus on red herring, not the real issues for tonight's hearing.

By Will Collette

Platner told us 11 years ago what to expect

Tonight, Monday August 22 at 7 PM in the auditorium at Charlestown Elementary, Planning Commissar Ruth Platner and the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) will take a 3rd shot at passing a new zoning ordinance that will effectively ban multi-family developments.

Long a dream of Platner's, the ordinance will give her more power over land use than the Town Council and create conditions so onerous that no one is likely to even try to seek a permit for a new development. 

It also will almost certainly lead to long and costly litigation.

Rather than offer a plausible rebuttal to these concerns, Platner and her CCA cohorts have focused on a passage in a critique by Steve Williams' letter to the Westerly Sun where he asserted the ordinance would reduce the number of buildable lots. It was a minor point in Williams' letter and a trivial one compared to the monumental problems Platner's plan will cause.

But that's classic Ruthie: find a minor point you can chew on and hope it will distract from the far more serious issues. It's a variation on the "straw man defense" and I hope Charlestown residents can see through it for what it is. 

Here's my original article which ran last week:

Dressed up in the language of conservation, the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) will make its third attempt on Monday to replace Charlestown’s existing zoning rules for a set of barriers against multi-family developments that might attract families with children or worse, “people from Providence.”

The new plan will henceforth allow only “conservation developments,” and under terms and conditions that are so onerous and complex that no developer in their right mind would even try to get a permit.

Included in the plan is a remarkable power grab that essentially gives the Planning Commission ultimate power, greater than that of the Town Council. That’s a pretty bold stroke given that, under RI General Laws, the Planning Commission is supposed to be appointed – Charlestown is the only municipality in the state that still elects its planning board.

Among the most onerous conditions, cited repeatedly throughout in the ordinance, is the Planning Commission’s power to alter, adjust, modify etc., any detail within the conservation development application to suit the whims and purposes of Platner and the Planning Commission, whatever they may be at any given moment in time.

The technique is the tried-and-true method of creating conditions impossible to meet, as the CCA did when it effectively blocked ALL residential wind power by creating so many complex and expensive conditions that not one single person has gotten a residential wind turbine permit in Charlestown since the ordinance was passed a decade ago.

One of the attractions of the impossible-to-meet approach is the CCA can say with a straight face that “we’re not against wind power, we just want it to be responsible” when that’s a lie.

What you need to wear while in a
conservation development.  
Loewe via Vogue

With this “conservation development” scheme, the CCA can claim that “we’re not racist or anti-family, we just want ‘responsible’ development.” That also is a lie.

In 2011, the CCA had a chance to approve a beautifully designed 10-unit “conservation development” that was proposed by Ted Veazey, in cooperation with the Westerly YMCA that offered the added benefit of cleaning the derelict campground abandoned by the Westerly YMCA. Planning Commissar Ruth Platner and her compliant Commissioners stomped Ted Veazey’s dream flat. That was the CCA’s first major scandal, “Y-Gate,” after seizing full control of town government.

But I guess Ruthie filed away the name “conservation development” to be used in the future when it suited her agenda of blocking all development in Charlestown. And, I'm sure she hoped no one would remember what she did during the Y-Gate Scandal.

If Ruthie had cooperated with Veazey instead of screwing him, we’d have an 11 year old template for how to do this kind of development right.

But instead, we have Ruthie’s dystopian version that, in the words of Steve Williams in his letter to the Westerly Sun means “the CCA is rapidly converting Charlestown into the equivalent of a gated town.”

This is not theoretical as Williams described Platner’s proposal in real world terms:

“Ten years ago my brother and I inherited a 68-acre parcel of land in Charlestown our family had owned for over 60 years. I hired a surveyor to calculate how many buildable lots could be developed on the parcel, which had a half-mile road frontage. He came up with only nine buildable lots in the yield plan based on the planning and zoning rules at that time. We did not subdivide.

This calculation only included 40% open space. Proposed ordinance 397 with open space set at 70% would have had the town or a “legally constituted organization” controlling 48 of our 68 acres....

By use of the planning and zoning commissions I believe the intent of the CCA is to make it too expensive and complex for an average-size house to be built; that was my conclusion 10 years ago. Now, ordinance 397 will make matters even worse. There is nothing creative or beneficial about it, as claimed by Councilor Bonnie Van Slyke. It just hinders normal progress while causing landowners to suffer loss of control of their land, therefore loss of money, while allowing the town to gain possession of the land.”

When Platner’s Plan first came before the Town Council on July 11, so many people turned out at the public hearing that the CCA 3-2 council majority* could not get a vote taken because too many people still wanted to speak.

* Technically, the CCA lost its 3-2 edge when ex-Eagle Scout Cody Clarkin moved out of Charlestown and is no longer legally eligible to serve. We’ll see what Cody cares about most: following the law, honoring his Boy Scout oath or obeying Ruth Platner’s orders not to say anything.

So they rescheduled a continuation for the earliest legal date later that week, July 14. So many people showed up that the meeting could not be held due to Fire Marshal occupancy rules.

Now this third hearing scheduled for Monday August 22 will be held in the auditorium of Charlestown Elementary at 7 PM where, presumably, there will be enough space for the anticipated crowd.

Platner is scared and did what she usually does when she’s scared: she wrote a ridiculously complex defense of her proposal and posted it on the CCA website. She needed, can you believe it, 30 sections to compare what she called “lies” opposing her scheme with what she called “facts.” Read it for yourself HERE.

The Westerly Sun heavily redacted it before running it as a letter to the editor. Despite their need to fill the paper, even this was too much. You can read Ruth’s abbreviated tome HERE.

Her 30 theses stand as proof of my own criticism of the scheme: it is so complex and cumbersome that no one will be able to ever get a permit.

I think Steve Williams’ letter really got to Ruthie because she inserted what might be a tongue-in-reply although I doubt Ruth has a sense of humor. To the left is her paraphrasing of the punchline in Williams' letter and to the right, her rebuttal:

Conservation Development will create gated communities.

Roads in a Conservation Development are required to be public roads. You cannot gate a public road.

Maybe she’s trying to be cute, but I think Ruth, as usual, is missing the entire point.

Charlestown remains one of the worst towns in the state for affordable housing. It is also one of the worst towns for the high price of homes. According to HousingWorks RI, it has NO affordable rentals.

A recent survey puts “Typical home value at $613,397.”

According to Charlestown’s Comprehensive Plan (Chapter 9), not coincidentally written by Ruth Platner, the only business growth anticipated is in tourist services and hospitality, two industries with low wages and benefits. We do not have housing for these workers.

CCA approved transportation

Getting to work to clean and serve seasonal visitors will be problematic because, again citing Platner’s Comprehensive Plan (Chapter 8), Charlestown has no RIPTA service and, according to Platner, doesn’t want any. I guess workers are supposed to ride bicycles to get to their minimum wage jobs. Or take Uber. That’s also in Chapter 8 of Ruthie’s plan. Seriously.

The Comprehensive Plan (Chapter 10) considers the most likely new source of any new affordable housing to be the Narragansett Indian Tribe. Yet Charlestown, using its Indian-fighting lawyer Joe Larisa on a $25,000 a year retainer, has harassed and blocked just about every endeavor by the Tribe to better itself INCLUDING affordable housing.

And now this new ordinance completes Charlestown's virtual lock-out of undesirables such as families with children and "people from Providence."

Incidentally, if you want to read the ordinance in its entirety, CLICK HERE. What struck me is that it begins by striking out the entire existing two and a half page ordinance and replaces it with the proposed eight and a half page proposal.

On the CCA website, Ruthie’s polemic is followed by the usual comments from the usual sycophants hailing her brilliance. The comment I most enjoyed came from the CCA’s resident stable genius Mike Chambers who wrote:

“Qui bone? Who benefits from the disinformation? The people spreading it. Who is spreading the disinformation? Attend the Town Council meeting and you will easily see who is spreading the disinformation. By the way, it is the same people who spread disinformation when the town was considering a conservation easement on the Moraine Preserve. But the Moraine Preserve was already open space and not to be developed.”

For those of you who might be unfamiliar with Mikey’s opening “Qui bone?” you may be more familiar with its actual spelling “cui bono?”

Meet "Que Bone," Mikey's muse

“Que bone” seems to be some dog with a page on Facebook. “Cui bono” is Latin for “who benefits?” and is often used in law to identity the most likely suspect in a crime, as in the expression “look first at the one who has the most to gain.”

Mikey makes a historically inaccurate reference to the shady 2014 Moraine Preserve scheme where the CCA decided it would give land the town purchased for $2.1 million to save Mikey and his neighbors from a wind turbine to the Charlestown Land Trust. Charlestown voters thoroughly trashed that proposal. Mikey seems to have never gotten over it.

But if Mikey really did mean to ask “who benefits” from this proposed ordinance, it’s actually a damned good question that has a very simple answer: Ruth Platner. The ordinance would officially make Platner the most powerful person in Charlestown and would cement her legacy as the driver of Charlestown’s exclusionary, if not racist, zoning practices. 

Is it a Trojan Horse or a Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing?

They won’t stop until they can control every aspect of your property.

By Margaret L. (Maggie) Hogan, Esq.

UPDATE: The first hearing on the CCA's proposed new development ordinance (actually, non-development since the ordinance is designed to create conditions making new developments virtually impossible) was held on July 11. Even with their 3-2 majority, the CCA was unable to bull their plan through. Thus, on Thursday, July 14, the Council will hold Part 2 of the hearing. 

The Town is giving the absolute minimum required notice since the CCA obviously wants to get this done with the least amount of public hassle. The original writing critiquing the CCA proposal appears after this notice:

Here is that notice:

PUBLIC NOTICE

TOWN OF CHARLESTOWN 

Notice is hereby given that the Town Council of the Town of Charlestown has continued a public hearing, opened on Monday, July 11, 2022, open to the public, to Thursday, July 14, 2022 at 7:00 p.m. 

**This meeting will be held in person at the Charlestown Town Hall, Council Chambers, 4540 South County Trail, Charlestown RI 02813. Comments from the Public will be accepted in person only.** 

At the continued public hearing noted above, the following proposed amendment to the Code of Ordinances will be considered. Opportunity shall be given to all persons interested to be heard upon the matter of the proposed ordinance. The following proposed amendments are under consideration and may be adopted and/or altered or amended prior to the close of the public hearing without further advertising, as a result of further study or because of the views expressed at the public hearing. Any person interested in viewing the proposed amendment may view same at the Town Clerk’s office of the Town of Charlestown or at charlestownri.gov prior to said hearing.  

The proposed ordinance may be accessed through the following link: 

https://charlestownri.gov/vertical/sites/%7BDF68A5B8-A4F3-47A1-AE87-B411E21C6E1C%7D/uploads/397_-_Chapter_218-52_Residential_Conservation_Development.pdf

The CCA used to HATE conservation developments but now say they love them.
This is the plan for a conservation development proposed in 2011. The Planning
Commission stomped it to death, leading to the "Y-Gate" scandal discussed
below. - W. Collette

This article ran as a Letter to the Editor of the Westerly Sun and is reprinted here with the permission of the author.

There’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing creeping into Charlestown under the cloak of the seemingly benign and friendly title of a “Conservation Design” amendment to the zoning ordinance.” 

There will be a Public Hearing on this scheme on Monday, July 11, 2022 at 7:00 PM at the Charlestown Council Chambers. 

Proposed by the Planning Commission, the long-standing cluster subdivision regulations (which also had problems) would be repealed and replaced.

The following changes would be enacted:

(1) From 50% to 70% (depending upon the zoning district) of a property owner’s developable property would be required to be set aside for “open space” owned by the Town, or a third party such as a non-profit. This is an increase from 40%, with no stated rationale.  

This land grab would be in addition to restrictions against development on “constrained lands” such as wetlands or slopes.  So, if you have a property with 10% undevelopable land, you will be left with only 20% land that you can develop.

(2)  Of the land that will be required to be “open space” only 10% of the land could be used for active recreation. This is a reduction from thirty-five percent under the current regulation, with no stated rationale for the change. 

And, only 5% of the land in open space will be permitted to be impervious (think basketball courts or tennis courts) which is a decrease from 25% under current regulations.  And, the type of recreation allowed will be determined by the Commission and may be disallowed if it finds the recreational uses “negatively impact the conservation values.” Again, no rationale for this change.

(3) Land which the Planning Commission deems to be “environmentally disturbed or damaged” will not be accepted for a conservation development until the land has been “restored to a condition satisfactory to the Planning Commission. 

The term “environmentally disturbed or damaged” is not defined in the ordinance and could easily be interpreted by this Commission to mean land that has had some or all trees previously removed.  Far too much “discretion” vested in the Commission will undoubtedly result in denial of rights.

(4)  Maximum lot coverage for 20,000 square foot lots will be 15%, whereas the same size lot in other areas of the town permit up to a 20% lot coverage.  No reason provided for treating the same size lot differently.

(5)  The Planning Commission proposes that it retain the right to limit private ownership of the open space and reject a homeowners’ association “where necessary to contribute to a connecting greenway system or to provide public access to open space.” This is clearly a taking of private property for a public purpose, without compensation!

(6) Only single family homes permitted, no duplexes. 

These enumerated items are simply the “highlights” of this overt land grab.  If you own land in Charlestown that you hoped to develop someday, you need to read this ordinance and take appropriate steps to protect your property rights.

The CCA's peculiar land use practices

Sidebar by Will Collette

In 2011, Ted Veasey proposed a 10-unit conservation development at the site of a derelict summer camp owned but abandoned by the Westerly YMCA. The site plan is shown above.

Not only did the CCA-controlled Planning Commission kill this proposal but their leader, Planning Commissar Ruth Platner, then embarked on a bold initiative to buy that same land for almost a million dollars in town and state funds which would be given to the Charlestown Land Trust.

This was the first major CCA scandal after the CCA consolidated its power after the 2010 election, power they have held ever since. 

The scandal was marked by bogus assessments, secret back door deals, conflicts of interest galor, political kick-backs - grifting on a grand scale. These practices have set the pattern the CCA has followed ever since: buying land the town doesn't need for incredibly inflated prices (CLICK HERE for a recent example) to benefit CCA-favored cronies (CLICK HERE for a recent example).

The Y-Gate scandal that emerged from Ted Veazey's conservation development proposal was Progressive Charlestown's first major series on a town scandal. The scheme was blocked by a lawsuit brought by the much-missed late Dr. Jack Donahue, represented by Maggie Hogan,  the author of this article.

That the CCA would today embrace the "conservation development" concept, though with the CCA's special twist of imposing such Draconian conditions that it's doubtful anyone would apply, is ironic considering what they did to Ted Veazey's conservation development proposal ten years ago.

$900,000 for Tucker Estates: who’s idea was it?

On Monday, Town Council will decide whether to give away $500,000 in town money to Wakefield developer

By Will Collette

At the Monday, April 12 Council meeting, there will be a “public” hearing perhaps followed by a decision to spend $500,000 in town money and $400,000 in state funds for Tucker Estates, an over-valued piece of property owned by Brian Lind, a Wakefield developer.

Going back over Town Council meeting videos, this project was sketchy from the start. First, the town violated its own procedures for open space acquisition by actively soliciting the owner, rather than have the owner file the “Open Space Declaration of Interest.”

According to testimony by Town Planner Jane Weidman (Town Council meeting, August 11, 2020, starting at 1:23 on the video), the idea to buy the property came from Planning Commissar Ruth Platner and Arnolda’s Town Councilor Bonnie Van Slyke.

Screenshot from Town Planner Jane Weidman's unusual
August 11, 2020 testimony about how the Tucker Estate
deal started

They had their eye on a new cycle of DEM open space grants and decided this property would be a nice addition to Ruth’s open space shopping basket.

 Ruth knew about Tucker Estates because – FIFTEEN YEARS AGO - she had killed a proposal from Lind to build a 22 unit housing development.

The town commissioned an appraisal to be done on the property. For some unexplained reason, they decided to have the appraisal done based on the “extraordinary assumption” that the 22-unit housing development Platner had killed 15 years ago was somehow going to be built in the near future.

The first appraisal came in at $660,000 based on that false assumption was too low for Lind, according to Planner Weidman so she had the appraisal re-done using different comparable properties and got a second appraisal at $725,000.

That was still too low for Lind so he got his own appraisal done. That came in at $915,000 but having a generous heart, Lind has offered the town a purchase-and-sale agreement at $900,000.

Now, if you want a more realistic dollar figure for the land’s worth, minus the imaginary 22-unit housing development, look at Charlestown’s Tax Assessment for the property, which pegs its value at $333,600.

DEM awarded Charlestown a $400,000 grant, the maximum allowed, based on the town’s “extraordinary assumption” appraisals. In case you need reminding, this $400,000 in possible state DEM funding is ALSO our money.

Weidman told the Town Council that DEM has given her verbal approval for either the town’s or the owner’s appraisals, except that’s not what DEM told me.

Charlestown cannot assume DEM will go along with valuing the property based on the imaginary 22-unit subdivision. DEM will subject the property and its value to their own analysis. There is at least one Charlestown precedent where DEM rejected the town’s appraisal (see below) on one of Ruth Platner’s sketchy land deals.

Charlestown is counting on that $400,000 from DEM to cut the direct cost to the town to half a million dollars. Remember, the town has assessed Tucker Estates as worth $333,600 and here is that document: 

Who ya gonna believe? Our tax assessor or appraisals based on fairy tale assumptions?

What makes this deal smell even more is that we simply don't need to buy the land to keep it from being developed. Platner and her crusty commissioners have killed development on the land in the past and would kill it in the future. So why buy it?

That’s what will be discussed at the April 12 Town Council meeting. 

If you wish to “attend” virtually it’s relatively easy – you can click on “Virtual meetings” on Charlestown’s home page to get access to coverage via Cisco WebEx, an app you need to download. There are some instructions in the left-hand column. You can also e-mail comments to Councilors – find their e-mail addresses HERE. I’m still waiting for a response from Cody Clarkin to my March e-mail about Tucker Estates. Scout’s honor!

Also, much to my surprise, town government took my criticisms of the way access to past meetings and documents were hidden. The IQM2 program – distinctly different than Cisco WebEx – that you have to use to access past meetings was so hidden that you needed a compass and bag of breadcrumbs to find it.

That has changed. Now on the Charlestown’s home page, there’s a small print link to the IQM2 web portal right under the link to “Agendas and Minutes.” You can use this to look for yourself at the earlier Council discussions about Tucker Estates.

Most recently, the Town (actually the CCA’s) plan to buy a 4 acre property on Oyster Drive from its political allies fell through over widely different appraisals. The seller submitted a $426,000 appraisal based on the “extraordinary assumption” the land was buildable, versus a $75,000 town appraisal based on the fact the land was NOT buildable. The deal fell through.

But to me, this new Tucker Estates scam more closely resembles the Y-Gate scam in 2011-12.

The Gist: The Westerly YMCA owned an abandoned summer camp on Watchaug Pond that they wanted to dump. After the town rejected an eco-friendly 10-unit development proposal supported by the Y, the Y worked through its benefactors (who also had close CCA ties) to finagle a town purchase of the property.

The YMCA gave the town an appraisal for $735,000 that used the “extraordinary assumption” that a zoning change and development plan the town had just rejected might actually happen, along with a variety of other convenient omissions that I analyzed in THIS ARTICLE.

DEM had initially awarded Charlestown a grant for this deal, as they have for Tucker Estates. But they also saw the flaws in the appraisal and cut the award from $367,000 to $206,000. The Y-Gate deal dragged on for months as then Council President, CCA leader Tom Gentz, tried one bizarre tactic after another to get around rising public dissent.

Ultimately, public opposition was too much, even for the CCA, and the deal fizzled out. The YMCA found another buyer and that property hasn’t made the news in years.

It seems like every two or three years, Ruth Platner, the common denominator in all these shady deals, comes up with a property she just has to have, no matter how much it costs the rest of us. 

According to the new draft Comprehensive Plan, about half the town’s land area is officially open space, but Ruth seems to want to grab it all, except maybe for the seaside properties where the CCA’s base owns houses.

Ruth does her best to stay under the radar, letting others, like Planner Jane Weidman, do her dirty work. Platner doesn’t use the town’s e-mail system to avoid any disclosure of her wheeling and dealing under the state open records law.

As long as Ruth continues to exercise de facto control over town government, this will be a chronic problem that I plan to do my best to expose.

SPA-Gate is over, or is it?

Charlestown Council decides on “no action” on sketchy land deal

By Will Collette

For the past several months, we’ve been following “SPA-Gate,” a land deal where one of the ruling Charlestown Citizens Alliance’s (CCA) allies, the Sachem Passage Association (SPA) offered to sell a small patch of land on Foster Cove to the town for $426,000.

The CCA Party, a conservative political action committee funded mostly by non-residents, has held control of Charlestown since 2000. Today, they still hold a 3-2 majority on the Town Council.

Aside from the optics of yet another insider pay-to-play deal, the land value was grossly over-estimated, the mechanics of actually doing the deal were murky and the question of whether the town actually needs to buy this property were never answered.

Added to that, SPA-Gate revealed the extraordinary measures town administrator Mark Stankiewicz, under CCA direction, would go to in order to hide the deal from public scrutiny.

The property is around 4 acres and leads off Route 1 North down Oyster Drive to a small beach on Foster Cove. The lot is bounded by two Town-owned open space parcels as well as the Ninigret National Wildlife Refuge. 

The lot itself is unbuildable for a number of reasons, but mainly because it consists almost entirely of wetlands. Whether Charlestown bought the land or not, the property was and is going to remain in its natural state.

One reader had another name for this shady deal, calling it “Oyster-Gate” because the land is basically the length of Oyster Drive. Geez, I wish I had thought of that – Oyster-Gate is so much better title than SPA-Gate.

The property belongs to the Sachem Passage Association and approximately 100 households in the Sachem Passage neighborhood have a deeded right of access to use the property, though apparently few of them actually use it.

So Ron Areglado, a SPA officer, approached the town on April 24, 2020 with an offer to sell and an appraisal attached to their proposal that pegged the value of the land at $426,000. Except that the appraiser set that value based on what he (the appraiser) called the “extraordinary assumption” that the lot was buildable, which it is not.

Town Planner Jane Weidman prepared a grant proposal to DEM, presumably under the direction of Planning Commissar Ruth Platner – I say “presumably” because Platner controls these deals though she rarely leaves a paper trail and does not use her official Town e-mail account for Town business.

The DEM funding was important as it would provide state funding for up to 50% of the land value.

Before sending in the application, Weidman asked Town Tax Assessor Ken Swain to explain how the town came up with its tax assessment of only $61,900. On June 1, Swain responded by clearly detailing why the land was only worth $61,900 and nowhere near $426,000 figure in the SPA appraisal.

However, three days later on June 4, Weidman apparently decided – or more likely, was told – to disregard Swain and submit the grant application to DEM using the imaginary $426,000 number on the appraisal submitted by SPA.

On July 30, DEM approved the grant to Charlestown for $213,000 – at the maximum rate of 50% of the land value – but required a new, independent appraisal.

Getting that new appraisal took a while but finally it came in and was put into the public record as part of the Town Council’s agenda for its January 11, 2021 meeting.

The independent appraisal for Oyster Drive property was $75,000 based on the correct assumption the lot is unbuildable. Since DEM will only fund a maximum of 50% of the true appraisal, the state share available for the deal fell from $213,000 to $37,500. Further, as Ruth Platner herself admits, DEM "will not be involved in the sale if they believe the price is greater than the market value."

On January 11, the Town Council directed Town Administrator Mark Stankiewicz to talk to the SPA to find out if this new valuation changed their proposal to sell the property. Here is the illuminating e-mail Stankiewicz sent to Ron Areglado as it was provided to me under the state open records law.Here is Areglado's reply to Stankiewicz as revealed under the APRA:

Gotta love "open and transparent" government!

Stankiewicz reported back at the February 8 Council meeting that the SPA leaders were not interested in negotiating a sale at around that price.

The CCA-sponsored Council members seemed interested in keeping the deal alive and asked whether DEM approved the original $426,000 bogus appraisal. Stankiewicz said “yes.”

That was not actually true: Stankiewicz left out the important catch that DEM would not fund the deal based on the bogus appraisal but instead would pay no more than 50% of the $75,000 figure given in the independent appraisal. 

No big payday for the SPA folks is possible unless all of the money comes out of Charlestown taxpayers’ pockets.

At this point, the CCA Council members, as well as Stankiewicz, seemed eager to drop the whole thing without the Council adopting any official position such as rejecting the deal and notifying DEM we would not need the funding. Instead, they pushed for simply having the minutes reflect the Council took “no action” on SPA-Gate.

My conspiracist mind leads me to wonder if they plan to huddle with Ruth Platner and SPA leader Ron Areglado back at the CCA’s secret clubhouse to see if they can find a work-around to revive the deal.

Several readers have likened the SPA-Gate (aka Oyster-Gate) deal to the 2012 “Y-Gate” scandal. That was another insider pay-to-play land deal that shared many of SPA=Gate’s characteristics: backroom deals, political favoritism, secrecy, a bogus appraisal, DEM funding, etc. The CCA had its ass handed to it when a public outcry stomped the deal flat.

One similarity between Y-Gate and SPA-Gate concerns me. The indecisive way the Council left the matter could allow the deal to re-surface. The Y-Gate deal was resurrected several times before it was finally killed. Saying “no action” to SPA-Gate leaves the proverbial gate open for this walking dead deal to totter back into the scene.

Other unresolved issues.

For example, there’s this section in the Rhode Island General Laws:

§ 11-18-1 Giving false document to agent, employee, or public official. – (a) No person shall knowingly give to any agent, employee, servant in public or private employ, or public official any receipt, account, or other document in respect of which the principal, master, or employer, or state, city, or town of which he or she is an official is interested, which contains any statement which is false or erroneous, or defective in any important particular, and which, to his or her knowledge, is intended to mislead the principal, master, employer, or state, city, or town of which he or she is an official.

(b) Any person who violates any of the provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, upon conviction, shall be imprisoned, with or without hard labor, for a term not exceeding one year or be fined not exceeding one thousand dollars ($1,000).

Consider this statute and whether it applies to two actions by SPA-Gate principals. The first is the April 24, 2020 offer to sell by Ron Areglado on behalf of SPA that used the $426,000 appraisal that was clearly, to use the language of the statute, “false or erroneous, or defective in any important particular” and "intended to deceive."

The second and perhaps more egregious act happened on June 4, 2020 when Town Planner Jane Weidman submitted a grant proposal to DEM based on the bogus appraisal.

This is made worse by the fact that she asked Ken Swain for the reasoning behind the town’s $61,900 tax assessor and he gave it to her three days before she sent in the grant application.

This indicates Weidman, in addition to submitting a false document, “intended to mislead the principal, master, employer, or state, city, or town of which he or she is an official.”

At the February 8 Council meeting, there was no decision or instruction given to let DEM know Charlestown doesn't need the $213,000 DEM has earmarked for Charlestown so they could re-direct it to some other worthy project. That might also mitigate Charlestown’s exposure under RIGL § 11-18-1.

The fight for full disclosure

Throughout this whole Oyster-Gate mishegoss, I sparred with Town Administrator Mark Stankiewicz over the release of records to shed light on what was happening. Stankiewicz had directed our town clerk to refuse release of any record the state open records law allowed the town to withhold. Over 100 records were either denied in toto or almost totally blacked out.

The most common types of records the town withholds are communications, especially e-mails, that were written by, sent to or even just cc’d to an “elected official.” Then you get the document almost entirely blacked out like the two samples above.

It’s a quirk in the law and Charlestown exploits it to fullest. All you have to do to make a document private is slap an elected official’s name (e.g.  Ruth Platner) in the “c.c.” line.

I especially wanted these records so I could track who was driving this deal and making the decisions. In particular, I want to know why Jane Weidman submitted the $426,000 DEM grant application after she was told by Tax Assessor Ken Swain the property was only worth $61,900.

Charlestown does have the legal right to withhold such records, but as the chief of the Attorney General’s open government unit Kathy Sadeck told me that just because a document CAN be withheld doesn’t mean it MUST be withheld or even SHOULD be withheld especially in instances where public corruption may be involved.

In Rhode Island, public corruption is first investigated by the State Police and then prosecuted by the Attorney General’s Public Integrity Unit. The loophole in the public records law that Town Administrator Mark Stankiewicz used to withhold over 100 documents does not shield these records from their investigations. Or from a grand jury.

Video vagaries

Back in 2014, when Mark Stankiewicz was still talking to me, he told me the town was shopping for new software to replace the obsolete Clerkbase system the town had been using to allow citizens to gain  remote access to town meetings and records.

He said he was interested in IQM2 and asked me to check it out. I ran a corporate background check and then audited the system which was then being used by several nearby municipalities. It checked out and the town switched to IQM2 in 2015.

Unfortunately, Charlestown’s deployment of IQM2 is not nearly as good as what I saw in the other towns’ websites as I reported in this 2015 article after it was first deployed. It has gotten worse ever since.

The first and maybe biggest problem is simply finding it.

It’s not on the town’s front page. The table for “Virtual Meetings” takes you to Webex, the software the town uses to allow you into LIVE virtual meetings.

It’s not under the “Government” tag either at “Agendas and Minutes” or “Meeting/Event Calendar.”

I used the site map and the search engine and finally found the IQM2 here. You must then click on Media and then pick your poison from among the meetings that have been put up on the menu. There are dozens of them arranged alphabetically by town department and then chronologically. The font size is very small so you will probably need to increase the magnification.

Click on the meeting you want and then a new window opens up with a split screen that allows you to see the whole agenda or a document you want to examine as well as watch the video.

While watching a meeting, you will probably want to zero in on a particular topic and will try, as I did, to click on the link in the agenda for that topic. Except it won’t take you to that discussion. You have to either watch the whole video or try to find the right place by skipping around. 

Meetings are not posted on IQM2 for a while. The Feb. 8 Council meeting was not available to watch until almost a week later.

It’s a pain in the butt and frankly not nearly as good as the sites I audited back in 2014 when I gave my recommendation to Stankiewicz. After almost 7 years, it’s gotten worse when you would expect advancing technology to make it better.

Charlestown needs to fix this perhaps starting with a clearly identified link on the Front Page and at least a little guidance for how to use it. I know that runs against the town’s – meaning the CCA’s - natural inclination to give the public as little information as possible, but, hey, this is your chance to prove me wrong.

Sit luceat.