With only days before Charlestown’s December 2 Town Council special election, CCA candidate dodges the real questions

CCA tries to deny and deflect its fiscal failings

By Will Collette

For continued good government in Charlestown,
elect endorsed Democrat Jill Fonnemann for Town Council 

Call it click-baiting if you will, but there’s a remarkable similarity between the way the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) treats Charlestown’s financial meltdown that led to their 2022 and 2024 election defeats and the way Donald Trump is dealing with his friendship with pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

I have been urging the CCA to come clean on how they managed to lose $3 million dollars used to fund CCA leader Ruth Platner’s shady land deals and then ran a cover-up campaign to hide what they did.

After two straight election drubbings, you’d think someone in the CCA might have figured out that rather than deny, distract and deflect, maybe the CCA should admit and apologize.

A key figure in those scandals is one of the December 2 candidates, Bonnita B. Van Slyke. Van Slyke was on the Charlestown Town Council throughout the 2022 scandal but bailed out before the 2022 election rather than be on the CCA ticket rejected by Charlestown voters.

She tried a comeback in 2024 but ran in last place, 10^th out of ten, as the CCA tried to make that election about dark skies (seriously, the darkness of the sky was their big issue) rather than address the financial mess they caused. The CCA lost the last of their Council seats in that election.

And now, here comes Van Slyke again.

In this special election, Van Slyke and the CCA again want to focus voter attention on “issues” where there is no disagreement among the three candidates – how much we all love Charlestown and its beauty, and clean water, green forests, dark sky, and golden beaches. And critters ranging from wildlife to dogs. She wants to talk about “over-development in sensitive areas” but without talking about how the CCA allowed shoreline property owners to do anything they wanted.

Why does Van Slyke want to raise these issues? Because she and the CCA want to distract voters away from other important issues the CCA doesn’t want to talk about. These include:

·    Who can voters trust to properly manage their money?

·    Who will do the better job of keeping administrative costs and taxes down while providing effective government services?

·    Who will run an honest and open government, free of shady deals, secrecy and attempts to cover up mistakes?

·    Why pile up money in surpluses by over-taxing residents?

·    Who will do better at ensuring fair taxation?

Voters sent the CCA a message in 2022 and 2024: if you screw up the money, you can’t run the town. 

Obviously, they didn’t get the message by running Van Slyke, a key player in their financial SNAFU, as their candidate in this special election.

The heart of the CCA’s money management deficiencies is its obsessive effort to turn Charlestown into an exclusive retirement enclave for the independently wealthy while driving out families, mostly those living north of Route One, while erecting barriers to any new families moving in.

All the gray-marked areas in the center of the map are
Narragansett tribal land - i.e. open space

According to data from the town’s Comprehensive Plan, belatedly submitted by CCA and Charlestown Planning Commissar Ruth Platner, around 60% of Charlestown is tax-exempt or tax-favored open space. See map 👉. But that’s not enough for Platner, Van Slyke and the CCA. 

Through a series of shady land deals, Charlestown expanded the amount of town-owned open space often by buying property at much higher than its assessed value. CLICK HERE for a prime example.

They usually paid cash despite a voter-approved referendum that called for the town to use low-interest municipal bonds. Paying cash meant the cost of major capital expenditures were dumped on taxpayers that year instead of being amortized over time.

Several of their land deals were blocked by public pressure after we dug up public records exposing the details. Click on the links to see what we exposed in two of those deals: the SPA-Gate scandal HERE and the Saw Mill Pond scam HERE.

Under the CCA, this was the typical response
you got after paying for a public record

After these records wrecked the sweetheart deal behind SPA-Gate, the CCA made their lapdog Town Administrator Mark Stankiewicz clamp down on public information. Requests under the state’s open records law were routinely delayed. Records requested were subjected to careful legal and staff review to make sure that everything that could be withheld was indeed withheld. The town charged the maximum amount it could.

The result was that records about land deals were then offered with cost estimates of several hundred dollars payable in advance. If you paid the money, all you eventually got were pages almost totally blacked out. See sample 👈to the left.

I believe these secrecy practices not only contradicted the CCA's claims about "open and transparent government," but also contributed significantly to Charlestown's out of control administrative costs (see table below).

Van Slyke herself was behind the most outrageous abuse of the open government norms when she introduced a resolution to buy a land parcel but insisted that the name of the seller, the location of the property and the price for the purchase were withheld from the public!

The CCA Town Council majority approved the deal to proceed.

We later discovered the land in question was the Saw Mill Pond property that was already classified as open space and taxed accordingly by the town. The proposed purchase price was never actually disclosed but based on the paperwork, it had to be at least $800,000. The assessed value was only $312,800.

Van Slyke and her CCA Council colleague Susan Cooper voted yes to proceed with the deal. However, they were thwarted by no votes from late CRU council member Grace Klinger and Council President Deb Carney plus the recusal ofCCA council member Cody Clarkin on ethical grounds.

If Van Slyke really wants to talk about land use, these concrete cases of waste, fraud and abuse need to be part of that conversation.

While debates over land use raged, the town’s administrative functions were undergoing some serious dry rot. Town Administrator Mark Stankiewicz geared Town Hall to serve the CCA’s political agenda. Under Stanky and CCA leadership, Charlestown racked up the worst administrative costs in the state. That’s according to the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council. Check out Charlestown at the very bottom of this 👇table. More details HERE.

Aided by former Budget Commission chair Dick Sartor, Charlestown accumulated a massive surplus far in excess of what was needed. Here’s what the Rhode Island Auditor General wrote in his report on Charlestown about that surplus during the CCA’s final years, saying "unrestricted fund balances significantly exceeded the GFOA reserve recommendation (17% of fund expenditures/other financing uses)."

The CCA's policy resembled putting taxpayer money under the mattress.

Apparently, that excess surplus was moved around from pocket to pocket without proper management. In early 2022, the town’s auditor reported that $3 million had apparently been misplaced for an almost two-year period. This came to be known as the “$3 Million Oopsie.”

Van Slyke was the public voice of the CCA in trying to deny, diminish, deflect then ultimately attack critics of the “Oopsie.” Behind the scenes, Stanky and Budget chair Sartor worked hard to come up with any answer that didn’t involve blame falling on them or the CCA.

Van Slyke’s only glancing mention of this whole mess has in her most recent mailer where she continues to plug an unnecessarily high surplus fund to deal with “hurricanes and other crises.”

From Van Slyke election mailer, received November 22.

The state Auditor General has already criticized the inappropriately high fund balance salted away by the CCA when it ran the town. (See above). Remember: it’s your tax dollars being put away in Bonnita’s mayonnaise jar.

I could go on but suffice to say that since the Town Council control shifted from the CCA to Charlestown Residents United (CRU), things have gotten a lot better. Don’t take my word for it, look at what the RI Auditor General reported:

Note that the final column on the right is the first year (2023) that Charlestown began to be managed by the Charlestown Residents United Council majority. The previous four years were under the CCA's control

Cathy and I have already voted by mail for endorsed Democrat Jill Fonnemann who is also supported by the Charlestown Residents United. She manages a large chunk of the Rathskeller’s business which makes her far more qualified than Van Slyke to be diligent about protecting the taxpayers. 

You can meet Jill and see for yourself why she is the best choice for Town Council at the General Stanton Inn Tuesday night.

Let’s turn out for Jill and make her Charlestown’s next Town Council member.

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?

Up in the night sky

A model approach for Charlestown?

Leading dark sky protection organization endorses model for sport field lighting. Are you paying attention, Ruth?

I want to tell you about a special school on Canada’s rugged east coast: Université Sainte-Anne.  As a student there, you must sign a pledge that you’ll only speak French. The school is equally serious about protecting the night as it’s located within a Starlight Reserve.  Please help institutions like this one succeed. The university aimed to build a football pitch to give its whole community a safe place to stay active, even in winter when daylight is scarce. With support from people like you, that athletic field became the first DarkSky Approved Outdoor Sports Lighting project outside the U.S. “Seeing students, staff and community members use this facility at night and knowing that we’re preserving the surrounding dark sky at the same time makes me proud,” says University President Kenneth Deveau. This project can be a model for communities worldwide. Will you keep that momentum going with a gift to DarkSky International today? With gratitude,  Ruskin Hartley CEO & Executive Director P.S. With global light pollution increasing 10% each year, there’s no time to wait.

Int'l Space Station to make a 7-minute pass over Charlestown tonight

Hopefully, you'll get to see it

By Will Collette

Seven minutes. That's how long it takes to travel our night sky from end to end if you're flying in the International Space Station (ISS). 

That passage will begin at 5:10 PM at 10 degrees above the horizon in the west-northwest an hour after sundown. The ISS will rise to 61 degrees or about 2/3's up the sky and continue onwards until it disappears at 5:17 at 10 degrees about the horizon in the southeast.

Hopefully, you'll have a chance to see it. The National Weather Service forecast is not great, despite today's sunshine, calling for some clouding up and perhaps a little spritz of snow. But maybe we'll get lucky.

Last night there were a number of reports of other sightings in our night sky on the Nextdoor blog for our area. At around 5:50 PM, low on the horizon, a string of Elon Musk's Starlink satellites paraded across the sky. 

Astronomers hate the disruption caused by Musk's satellite swarm on scientific observation, but as we've all come to learn, Musk scarcely gives a f**k.

"Melissa D" posted this snap → taken by her son showing Musk's cosmic choo-choo overhead. 

Here is the text of the e-mail I received from NASA last night to notify me of the chance for a sighting:

Time: Tue Dec 03 5:10 PM, Visible: 7 min, Max Height: 61°, Appears: 10° above WNW, Disappears: 10° above SE

NASA, the National Weather Service and NOAA have an uncertain fate once Donald Trump takes office. They will undoubtedly face serious cuts. 

Under Trump's Project 2025, NOAA and the National Weather Service may be abolished, no doubt replaced by Trump going on TV and drawing the weather on a map with his Sharpie®. 

Elon Musk has no love for NASA, except for their contracts. Maybe he'll buy it...Trump would certainly give him a good price.

CCA tries to distract Charlestown voters with shiny things

Don’t fall for this old trick

By Will Collette

To hear the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) tell it, if not for them, Charlestown would be lit up like a car dealership in Cranston. Unless they are returned to power, Charlestown will be lit up like convicts caught in the prison yard attempting a jail break. Without them in charge, Charlestown will look like the Las Vegas strip.

If you read their literature, this election is all about Charlestown’s dark sky. It’s not about the CCA’s financial screw-ups and mismanagement. Or about continuous tax increases during their ten years of power. Or their succession of shady land deals – over-priced properties, bogus appraisals, insider deals. It’s not about their decision to cover up their conduct by denying access to public records and denying non-CCA members to speak at Council meetings.

No, none of those issues matter at all. Just look at the shiny objects that the CCA wants you to think are a menace to you and all that you love.

My oh my, I am so sick of these people.

To learn more about the CCA's sleezy land deals, read The Politics of Charlestown Open Space.

Look, I grew up wanting to be an astronomer, at least until I found out it required a math aptitude I just don’t have. But I love sky-watching and appreciate the rare ability we have in Charlestown to see so much more of the night sky than our urban neighbors. We've run more than 400 articles in Progressive Charlestown on astronomy.

According to the CCA's campaign filing reports, these slick,
3-page flyers cost $3000+ to print and mail on a phony issue

But if you were to ask me to rank dark skies among the needs of residents, it would be on the list but not in first place by a long shot. As a voter, I’d put a higher ranking on good town management, clean water, affordable housing for seniors and workers, transportation alternatives, sound land management and honesty.

But apparently CCA leader and Town Council candidate Ruth Platner (possibly former Planning Commissar) wants this election to be all about dark skies. It sure beats talking about CCA financial foul-ups. Oh, look at the not-shiny thing!

For detail on just how badly the CCA messed up on finances and taxes, read Charlestown finances and taxes – Your choice on November 5 then read RI Auditor General finds new CRU leadership in Charlestown improved town finances to see how our current CRU Council leadership has turned things around. It also explains why the CCA is so eager to distract you with a bogus issue.

It’s worth revisiting how we got to this point. When Tom Ferrio and I started Progressive Charlestown, we found the CCA gave us lots to write about. In addition to shady land deals, Platner’s dark sky obsession figured prominently in the early years of the CCA’s rule.

For several years, Platner kept trying to figure out how to write a town ordinance to ban outside lighting, especially for sports and recreation, or at least force people to comply with using only shielded, downward facing outdoor lights.

In her early attempts, she tried to make it retroactive to cover every light in town but was told that wasn’t legal. She tried to make it compulsory on everyone, but that sparked a huge backlash.

She tried to regulate lighting as minutely as she has in such things as Charlestown’s anti-wind power ordinance or their newly released “Design Standards” that dictate down to the smallest detail what can or can’t be done with buildings in Charlestown. At one point, she went for a plan that would require you to install new dark sky-friendly light fixtures anytime you changed a lightbulb. 

Some CCA Planning Commission members had even more radical ideas, such as blacking out the town, noting that we get the best dark skies during extended power outages.

It was everyone’s worst nightmare of regulatory overreach.

Watching it was sad, but also funny. It was a battle that never needed to be fought and that’s still true today.

At the time, I suggested a better approach would be to conduct public education to pursue assisted voluntary compliance. The town could help promote dark sky lighting through property tax credits to offset the cost of retrofitting. It could also arrange a bulk purchasing plan to make it easier and cheaper to buy such things as hoods for outdoor floodlights.

But no, the CCA and Ruth don’t trust you to make good decisions.

After long and arduous failed attempts and endless public hearings, Ruthie finally got a watered down, unenforceable dark sky ordinance passed. In my opinion, she got less than she would have through the voluntary approach I recommended.

But that’s not all. It wouldn’t be a CCA campaign without an imaginary crisis, in this case “The Battle for Ninigret Park.” Like today’s phony CCA dark sky panic, it involved an approaching Armageddon sparked by the idea of after-dark activities in Ninigret Park.

To read more about the CCA’s habit of creating phony threats, read Fear and Loathing in Charlestown Politics.

This crisis featured a phony dossier – referred to as "Document #2" - held but never revealed by former CCA President and Town Council member Dan Slattery. According to Slattery, any attempt to install lights in Ninigret Park would trigger the federal government to take back the Park. And he had the proof right there in Document #2.

The town was in an uproar for months and it took an appearance by regional US Interior Department office Elyse LaForest to establish that (a) Charlestown owns Ninigret Park, (b) no, the Interior Department had no plans to take back the Park and (c) under the federal program that transferred decommissioned military land to local governments, there were almost no instances of land reverting back to the feds.

In those rare instances, it was usually because the local government asked the feds to take the land back.

After an investigation by the RI Attorney General, Dan Slattery admitted that there wasn’t actually anything in “Document #2, his Ninigret dossier.

There were casualties in the Battle for Ninigret Park, of course, since the CCA needed blood. Town Administrator Bill DiLibero and Parks and Rec Director Jay Primiano lost their jobs.

So here we go again, another election and another bizarre CCA conspiracy theory.

Like I said, I am so sick of these people and the way they behave. After all this, how dare they ask for your vote.

The Charlestown Citizens Alliance is lying - AGAIN - about Ninigret Park

Reject the CCA’s 39 Million Dollar Lie

Charlestown Residents United (CRU)

Contrary to what the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) would like you to believe, this Town Council is NOT spending $39 million in Ninigret Park.
❌ We are NOT building a stadium.
❌ We are NOT ruining the dark sky.
❌ We are NOT running a negative campaign or spreading false information.

The Town is required to update the Master Plan, which was last updated in 2008. 

We are overdue by six years in fulfilling this obligation. 

And let’s be clear — NOTHING can get built in Ninigret Park unless the voters approve the funding.

Just because something is in the Plan does NOT mean it will be built.

For example:
• The 1994 Plan included a "bandshell" that was never built.
• Both the 1994 and 2008 Plans had football fields, which were also never built.

On the other hand, something not in the Plan could still be built if approved. Take the multi-purpose trail near the playground and senior/community center — that wasn't in the Master Plan, but it was built.

Let’s be clear: This is CCA fearmongering.

NOTHING can be built without voter approval for funding.

Once again:
❌ This Town Council is NOT spending $39 million in Ninigret Park.
❌ We are NOT building a stadium.
❌ We are NOT ruining the dark sky.

Early voting, mail-in ballots start this week amid confusing ballots for Charlestown voters

Mixed up Council listings and 11 Charter revision questions make it hard to make informed choices

By Will Collette

If you are a Charlestown voter, you face a daunting challenge of figuring out how to make intelligent decisions in the face of a ballot that doesn’t really tell you what you need to know.

Two sections of the ballot are especially cumbersome: (1) the Town Council race and (2) the 11 proposed revisions to the Charlestown Town Charter. Today, we’ll deal with the Council.

The Town Council

Who’s who among the ten candidates for Town Council? The 10 are evenly split between five Charlestown Residents United (CRU) candidates and five Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) candidates.

Several factors make your choice harder. First, you won’t see the CRU or CCA labels on any of the candidates. The CRU and CCA are both PACs with radically different visions for Charlestown.

After losing power in 2022, the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) broke its longstanding promise to run its candidates strictly as independents. All their newcomers are running either as Republicans or Democrats even though none of them have any actual connection to either party’s town committee.

Neither the Republican nor Democratic Town Committees made candidate endorsements in time to affect ballot placement, leaving the individual placement to a lottery.

In other words, a mishmash. Sometimes well-placed campaign signs can help with such confusion. This year, I’m afraid both the CRU and CCA wasted their money. Their signs are similar in appearance and crowded-with lists of names that are almost unreadable to passing motorists.

The mailers are somewhat more helpful because at least you can see the names of the officially endorsed candidates though the effect is diminished by the excruciating amount of detail crammed into each mailer.

In Charlestown, party labels (i.e. D versus R) matter less than CRU versus CCA. There are sharp differences on important issues between the two political committees that should guide your choice.

The Big Issues

Let’s review.

The tax rates from 2011 to 2023 show a steady rise
under the CCA. Source: Charlestown Tax Assessor.

Taxes. Everyone’s favorite. The Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) claims to be the party of low taxes. Their record shows the contrary. Under ten years of CCA rule, Charlestown’s tax rate grew steadily and the actual tax paid by households increased as the CCA siphoned off town money to make shady land deals, allowed town municipal costs to climb to the highest in the state, and strangled small business growth.

In the two years since Charlestown Residents United (CRU) ousted the CCA from power, the tax rate is down. So is the actual tax residents have had to pay.

NOTE: To get much more detailed analysis of Charlestown taxes, financial management and the differences between the CRU and the CCA on these subjects, CLICK HERE. I include links backing up each detail as well as to the state Auditor General who supported my assertations that the CCA messed up the money and the CRU has been effectively fixing it. 

Town Financial Management. This was the major factor that led to the CCA’s defeat in 2022. They messed up the money. They misplaced $3 million for almost two years, ran up a huge deficit, and, instead of fixing the problems, they spent the past two years denying the problems existed, blaming the messenger and mourning the departure of the individual town officials most responsible for the problems.

According to the Rhode Island Auditor General, the CRU wiped out the CCA deficit, reduced town debt by 25%, reduced expenses by $1.5 million, increased town savings by 17% and improved pension funding. These are hard, documented facts showing a remarkable turnaround in town finances under the CRU’s leadership.

Charlestown Economy. The CCA covers its fanatical devotion to expanding open space by claiming this is good for tourism and, by extension, the town economy. They’re fine with Charlestown perking up on Memorial Day and then dying on Labor Day.

No matter how tasty, burgers are not
the key to Charlestown's prosperity

While tourism does boost seasonal businesses, it forces Charlestown to pay for a bloated infrastructure designed to handle a summer population that triples the town’s size. What jobs are created are low wage with no benefits and held by folks who can’t afford to live here. That’s really all the CCA’s got on the economy. If you don’t believe me, check the town Comprehensive Plan, hand-crafted by CCA leader Ruth Platner.

The CCA still uses Planning and Zoning to torture small businesses. Because of CCA restrictions, Route One still remains our Boulevard of Broken Dreams with its array of empty businesses.

For a preview of what a new CCA term of power would do to small business, check out their new “Design Standards.” If the CCA regains power, these micro-managed minutiae will become law and further destroy small business. The CRU by contrast, blocked Planning Commissar Ruth Platner (now a Town Council candidate) from making these “standards” an ordinance.

The Environment. The CCA claims supremacy on all matters environmental, but do their claims pan out? They claim they are responsible for Charlestown’s dark sky, yet they diddled for years on a draconian but unenforceable anti-light ordinance when they could have gotten much better lighting compliance by helping businesses and residences convert to low-impact lighting.

They added some more open space even though more than 60% of Charlestown land is a protected from development. Many of the CCA’s land deals were with insiders, mainly CCA supporters, and nearly all at way over assessed value and even land that was already classified as open space. Despite their open space zeal, the CCA bitterly opposed, and tried to block Frank Glista from selling 20 acres to the state Water Resources Board as a protected water resource.

The CCA concocted multiple fake issues about Ninigret Park conflating plans to provide temporary portable lights at the field behind Town Hall to allow Peewee Football to go a couple more hours in the fall into a major crisis. The CCA forecast such lights would shut down the Frosty Drew Observatory and trigger the federal government to take back Ninigret Park. Utter nonsense.

For more examples of the way the CCA fakes some issues and generally pumps up issues beyond recognition, read “Fear and Loathing in Charlestown Politics” by clicking HERE.

The CCA has shown little interest in any other environmental issue other than open space. They routinely ignored hazardous waste problems, especially at Ninigret Park dating back to the decommissioned Ninigret Naval Air Field. They effectively banned all wind power, even small residential units. They botched the fight against the Copar Quarry and even allowed the mob-connected owners to acquire a second quarry in Charlestown.

They claim they are leaders in the climate change fight, even though they have done nothing, other than to claim credit. Real credit goes to our state Senator, Victoria Gu, and state Representative, Tina Spears, both Democrats, for getting legislative passed and funding for climate resilience.

Charlestown Residents United (CRU) in its two years in office has not caused the environmental disaster predicted by the CCA and, in fact, kept a steady, even hand on environmental matters and clearly states it intends to protect our rural community.

Housing. The CCA has opposed all forms of new housing. Period. They have been tolerant toward some building by rich people in their voter strongholds along the shoreline, but remain adamantly opposed to affordable housing, workforce housing, family housing or senior citizens housing.

Former CCA leader George Tremblay even claimed that building elderly housing will only attract rich senior citizen speculators who will buy affordable senior housing and then flip it as market-rate housing. He based this on a debunked story out of New York City.

The CCA’s primary weapon to block housing has been exclusionary zoning accompanied by nitpicking and delay to drive up costs. Planning Commissar Ruth Platner, now running for Town Council, was the master of exclusionary zoning. She covered her practices by claiming that families with children were a plague because they would cost taxpayers beaucoup cash when the kids attend Chariho, even concocting a mathematical formula to “prove” her thesis.

Charlestown Residents United (CRU) has not been able to overcome Platner’s roadblocks, though a lot hinges on the November election. The CRU’s stated position is to support affordable housing for Charlestown’s “workforce, seniors and adult children.” Getting this done will require the CRU to hold the Council majority and change the majority on the Planning Commission.

Secrecy and cover-ups, panic and alarm. Under the CCA, we saw one shady land deal after another, often overshadowed by fake alarms and outside threats, whether from the Tribe, Amtrak or “others.” Often the truth behind these deals and bogus alarms was uncovered by diligent investigation through the town’s public records.

Stonewall Stankiewicz

The CCA figured out they might get less grief if they had their stooge, ex-Town Administrator Mark Stankiewicz “weaponize” the Access to Public Records Act,” RI’s open records law. Starting with “SPAgate,” Stanwiewicz slowed responses to records request to the maximum allowed by the law, used every exemption to withhold records, blacked out vast amounts of text in whatever records were finally released, and charged the maximum fees they could get away with.

The CCA says it is pledged to “provide open, honest, responsible leadership. Their track record says otherwise.

The candidates

Both the CRU and the CCA are running full slates of five candidates for Town Council. Both are a mix of Democrats and Republicans. The only two “independents” are hardline CCA people, the aforementioned Ruth Platner and her puppet, former town Council member Bonnita Van Slyke.

Four of the CRU slate – Deb Carney, Rippy Serra, Steve Stokes and Peter Slom – are already on the Council and have a commendable record as previously discussed. The fifth CRU candidate is well known Breachway Grill restauranteur Craig Marr.

Based on their records, characters and the strength of the CRU’s performance in its first term, they’ve got my vote.

I’ve already given you ample reasons why Ruth Platner is not qualified to serve on the Town Council. Her pal Bonnie Van Slyke holds all the same beliefs, but with an added deficit of consistently making goofy arguments that are filled with lies and nonsense.

I wrote an entire series labeled “Slyke of Hand” devoted to fact-checking and rebutting Van Slyke’s nonsense. CLICK HERE for the final installment.

About the remaining three CCA candidates, to paraphrase Donold Trump, some might be “very fine people,” but all I really know about them is that they were willing to run as CCA candidates while appearing on the ballot under their registered parties, despite having no actual ties to the local Democratic or Republican committees.

I can say this about them: if you run under the CCA label, you are not a free-thinking individual. You must toe the CCA party line, meaning strict obedience to Ruth Platner, or you will be punished.

The CCA set their Politburo style right from the start by purging their first elected Town Council. They won a clear majority but turned on their own people. Why? The CCA Councilors supported wind power development in Charlestown largely because at that time, the CCA was pro-wind, especially their leader Tom Gentz.

But after the Sachem Passage Association made a political deal with Gentz’s partner in crime Dan Slattery to do a 180-degree turn to oppose wind power in the form of the Whalerock wind development, the CCA Council majority couldn’t keep up with the shift. The CCA excommunicated them.

In its second run for power, the CCA ran a brand new slate, led by former wind-supporter but now opponent Tom Gentz and Dan Slattery and ousted all but two of the former CCA apostates.

On those rare occasions when a CCA Council member has failed to obey Platner, they usually come to the next meeting to push for an opposite position. For example, CCA’s Susan Cooper initially voted her common sense to end anti-Indian Joe Larisa’s contract, but at the next meeting, after a trip to the woodshed, Cooper pushed a “Motion to Reconsider” to reverse her own vote and rehire Larisa.

The CCA truly seems to still believe in absolute obedience. When I named names in reporting on the CCA’s financial screw-ups, Van Slyke took to the letters to the editor column of the Westerly Sun to blast me for defaming the reputations of ex-Budget Commission chair Dick Sartor and ex-Town Administrator Mark Stankiewicz. By telling the truth.

Van Slyke actually said “One would hope that the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee might put an end to the telling of whoppers such as this one spouted by someone who is a CDTC member.”

That may be the way the CCA operates, but that’s not how it works in a democracy. And that’s the last reason I offer for voting to keep the Charlestown Residents United (CRU) majority.