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. 

SPA-Gate cover-up begins

Town blacks out elected officials’ correspondence on shady land deal

By Will Collette

This is the first of EIGHT pages of blacked-out photos

As it does at least once a year, the Charlestown-controlling Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA Party) is working on a shady land deal. 

This time, it’s with one of its client groups, the Sachem Passage Association (SPA). It could lead to the town buying a small piece of property for seven times its assessed value. (Spoiler: the land is worth $61,900 but we might pay $426,000).

Welcome to SPA-Gate.

We have documents the town was legally required to disclose under the state’s Access to Public Records Act (APRA). These documents give us more than enough detail to know the deal is a really bad one for the town. 

We have other documents that are so heavily black-out (redacted) that they are useless.

These are documents that Charlestown, tightly controlled by the Charlestown Citizens Alliance, chooses to hide under an exemption in the APRA that allows the town to cover up correspondence to and from elected officials. 

To the upper-left is an e-mail from Council President Virginia Lee to Parks & Recreation Director Vicky Hilton with what are supposed to be photos of the land being offered for sale to the town. It is one of the more ridiculous examples of what has been covered up.

But more seriously, the e-mail black-outs mean you can’t see the by-play between the key figures. 

You can’t see how the deal evolved, what promises were made, whether there is any quid pro quo or corrupt practices or intent. In some instances, perfectly innocent documents end up looking sinister after the content is blacked out.

Since August 16, the town has sent me 91 documents relating to SPA-Gate. Of those, 76 have undergone some level of redaction (black-out). 

Nearly all have been censored under this exemption for elected officials (APRA, 38-2-2): “(M) Correspondence of or to elected officials with or relating to those they represent and correspondence of or to elected officials in their official capacities.”

I spoke to Kathy Sadeck, chief of the Open Government Unit at RI Attorney General Peter Neronha’s office. She said that just because a document CAN be withheld doesn’t mean it MUST be withheld or even SHOULD be withheld.

When the information is in the public interest or may involve some questionable or illegal practice, the Attorney General may not allow it to stay hidden behind the exemption.

Choices to disclose or hide are usually political and reflect either a commitment to transparency or to secrecy.

These documents would not be protected from disclosure to a grand jury or in a court of law.

Deb Carney never asked for these black-outs

Council member Deb Carney raised this issue with the Town Council when she learned her own e-mails had been censored without her knowledge or consent. Example to the left.

She suggested the Town stop censoring every piece of correspondence involving a Council or Planning Commission member.

CCA Council member Bonnie Van Slyke who represents Arnolda asked Deb:

“I wonder what the problem is here and why the mechanism set up, you know, to appeal to the Town Administrator if there’s an issue or to the Attorney General, I don’t understand. Deb, what is the problem? What is broken here?”

OK, Bonnie, you asked.

Every detail of Charlestown policy and practice has been controlled by the Charlestown Citizens Alliance through its secretive Steering Committee for the past ten years. That includes disclosure of information. There have been running battles over the public’s right to know for the past decade.

Town Administrator Mark Stankiewicz does what the CCA tells him to do so appealing to him is pointless except to fulfill the steps set out in the APRA before making the failure to disclosure a bigger, legal issue.

Despite the 76 censored records, we have enough in those records the town had no choice but to disclose to understand why the CCA is so eager to cover-up SPA-Gate e-mails. Based on those records, here’s what we know.

Buying the SPA land is unnecessary - it can't
be developed and is bordered by two pieces
of town land the the Ninigret National Wildlife Refuge.
Plus, we apparently don't get the access road.

The Sachem Passage Association (SPA) is a non-profit residents association of about 100 households clustered on the Charlestown Moraine. They operated under the nom de guerre “Ill Wind” to try to block a proposed two-turbine wind energy project called Whalerock but failed and turned to the town for a bail-out. So in 2013, Charlestown bought the Whalerock property for $2.1 million. 

From that point on, SPA and the CCA were joined at the hip.

SPA owns Lot 5-95-5, 4.27 acres including its access road on Foster Cove. It's the land outlined in red on the map to the right. The access road does not appear to be included in this deal, raising the question of what the town would do with the land if the deal goes through.

Each of the SPA households has a deeded right of access to the lot, though the land has been largely unused. Thus, the SPA leaders decided to sell it.

We know an official approach was made to the town on April 24 by Ron Areglado, CCA Party candidate for Town Moderator, acting as SPA’s Secretary (READ HERE or below). Areglado led the unsuccessful anti-Whalerock fight that ended up costing Charlestown $2.1 million.

The SPA presented a January 21 appraisal that valued the land at $426,000 based on, according to the appraiser, the “extraordinary assumption” that a two bedroom house could be built there even though the appraiser admits this is virtually impossible. READ THE APPRAISAL HERE. Here is the most relevant passage:

We have a June 1 memo (READ HERE or below) from Town Tax Assessor Ken Swain to Town Planner Jane Weidman that details why he believes the town assessment of $61,900 is fair and reasonable given all the legal and physical restraints make it impossible to build a house on that property.

On June 4, despite Swain’s memo, Jane Weidman submitted an open space grant application (READ HERE) to RIDEM based on the phony price of $426,000.

So what happened between June 1 and June 4 to convince our Town Planner to submit a request for state funding based on SPA's shaky appraisal? Nothing shows up in the records then or later to shed light on this decision. All e-mails involving town elected officials are heavily redacted.

On July 30, DEM awarded Charlestown $213,000 to pay for half of the bogus price listed in SPA's appraisal.

SPA-Gate is not a done deal – several shady CCA deals have been killed by public protests in the past when the details emerged. Plus, there are some fail-safes built in such as DEM's requirement that an independent appraisal be done, hopefully without the “extraordinary assumptions” (a.k.a. bullshit) that underlay the SPA appraisal. We do not have the state funding in hand. Yet.

Proponents of the SPA-Gate deal – the SPA officers, Planning Commissar Ruth Platner and the CCA members of the Town Council – have been laying low since the DEM grant was approved. The town is still waiting for SPA to hand over more documents. Meanwhile, there’s the black out of public records relating to SPA-Gate.

We are, of course, looking at an election on November 3. My sources say activity will pick up again after that depending on who wins in the Council and Planning Commission,

SPA-Gate scam enters a new phase

Town orders new appraisal of property while cover-up continues

By Will Collette

For those Charlestown taxpayers who have been paying attention, Town Planner Jane Weidman has hired a Newport appraisal company to conduct a new appraisal of the property on Foster Cove being offered for sale by the Sachem Passage Association (SPA).

The SPA is a client group of town masters, the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA Party).

For those who have not been following this issue, here’s a recap.

The Sachem Passage Association (SPA) wants to sell Charlestown a 3.71 acre parcel on Foster Cove that is under-used by the SPA members.

SPA has been joined at the hip with the CCA Party since 2013 when Charlestown blocked a proposed commercial wind turbine project by buying the land under it for $2.1 million.

SPA submitted their offer along with an appraisal based on the false assumption that the lot is buildable, resulting in an appraised value of $426,000. Here's a key extract from that appraisal: 

On June 1, Charlestown Tax Assessor Ken Swain tersely explained why he feels the Town’s current tax assessment of that property is properly pegged at only $61,900. Here's his memo:

Nonetheless, three days after Swain’s memo, Charlestown submitted a grant application for $213,000 (half the price in the bogus appraisal, the maximum amount allowed) to the RI Department of Environmental Management. DEM approved the grant.

Charlestown has blacked-out the contents of all e-mails released to me under the state Access to Public Records Act (APRA) to and from Town Council members related to SPA-Gate. These black-outs (redactions) deny us any insight into the interplay, including deal-making, among key elected town players.

The town has released 94 SPA-Gate documents to me so far but 78 of them have been mostly blacked-out.

NO e-mails by Planning Commissar Platner have been released, redacted or otherwise. I have asked for an explanation of how this is possible, given Platner’s central role in any and all Charlestown land deals. The town has not answered my question.

There have been a couple of e-mails TO Platner from Town Planner Weidman. Here’s the most recent one:

None of the documents released explain what went on between June 2 when Ken Swain laid out why the land was only worth $61,900 and June 4 when Jane Weidman submitted a DEM grant application based on the fictional appraisal of $426,000.

My sources tell me the CCA Party and its SPA chums are waiting until after the election to move this deal forward.

In the meantime, Town Planner Weidman approved a proposal from the Newport Appraisal Group on September 22 to conduct a new appraisal for a cost of $750 to the town. Here is that proposal:

The proposal sets out a three-week time frame for doing the work. It’s been more than three weeks so that appraisal should already be complete. QUESTION: Where is it?

Neither the proposal nor Weidman’s approval letter sets out any instructions or parameters for that appraisal - no e-mails have been released by the town - other than the word "defensible" in the bid letter above. The town has not disclosed any paper trail that explains how Weidman and the appraiser came up with a definition of "defensible." 

We don’t know whether the Newport Appraisal Group is using the same unrealistic assumptions as the SPA’s appraiser did. Whether the land can in fact be used to build a two-bedroom house makes the difference between Swain's $61,900 assessment and SPA's appraiser's $426,000.

What about access?

We also don’t know about the access road that leads to the site. The actual entry to the access driveway appears to have been omitted in the SPA offer as submitted. If the access road is NOT part of the deal, that diminishes the land’s worth to the town a whole lot more. 

Also, if you scroll up to the passage I inserted from the SPA's appraisal, note that the appraiser calls the 3.71 acres size of the property he appraised a second "extraordinary assumption" when in fact, the entire property, including all of the access road, appears on the Charlestown Tax Assessor's rolls as 4.27 acres. 

Based on the records, that half an acre difference means the SPA wants to sell us land that no one in Charlestown other than the 100 households in SPA can get to. Each SPA household has a deeded  right of 24/7 access to the land.

I'd sure like to know why the SPA did that. We know it was deliberate because in the April 24 sale inquiry SPA Secretary (and CCA Candidate for Town Moderator) Ron Areglado gave 3.71 acres as the acreage being offered.

Here's the map SPA submitted:

SPA-Gate is a bad deal for Charlestown.

We don’t need this property at any price. It is unbuildable (and sea level rise will probably submerge it within a few years). We do not have to worry the land will be developed. The town owns two adjacent pieces of undeveloped land and there’s the neighboring Ninigret National Wildlife Refuge.

If we had the land, what would we do with it without public access?

Besides being a bad deal, there’s also the problem of subterfuge by the CCA Party in directing town officials to subvert YOUR right to know what your elected officials are up to.

It will be interesting to see if the CCA Party allows the new appraisal to surface before Election Day. SPA-Gate has been a poster child for the shady deals and deliberate lack of transparency that are central issues in the November 3^rd election.

Charlestown's SPA-Gate cover-up begins

Town blacks out town officials’ correspondence

By Will Collette

It goes on like this for EIGHT pages. Source: 
Charlestown document 4-M-2020-8-9 Lee to Hilton
etal_Redacted.pdf

As it does at least once a year, the controlling Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA Party) is working on a shady land deal. This time, it’s with one of its client groups, the Sachem Passage Association (SPA). It could lead to the town buying a small piece of property for seven times its assessed value.

Welcome to SPA-Gate.

We have a number of documents the town was legally required to disclose under the state’s Access to Public Records Act (APRA). These documents give us more than enough detail to know the deal is a really bad one for the town.

I’ll run the details down for you shortly. (Spoiler: the land is worth $61,900 but we might pay $426,000).

But let me tell you what the town is covering up: by claiming an exemption under the APRA, Charlestown is blacking out correspondence to and from elected officials on the deal.

Charlestown’s black-outs mean you can’t see the by-play between the key figures. You can’t see how the deal evolved, what promises were made, whether there is any quid pro quo or corrupt practices or intent. Some perfectly innocent documents end up looking sinister after the content is wiped out with a magic marker.

Since August 16, the town has sent me 91 documents relating to SPA-Gate. Of those, 76 have undergone some level of redaction (black-out). Nearly all have been cut up under the exemption for elected officials.

The example to the ☝upper-left is an e-mail from Council President Virginia Lee to Parks & Recreation Director Vicky Hilton with what are supposed to be photos of the land being offered for sale to the town. It is one of the more ridiculous cases – I doubt those photos give away any secrets.

You can only guess what our Town Planner had to
say to Planning  Commissar Ruth Platner
after the DEM grant was approved

The open records law does allow correspondence of elected officials – e.g. Town Council or Planning Commission members – to be withheld.

Here’s the APRA exemption for elected official at 38-2-2: “(M) Correspondence of or to elected officials with or relating to those they represent and correspondence of or to elected officials in their official capacities.”

I spoke to attorney Kathy Sadeck, chief of the Open Government Unit at RI Attorney General Peter Neronha’s office. She said that just because a document CAN be withheld under this exemption doesn’t mean it MUST be withheld or even SHOULD be withheld.

When the information is in the public interest or may involve questionable or illegal practices, the Attorney General may not allow it to stay hidden behind the exemption.

Choices to disclose or not are usually political and reflect either a commitment to transparency or to obfuscation.

These documents would not be protected from disclosure to a grand jury or in a court of law.

According to Council Vice-President Deb Carney 
these blacked out e-mails are questions about the 
black-out policy she raised with our Town Clerk
and Town Administrator. She did not ask for nor
agree to the black-outs.

Council member Deb Carney has raised this issue with the Town Council and suggested the Town stop censoring every piece of correspondence involving a Council or Planning Commission member.

CCA Council member Bonnie Van Slyke who represents Arnolda asked Deb:

“I wonder what the problem is here and why the mechanism set up, you know, to appeal to the Town Administrator if there’s an issue or to the Attorney General, I don’t understand. Deb, what is the problem? What is broken here?”

OK, Bonnie, you asked.

Every detail of Charlestown policy and practice has been controlled by the Charlestown Citizens Alliance through its secretive Steering Committee for the past ten years. That includes disclosure of information. There have been running battles over the public’s right to know for the past decade.

Town Administrator Mark Stankiewicz does what the CCA tells him to do so appealing to him is pointless except to fulfill the steps set out in the APRA before making the failure to disclosure a bigger, legal issue.

Despite the 76 censored records, we have enough in those records the town had no choice but to disclose to understand why the CCA is so eager to cover-up SPA-Gate e-mails. Based on those records, here’s what we know.

The Sachem Passage Association (SPA) is a non-profit residents association of about 100 households clustered on the Charlestown Moraine. They operated under the nom de guerre “Ill Wind” to try to block a proposed two-turbine wind energy project called Whalerock.

They failed and turned to the town for a bail-out. So in 2013, Charlestown bought the Whalerock property for $2.1 million. From that point on, SPA and the CCA were joined at the hip.

SPA owns Lot 5-95-5, 4.27 acres (which includes the access road) on Foster Cove. Each of the SPA households has a deeded right of access to the lot, though the land has been largely unused. Thus, the SPA leaders decided to sell it.

We know an approach was made to the town on April 24 by Ron Areglado, CCA Party candidate for Town Moderator, acting as SPA’s Secretary (READ HERE). Areglado led the unsuccessful anti-Whalerock fight that ended up costing Charlestown $2.1 million.

The SPA presented a January 21 appraisal that valued the land at $426,000 based on, according to the appraiser, the “extraordinary assumption” that a two bedroom house could be built there even though the appraiser admits this is virtually impossible. READ THE APPRAISAL HERE.

Here is the relevant passage where the appraisal says his number is based on the "Extraordinary Assumption" that the lot is buildable.

We have a June 1 memo (READ HERE or below) from Town Tax Assessor Ken Swain to Town Planner Jane Weidman that details why he believes the town assessment of $61,900 is fair and reasonable given all the legal and physical restraints make it impossible to build a house on that property.

On June 4, despite Swain’s memo, Jane Weidman submitted an open space grant application (READ HERE) to RIDEM based on the phony price of $426,000.

So at some point between June 1 and June 4, the town decided to disregard Town Tax Assessor Ken Swain's misgivings about the value of the land and to instead submit an application for state funding, using an appraisal known to be false.

Who made that decision?

I don’t know if there were any exchanges in the blacked-out e-mails that discussed the propriety of asking for a grant based on the SPA appraisal when it was clear the $426,000 price was wrong.

On July 30, DEM awarded Charlestown $213,000 to pay for half of the inflated appraisal price for the SPA land.

I can’t tell from any of the blacked-out e-mails whether there was any thought given to telling DEM about the appraisal problem.

From this point on, just about all the documents released by the town are heavily redacted like the example to the left.

SPA-Gate is not a done deal – several shady CCA deals have been killed in the past when the details emerged.

Plus, there are some fail-safes built in such as the requirement that an INDEPENDENT appraisal will be done, hopefully without the “extraordinary assumptions” (a.k.a. bullshit) that underlay the SPA appraisal.

Proponents of the SPA-Gate deal – the SPA officers, Planning Commissar Ruth Platner and the CCA members of the Town Council – have been laying low since the DEM grant was approved. The town is still waiting for SPA to respond to its request for documents. 

And there’s the black out of public records relating to SPA-Gate which is becoming an issue in itself - although, to be honest, I think the land deal between the CCA majority and its cronies is the real issue.

We are, of course, looking at an election on November 3 where the CCA Party's 10-year control of Charlestown is being challenged.

My sources say activity will pick up again after November 3, unless the CCA Party loses its Council majority or Ruth Platner is voted off the Planning Commission (hopefully both),

Another land scam brewing in Charlestown

Is SPA-Gate going to become Charlestown’s big 2020 scandal?

By Will Collette

The Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA Party) loves to spend your money to buy over-priced land from its cronies, whether we need the land or not.

These deals are almost always brokered by CCA Party leader and Planning Commission chair Ruth Platner and she has another deal in the works - buying a small parcel of land from the Sachem Passage Association for almost 7 times its assessed value. The deal is very much like one we've seen before. 

Tom Ferrio and I started Progressive Charlestown in January 2011. One of the first big issues we covered in depth was “Y-Gate,” a scheme to spend over $800,000 in Charlestown and state tax dollars on a derelict campground on Watchaug Pond that had been abandoned by the politically-connected YMCA of Westerly.

The scheme was pushed by the mostly non-resident Sonquipaug neighborhood who wanted the town to buy the land as an extension of their small vacation house backyards, as well as CCA insiders connected to the Westerly Y. “Y-Gate” was marked by secrecy, sneaky backroom deals, personal attacks and lies. Ruth Platner quarterbacked the scheme.

Central to the Y-Gate scam was a totally bogus appraisal that even the appraiser said was  based on assumptions “known to be false.”

In the end, the Y-Gate caper ended in a storm of public outrage at the CCA-controlled Town Council, but its legacy lingers on.

More often than not, Charlestown’s open space purchases are for parcels that are over-priced and bought from owners with CCA connections.

Almost a decade after Y-Gate, Charlestown is considering another remarkably similar land deal: spending almost half a million dollars of state and Charlestown money for a parcel scarcely worth $60,000 but owned by the CCA Party client group, the Sachem Passage Association (SPA).

In 2011, we had Y-Gate. In 2020, we have SPA-Gate.

You may recall the SPA (using the nom de guerre “Ill Wind”) as the group that fought a losing court battle to block construction of Whalerock, two industrial-sized wind turbines on the Charlestown moraine overlooking Route One.

Whalerock was a bad project, highly unpopular, but fighting in court against a proposed “LULU” (“locally undesirable land use”) is the worst strategy. I know that from 20 years of experience in fighting LULUs around the country.

The SPA leaders in that fight also decided to make environmental health the core of their raison d’etre, citing plainly silly pseudo-science to claim all manner of health problems connected to wind turbines. If you want to know where Donald Trump got his “windmills cause cancer” nonsense, just check the SPA’s sources for its health claims.

As SPA’s case started circling the drain, they drew Charlestown into the court fight. Then, when that failed, SPA prevailed on Charlestown for a bail-out. So in 2013, Charlestown bought the Whalerock property for $2.1 million.

Now they’re back with their hand out. On April 24, Ron Areglado sent an “Open Space Inquiry” (below) on behalf of SPA asking the town to buy a piece of land from them currently assessed by Charlestown at $61,900. Areglado was leader of the erstwhile “Ill Wind” group, served on the Chariho School Committee under the CCA banner and is running as the CCA Party’s candidate for Town Moderator.

The land is Lot 5-95-5, 4.27 acres (which includes the access road) on Foster Cove. It’s a pretty piece of land – I’ve seen it – but it is over-valued. The $426,000 SPA “appraisal” is based, according to the appraiser, on the “extraordinary assumption” that a two bedroom house could be built there even though the appraiser admits this is virtually impossible.

On June 1, town Tax Assessor Ken Swain was asked by town planner Jane Weidman to explain why Ken had assessed the property at such a low figure ($61,900) – especially when compared to the SPA’s $426,000 appraisal. Ken responded the same day, detailing exactly why the property is only worth $61,900. Here is his response:

Planner Weidman sent a memo on August 5 (below) to town administrator Mark Stankiewicz, Council President Virginia Lee and Planning Commissar Platner, laying out the next steps including the town’s commissioning of an appraisal based on real world conditions

Those real world conditions include:

• The probability that none of the regulatory agencies (Charlestown, CRMC, FEMA, etc.) would ever allow a two-bedroom house to be built there;
• Constraints imposed by the settlement in “SPA v. Ron and Mary Russo,” (CA WC-2014-0918);
• Unknown internal SPA issues including the fact that every SPA member has an individual deeded right of access to the land and would need to sign off, and last but not least;
• The high likelihood this property will be one of the first to go underwater due to climate change-driven sea level rise.

Despite all these dubious distinctions, Planning Commissar Platner is laying the groundwork for a big push to buy this property. She recently wrote an op-ed extolling the virtues of unlimited purchases of open space. Open space über alles.

She uses an old rhetorical trick called the “Straw Man” argument – setting up a false premise and then debating it.

In her letter to the editor, she starts with this:

Consultants in 2016 looked at the remaining land in Charlestown available to be developed for housing and determined that, if no more land is preserved, several thousand more units of housing will be built and our year-round population will triple. (Emphasis added). Occurring mostly in northern Charlestown, that development will dramatically alter the character of our community, destroy some of Rhode Island’s most critical forests that provide wildlife habitat and clean our water and the air we breathe, will reduce our attraction for tourism, and will significantly raise tax rates.

In other words, Armageddon. There is a fundamental flaw in this statement – just because something CAN be done does not mean it WILL be done. Platner would have you believe that every inch of undeveloped land will be turned into high-density housing bringing in hordes of (gasp!) people from outside.

You can’t logically jump from “possibility” to “certainty” and expect to be taken seriously.

The CCA Party and Ruth Platner in particular have a long history of exaggerated claims of threats that could happen, but probably won’t. Fear has driven their election success and like Donald Trump, they are hoping it will work for them again in 2020.

In my article on why we must challenge and end institutional racism in Charlestown, I noted that this is the kind of coded rhetoric – frankly, lies – that Charlestown uses to keep “people from Providence” out of Charlestown.

I repeat – just because something is theoretically possible, it doesn’t mean it will happen. There is just as much likelihood that all undeveloped land in Charlestown will be developed as there is for the SPA-Gate property to become a two-bedroom house.

Platner then goes on for a couple of paragraphs to praise all the great things the CCA Party has done to prevent Armageddon before setting up the next Straw Man. Here it comes:

Our opposition in this year’s election is claiming that we have too much open space, that we should acquire no more, and that land preservation is competing with development and causing residential growth to be too slow. The data do not support their claims.

I tried to find a source for Ruthie’s extraordinary claim. The closest I came to the inspiration for Platner’s Straw Man claim is an August 20 Westerly Sun letter to the editor by Steven Williams, especially this paragraph:

One time, a senior CCA member told me the town could never buy too much open space. I disagreed then, and I do now, unless my two criteria are met. I believe we have plenty of open space, especially when you add state and federal land into the total. The town’s responsibility is to protect and maintain all our properties. This year, the budget commission had to add additional money to the budget to supplement maintenance of our existing open spaces.

In 2016, Williams was once part of the CCA Party Town Council team until he resigned from the Council in 2018. He is not a 2020 candidate for any town office either for the Charlestown Residents United or any other organization.

He did NOT say Charlestown had “too much” open space – he said we have “plenty” especially when you consider federal and state land. He argued for two sensible criteria for new open space purchases: sensible price and a “reasonable purpose.” Williams' letter is neither anti-open space nor pro-development (read it yourself), just pro-common sense.

A 2016 survey map done by the US Fish & Wildlife Service (below) to support their proposed Great Thicket wildlife refuge shows more than 60% of Charlestown is protected land, not including all the acreage of fresh and saltwater ponds. It is hard evidence that supports Mr. Williams' statement that Charlestown has "plenty" of open space.

It’s not unreasonable to ask when enough is enough. It’s reasonable to call for more strategic acquisitions rather than follow Platner’s policy that “Charlestown could can never buy too much open space.”

Platner wraps up her screed with one more Straw Man:

Development is proceeding at 5 to 10 times the rate of preservation, yet our political opponents see land conservation as a threat to population growth!

The proof, Ruthie, show us the proof. As Carl Sagan said, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” I’d like to see the numbers Ruthie cites. More importantly, her claim that CCA Party opponents “see land conservation as a threat to population growth” needs to be documented. Who said it and when?

Everything point in this article is documented. Ruthie: it’s your turn.