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?

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

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

By Will Collette

The CCA's 2024 campaign slogan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2008-2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

2013-2014

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

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

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

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

2017-2019

Life-long Charlestown public servant
Frank Glista

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

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

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

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

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

He offered another example the CCA spoils system:

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

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

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

2021

Freud knew what was going on

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

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

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

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

Why raise issues that only spotlight your own malfeasance?

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

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

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.

How the Charlestown Citizens Alliance used fake enemies and bogus emergencies to gain and keep power

Fear and loathing in Charlestown politics

By Will Collette

Just substitute "CCA" for "GOP" and
you get the gist

One of the most despicable things a politician can do is to use lies to create fear and panic among the people to win their votes. 

Donald Trump has used that technique for years, but this year, has brought it to new heights, as the residents of Springfield, OH can testify. 

Trump’s running mate JD Vance admitted he spread phony stories about legal Haitian immigrants eating pets because "If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention..., then that’s what I’m going to do,”

Long before Trump, the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) has used that technique, starting in 2008 by portraying Charlestown’s resident curmudgeon Jim Mageau as the devil incarnate. 

While Jim was a terrible Town Council President, his wacky behavior made him an ineffective threat to anyone other than himself. But as a "threat," Mageau helped catapult the CCA into power.

Since that initial success at seizing power through fear and loathing, the CCA has come up with some enemy – real or imagined – to stay in power. They create one or more villains and then claim that only they can defend the town. The CCA is as phony as Trump and Vance claiming Haitians are coming to eat your pets.

The CCA's list of threats and enemies is long

The Charlestown Citizens Alliance threat list includes:

The Narragansett Indian Tribe for their long-abandoned plan for an Indian casino. The CCA hired attorney Joe Larisa, called a "racist by tribal leaders" specifically to harass the Tribe and block any effort the tribe makes to improve the lives of its people.

“People from Providence” who will swarm in with all their kids if we build any family housing and overrun the Chariho schools. Another example of the CCA's use of racist code words.

Developers and Democrats – the CCA has worked hard to create the myth that they are one and the same even though it's demonstrably false.

Wind power, spurred by Larry LeBlanc’s proposed Whalerock wind power project, became one of the CCA’s most successful phony campaigns. Ironically, in 2011, the CCA leader Tom Gentz was a staunch supporter of wind power, even making a presentation to the Council about how good wind energy is. Of course, that was before anti-wind NIMBYs started to contribute heavily to the CCA. Charlestown now has an effective town ban on ANY wind-to-energy device, even small residential units.

AMTRAK made another good boogeyman when a half-baked, improbable idea surfaced to run new track through northern Charlestown, scaring the shit out of half the town. CCA leader and Charlestown’s Planning Commissar Ruth Platner has been trying to revive the Charlestown Choo-choo hoax since the furor died down. Her 2021 headline for a story that attempted to revive the Amtrak boogeyman read They’re Back: Northeast Corridor Commission Sets Out Plan To Implement NEC Future.

Lights. In 2012, the CCA went nuts when a town staffer explored funding for temporary lights to facilitate autumn kids' football practice. This innocent inquiry mushroomed into a full-blown crisis - The Battle for Ninigret Park. The CCA confabulated this lighting inquiry into a direct threat that the Interior Department would take back Ninigret Park because the lights during autumn twilight would disturb the birds and bunnies in the Wildlife Refuge. It was all bullshit - the Interior's regional director Elyse LaForest had to come in to debunk the CCA lies - but it cost then Town Administrator Bill Delibero his job.

The Narragansett Indian Tribe became a CCA target again when one official made an ill- advised and broadly rejected deal to sell water to a nonexistent power plant in Burrillville.

Frank Glista was trashed for selling open, undeveloped land to the state Water Resources Board to preserve water resources. The CCA normally worships permanently protected open space, but not when the land comes from Frank.

Tons of asphalt were laid for "Faith's Folly" despite the CCA's
hatred for asphalt. Faith sold this project, telling the
Town Council it would cost less than $7,000.
The final bill was at $266,927.

Asphalt is a hated substance except when used in a scandalous patronage deal for CCA founding member Faith LaBossiere to build “Faith’s Folly,” an over-priced, under-used bike track in Ninigret Park.

Progressive Charlestown and me in particular made the CCA enemies’ list early on for writing articles like this. I’m fine with that.

The CCA also hates Deb Carney despite her years of effective leadership on the Council and the Chariho School Committee.

You can add a lot of others to the list. For example, CCA Town Council President Tom “Uncle Fluffy” Gentz frequently mocked and belittled Janice Falcone when she would rise to support a measure the CCA didn’t like.

The CCA viciously attacked Janice when she attempted to get the town to buy the historic General Stanton Inn that Janice and her beloved late husband Sonny labored to keep in tiptop condition. The CCA fought hard to block a town referendum to buy the Inn as an anchor for the Cross Mills historic district even though the CCA was otherwise willing to pay any price to preserve the “historic village district.”

* NOTE the contradictions. The CCA wants to do whatever it takes for the Cross Mills Historic Village but killed the plan to buy and preserve the General Stanton Inn. The CCA is willing to pay any price to add more protected open space but attacked Frank Glista for trying to do just that with his land sale to the state Water Resources Board. The CCA hates asphalt but is willing to lay down tons of it for "Faith's Folly." Go figure.

They viciously attacked my colleague Steve Hoff, a retired CPA, for doing the research to expose the CCA’s fiscal irresponsibility, especially the “$3 million Oopsie.”

In their big 3-page flyer, the CCA sums up their position, stating “What is at risk in this election?” Note they use the negative instead of “what is our plan for improving people’s lives” or some other positive theme. At risk, according to the CCA are “low taxes,” “dark skies” and “clean water.”

First, the town tax rate has dropped since the CCA was booted from control in 2022. They left behind a tax rate of $8.17 per thousand. Under the CRU's first year, the tax rate dropped to $5.74. It’s currently $5.78. 

They claim there’s a $39.5 million plan for “commercial development” in Ninigret. There isn’t.

They claim this imaginary threat will thwart “the Ninigret Wildlife Refuge and our children’s ability to learn about the universe.” This is a total crock of horse manure, as stupid as the "Battle for Ninigret Park" described above.

The CCA flyer also raises the specter of the need for “a sewage treatment plant and miles of sewer lines that would cost at least $1 billion.” Yup, that’s the claim. They say this will happen unless there is a “delicate balance” between well-planned residential development and what the land can support.

Here’s the key question: WHO is proposing otherwise? Who? If the CCA is going to create a boogeyman, at least give it a name.

Early on in the CCA’s history, one of their resident geniuses, Mike Chambers, liked to brag about the CCA's effectiveness at. They used Hitler’s Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels’ formula: “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth”

Creating fear and hate through lies kept the CCA in office for over a decade. They have also gotten very good at covering up their lies by blocking access to public records that would unveil their deception. CLICK HERE for an example.

In 2022, Charlestown voters saw through the CCA’s blue smoke and mirrors and voted them out of office. The CCA wants to take back power using the same old Goebbels’ formula. Don’t let them.

Charlestown dreaming

What can we hope for from the new CRU Town Council majority?

By Will Collette

Congratulations to the new Charlestown Residents United Town Council majority, L-R Deb Carney, Rippy Serra, Grace Klinger and Steve Stokes. They are being sworn in on December 5.

For the first time since 2008, we will soon see the first Town Council sworn in that does not have a Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) endorsed majority. The new majority were endorsed by Charlestown Residents United (CRU) and consist of one Democrat and three Republicans. Only incumbent CCA councilor Susan Cooper managed to win a seat.

Like the majority of Charlestown voters, I am hopeful that this new coalition government will not only be able to get along but will also bring about significant changes in Charlestown’s policies and practices, starting with lifting the iron curtain the CCA imposed on citizens’ access to information.

For the past two year in particular, Town Administrator Mark Stankiewicz seemed to go out of his way to find loopholes to make it harder to get information under the Access to Public Records act. This was especially true of information on Planning Commissar Ruth Platner’s land deals and town finances. Stankiewicz’s kind of public access meant be charged hundreds of dollars to get pages that were mostly blacked out like this example:

I hope it becomes town policy to make it easier, not harder, to get public information.

And for his gleeful participation in CCA's shady dealings and for covering them up, I think the new Council should look to replace Stankiewicz as soon as possible.

I hope this new majority will see the value in better relations with our neighbors, the Narragansett Indian Tribe. It’s time to cut loose the public face of Charlestown’s jihad against the Tribe, attorney Joe Larisa, whose retainer and expenses amount to $25,000 or more to do nothing but watch the Tribe and thwart any effort the Tribe makes to uplift itself.

The Council fired him once already, but he was rescued by CCA Councilor Susan Cooper, the only CCA controlled member of the current Council.

After Larisa goes, it’s long past time to sit with the Tribe and discuss mutual interests with respect and open-mindedness. I don’t know where such discussions might lead, but at least we must try. Our chances of a productive outcome are greatly increased without the incendiary presence of Joe Larisa.

We should take a good look at our financial management especially after last year’s $3 million “oopsie.” We need an honest, unbiased outside review to make sure we have the right safeguards in place to avoid future “oopsies” and to make sure we have the right management staff and oversight. What we don’t need is another rubber stamp of shoddy financial practices.

I think it would be smart for the new Council to commission a thorough review of Charlestown’s property tax policies. Even though our tax rate is low, our taxes rise every year regardless of the rate due to rising assessments. We also pay out of pocket for services that other municipalities provide as part of the package.

Traditionally, taxes reflect community values. Taxes don’t just fund the basic operations of government, like education and emergency services. Taxes are a way we support who and what we like and what we want to discourage.

In Charlestown, property tax breaks are given to veterans, the blind and disabled, low-income elderly, plus property under the Farm, Forest and Open Space program or with some form of conservation easement. NOTE: if you fit any of these categories, you must apply to get the tax break. You don’t get it automatically. You should contact Tax Assessor Ken Swain before March 1^st to see if you qualify.

We also give tax breaks on property owned by our two FAKE Fire Districts and to property owners whose land is improperly zoned. These are well-known problem areas that allow those owners to underpay their property taxes by thousands of dollars. We need to fix the mis-zoning problem and find a way to make the beach clubs/homeowner associations masquerading as fire districts pay up.

The Quonnie Central Beach Fire District's 28-acre rec center, assessed at $98,000. This is the photo the Charlestown Tax Assessor posted in 2014

On the other hand, we can use tax policy encourage practices we believe in. For example, the CCA-controlled Planning Commission regularly passes zoning regulations that micromanage local businesses. I’m not just talking about big changes like the recent upheaval in housing development rules, but the smaller and more nit-picky things like regulating everything from lighting systems to shrubbery, often mandating that businesses spend serious money to meet some CCA members’ styling whims.

If the town is going to dictate such things as the color of outdoor switch plates, businesses should be granted some tax relief to at least partially cover such unfunded mandates.

We should come up with a way to encourage more active participation in our volunteer fire companies. Incentives could run the gamut from a recruitment tax credit for joining to increased stipends for responding to call outs. If the Council talks to the fire fighters, I have no doubt they have some ideas as to how to improve recruitment, retention and participation.

Under the CCA, the town has invested heavily in adding more acreage to the stock of open space property to protect it from development. Town maps show 60% of Charlestown land is untaxed and off-limits to development.

But there’s a whole lot more to environmental protection than just acquiring more open space. 

Among Rhode Island towns, Charlestown is one of the most vulnerable to the ill effects of the climate crisis, especially sea level rise and increased severe storm activity. These threaten life and limb but also threaten to wipe out a substantial part of our tax base.

Climate change is a global problem, but we all need to do our share, especially since we have so much to lose, by switching to green energy. The new Town Council can help through regulation change and tax incentives.

Other than one summer’s burst of activity around the Solarize Charlestown project, CCA-controlled Charlestown did virtually nothing to promote green energy. In fact, while bathing in the PR glow of the 2017 Solarize project – actually, a state program – CCA-controlled Councils have made green energy development more difficult. And Solarize Charlestown barely scratched the surface even with town support. Only three dozen households participated. Cathy and I were one of those households.

Charlestown is littered with abandoned quarries and sand pits. The owners are under no obligation to reclaim the land. These sites could be used to site larger solar arrays.

It is in Charlestown’s self-interest to promote as much home and business level green energy as possible and tax credits certainly can play a role. But the new Council should also look at the barriers the CCA has imposed in the past, such as the virtual ban on small, residential or business wind energy.

While the town was pretty united against the proposed giant Whalerock wind turbines that would have towered over Route One, Charlestown’s ordinance on small turbines is a gross over-reaction, especially given advances in technology. For example, variations on vertical axis turbines – not big blades, but more curlicue-shaped – are becoming quite popular for home use.

There are hundreds of different vertical axis designs.
Generally, all are quiet and efficient. nordicgrizzly.com

If you want to see these types of turbines in action locally, visit the gardens surrounding Arrowhead Dental. Dr. Bruce Gouin has had a bunch of them placed as art installations. They’re not hooked up to an electrical generator so they don’t violate the anti-wind Charlestown Zoning Ordinance. If they were, though, they would generate a lot of energy.

The Charlestown Liquor Store has installed a geothermal generator that draws power from the earth. A number of homes – including ours – have installed heat pumps that draw heat from the air.

There are lots of other ideas the new Council should explore, many of them issues that have fallen by the wayside over the long reign of the CCA:

A homestead tax exemption. Charlestown is becoming an outlier on granting permanent residents a credit to offset the taxes we pay for year-round infrastructure to serve our summertime population surge. 

In recent years, Narragansett and North Kingstown joined the list with no apparent ill effects on their budgets. Even a dope like GOP Senate candidate Hershel Walker gets a homestead tax credit by claiming permanent residence in Texas even though he’s running to become Senator from Georgia.

In addition to reinstating a Charter Review Advisory Commission, as Deb Carney proposed, Charlestown should review its Code of Ordinances and begin weaning out those that are outdated, unenforced or unenforceable, or just downright silly, such as making it a crime in Charlestown to throw a snowball at a tree.

We need a bad actor ordinance or policy. At minimum, such a policy would protect the town from doing business with criminals. The town can set standards for who can get a contract, permit or purchase order. We can use whatever standards we want so long as they are reasonable and consistent. The usual criteria include corporate crime, environmental offenses, civil rights violations, failure to meet labor standards and, in construction, failure to consistently perform work on time and on budget.

We could have stopped the infamous Copar Quarry from acquiring the Morrone sand pit based on their owner’s serving federal prison time for organized crime. Or the Dollar Store’s violations of wage and hour laws, and discriminatory employment practices IF we had a bad actor policy that contained those criteria.

And of course, there’s Charlestown’s desperate need for affordable housing. Kids who grew up in Charlestown can’t afford to stay – a notable example is now ex-Town Council member Cody Clarkin.

The new Council not only faces a growing problem but one where the CCA brutally worked to block any progress for over a decade. The CCA did everything it could to keep affordable housing from being built, including Ruth Platner’s slander that families with children are parasites because they increase our school costs. That has to change.

This new Council has two years to work on the mess left behind by more than a decade of CCA rule. It’s a tough job and those of us who supported the CRU’s successful campaign will need to be patient. At the same time, we should not be bashful about urging them on to do what we elected them to do.