The deafening sound of silence

For the past couple months, we, the citizens of Hopkinton, have heard no official word about the fate of the ill-conceived movie studio.  Yesterday, the Providence Journal published an article indicating that the deafening sound of silence we have heard from the Town Council and the developers was indeed the death knell of said studio.   I say good riddance to bad rubbish.

Hopkinton Loses Shot to Be Little Hollywood

By Maria Armental, Journal Staff Writer

HOPKINTON –– A proposal to build a film studio and hotel near Route 95 at Exit 2 in Hopkinton is officially off the table, town and state officials have confirmed.

Supporters of the movie studio proposal blamed the state’s annual $15-million cap on movie production tax credits –– which the project’s lead sponsor, Rep. Brian Patrick Kennedy, D-Hopkinton, called the “death knell for the project” –– for derailing the proposal, which hinged on a 20-percent transferable tax credit on construction costs, or roughly $15 million.

The developers did not comment, but a property owner whose land was under option and a real estate broker who worked with the developers confirmed last week that most of the options had expired in May and June. The developers did not exercise their right to renew the options for another year.

Dorothy Reynolds, whose family owns and operates the Brook Knoll Farm, where some land had been optioned, said the family’s lawyer had tried unsuccessfully to get official word from the developers.

Under the one-year agreement that has since expired, she said, the family was allowed to continue using the land until construction began.

The options were never recorded in town.

Georgia Ure, a Hope Valley real estate broker, said some of the options are still active, but declined to comment on specifics, citing confidentiality.

Kevin R. Gould, of Advocacy Solutions, the project’s public relations firm, said last week he did not know the status of the options and did not comment on the status of the project.

As originally presented –– plans were never filed –– a development consortium backed by Pacifica Ventures of Santa Monica, Calif., proposed to build a $75-million studio with eight sound stages totaling 155,000 to 225,000 square feet; about 75,000 square feet of production offices; 10,000 square feet of executive offices; about 75,000 square feet of mill and welding space for set and sound-stage creation; a back lot for outdoor sets, trailers and parking; and buildings for cafeterias and storage. The proposal also called for a 150-room hotel.

The developers –– Hal Katersky of Pacifica Ventures in Santa Monica, Calif., along with Ralph Palumbo and Anthony DelVicario of Halden Acquisition Group in Providence –– had stressed the potential economic stimulus and job creation, based on their experience with a similar studio Katersky built in Albuquerque, N.M.

Kennedy, one of the sponsors of legislation that would have provided tax credits for the creation of film studios, said he hadn’t heard anything official from the developers but assumed the deal was off given the tax credit cap, the failure to approve tax credits for the creation of a film studio, and talk of other movie studios in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

“All of the incentives to create a project of this kind have disappeared,” Kennedy said, adding, “Our loss will be some other state’s gain.”

“I’m disappointed because I think this would have been a great project for Hopkinton and for the state of Rhode Island. Unfortunately, there weren’t enough progressive-thinking legislators.”

Katersky is moving forward on plans to build an $85-million studio in Chester Township, Pa.

I am hoping Kennedy will be one less “progressive-thinking” legislator sitting up in Providence come November 5th.  And what the hell does that even mean?  How does giving a giant corporation public welfare amount to a single progressive ideal?  Please explain further because it seems anything but a progressive mentality.

Oh, and American Kuhne is opening up this week, right?  Or is it next week?  Can anyone tell me how many NEW JOBS that created?  Considering it just moved from Norwich to Hopkinton, I am betting that the number is precious few.  Maybe 2 secretaries?

Why I Think the Municipal Court Is a Very Bad Idea

In my last post, I went off on a tangent about the Municipal Court.  I’ve never discussed it here so I’ll take the opportunity now. 

As I mentioned to Lois Buck in some previous comments, I think that instituting the Hopkinton Municipal Court was a big deal.  Yes, Rhode Island State Law gives the Council the ability to institute the Court through Town Ordinances and the Council is not required to put together a referendum to gauge public support for the Court.  However, Hopkinton has gone for 250 years without a municipal court.  The establishment of a local judiciary is a major change in Town practices.  If you have read any section of the charter, you will realize that many pedantic and insignificant legal changes need the approval of voters.  But a municipal court, a major structural change in Town government, requires the vote of 3 of 5 Councilors.  As a matter of good judgment, the Town Council should have brought it to the voters.  Mrs. Buck states that, “the Council had meetings”.  Yes, I am sure they did.  They always have meetings.  And any parent with a child or senior citizen whose eyes are not what they used to be when driving at night will not be at those meetings (these two categories include most of Hopkinton). We are also assuming that the electorate is even aware that the meetings are taking place.  I generally pay attention to these things and missed the notice of meetings to discuss the Court.  Maybe that was my fault, maybe not.  So let me lay out the arguments for and against a Hopkinton Municipal Court.

The Town Manager was the primary individual responsible for instituting the Hopkinton Municipal Court, or so we are told.  It appears that the Police Chief also played a role, which seems like one hell of a conflict-of-interest (the guy who enforces the law actively lobbying for the legal arm that prosecutes the law).  The Town Manager had two reasons for wanting the Council to approve a Municipal Court:

 

1.  Illegal Apartments.  The Town had no way to effectively shut down illegal apartments before the Court.  The building inspector could interfere with the sale of a property that contained an illegal apartment, but that was it.  So the Town Manger is hot-and-bothered about illegal apartments and wants to shut them down and he needs the court for that.   My question is: why?  I may be missing something here but I can’t see why illegal apartments are such a big deal.  Is safety the issue?  I’ve seen 3 or 4 illegal apartments in Hopkinton.  None of them house more than 2 to 3 people and they all appear relatively clean and well maintained.  I have not heard of any illegal apartments burning down, so I don’t think they are a fire hazard.  “Safety” seems like a red herring.  I do not thing Safety is the issue, it just sounds good.  If safety were truly an issue, we’d all be required to have sprinklers in our homes.  Safety might be the issue if 30 people were living in a house.  But none of the illegal apartments I am aware of are being used by dozens of illegal immigrants.  This is Hopkinton, not Cranston or Pawtucket and no one has even suggested that this is happening. What about fire escapes, you say?  If I have 8 people living in my house as a family, how safer is that than 2 families of 4 living with a wall in between?  I tell you, it is a farce.

Now septic issues may be a bonafide problem.  If you double the number of people in a house and increase the septic use, you may damage the system.  But isn’t that an issue for DEM and the owners insurance?

How about taxes?  Yes, illegal apartment owners are not paying the extra taxes that an attached apartment would warrant.  But if you bust the illegal apartment, they have to shut it down anyway and since you are not rezoning them they still don’t end up paying those taxes.

I think the illegal apartment issue is a joke.  There are a lot of hard working people in this Town.  If they can make some money off an apartment, good for them.  It has no impact on the quality of life for the rest of us and I defy anyone to demonstrate such.

 We selectively enforce laws every day.  Every cop and every prosecutor decides which people to stop, which laws to enforce, which people to prosecute.  Racial profiling is the best example of this but there are lots of little examples everywhere.  Why waste all this energy on illegal apartments?  Someone has a bee in their bonnet and is making it everyone else’s problem. And for the record, I do not have an illegal apartment, would not rat my neighbors out if they did have one but can’t see why anyone would want one in the first place. 

 

2.  Police Overtime.  The next argument that was made was that having a Municipal Court would cut down on gas and police overtime.  This is probably true.  But I’m not sure this outweighs the negative aspects, which I will address shortly.  And there is something funny about this argument that never made sense to me.  The police chief is a member of the police union.  It’s strange, but true.  Now if he is such a working class guy, wouldn’t he want his cops to get overtime?  Cops love overtime.  They make a fortune on it, it is what bumps their salaries into the $80K range.  And driving back and forth in a police cruiser is probably a lot better than standing in a construction zone.  And god knows we have enough damn police cars.  So why would the chief push to cut down on overtime?  Maybe he had some really altruistic reason for it, but he’s never cared about keeping his budget lean in the past.  From all accounts, he is a man on a mission: building the finest little police empire Hopkinton can(not) afford!

And remember, these are not violent criminals being transported back and forth.  The municipal court handles stupid rinky-dink things like speeding tickets.  For the most part, the cops are traveling to the County Court to testify against the person they gave a ticket to.  In most places, if the cops don’t have the time to testify, they simply don’t testify.  The defendant still goes to court, still pays court fees and may or may not get a big old fine.  But it’s still a pain in the ass and a pretty decent deterrent. The whole thing smells like the Town is using law enforcement to generate revenue.  And that stinks.  Law enforcement should not be used to generate revenue, it should be used to stop people from breaking the law.  But I guess that’s corporate American for you, making money the old fashioned way, stealing it from people.

 

So what are the disadvantages?

 

There is only one (or two):  inbreeding and corruption. 

I am not a conspiracy theorist.  But it’s the culmination of many small incidents and abuses that concern me.  And I am not saying the Municipal Court is corrupt.  However, if I piss off the Police Chief he is more likely to cause me problems if he knows that everything he charges me with is going through a municipal court. He knows the judge, he knows the town lawyer and a little quid pro quo is what Rhode Island is known for.  If all my cases go through the County Court, they are going to get a little irritated if it looks like I am being harassed and the judges will start dismissing cases when my lawyer starts to document a pattern of harassment.  If the Police Chief sits in the Town Hall as my case comes up and proceeds to act as a witness in front of his dear friend, the judge, I’m going to lose every time.  And I am going to spend a fortune appealing to the County Court because now I need a lawyer.   If you have been paying attention, you know that Mauti (our former building inspector) received a $100K settlement from Westerly before he was able to rake them over the coals for harassment.  A Westerly Police Captain happened to get off her fat behind and get in a cruiser just as Mauti was crossing into Westerly from Hopkinton.  He was arrested by said WPD Captain for having an out-of-state license, despite being a resident.  Other officers in the WPD testified to the fact (in a sworn deposition) that the arrest was over-the-top and felt it was instigated by the HPD who were at war with the Hopkinton Building Department. I suspect that the HPS was hesitant to arrest Mauti because they didn’t want it to look like harassment.  Just before the WPD Captain got off her duff, she got a call from Hopkinton’s Police Chief.  The rumor I have heard is the case is now in Federal Court and it is the HPD’s turn to face the music.  In addition to this, I am aware of 3-4 other people that have been seemingly targeted by the HPD.  If you have read the papers for the past few years you’ve seen it all play out and you can name them as well as me.

(And yes, the HPD was at war with the Hopkinton Building department because the new Police Department was built like crap and the building inspector foolishly and repeatedly told them so.  And how dare he!  What is this world coming to if the Police Department can’t break the law?)

 

So excuse me for caring, but giving the HPD an easier avenue to prosecute people (a job which is not theirs) upsets me.  Considerably.  

In addition, the Town Magistrate is the former Town Solicitor.  This is what we call inbreeding.  Sure, laywers become judges all the time.  But in small town Hopkinton, where we all know our share of illegal, unethical and corrupt doings, this is not a good idea.  I was constantly disappointed by her actions as Town Solicitor, I have no doubt her actions as Town Magistrate will be similarly underwhelming.

And I will throw out this last bit:  The Town Manager wanted to be the Town Magistrate.  This is very bizarre.  I suspect he always wanted the job and this may have been his primary reason for pushing the court in the first place.  If Hopkinton has nothing else, it does have a boat-load of small people with giant, undeserved egos. 

 

So yes, we can chase down all those illegal apartments and we can save some bucks on gas and overtime and all we have to surrender is impartial justice.  Sounds like a deal to me.  The Town Council has been snookered and doesn’t even know it. And it will be a very hard thing to undo what has been done.  

 

Does John Gilman run Hopkinton?

Of course I am being facetious but it seems as though Mr. Gilman’s name finds it’s way into the news and the doings of Hopkinton far more often than most other people in Town.  Most recently (yesterday) the Westerly Sun reported on a change to the Town ordinance that would alter how residential compounds are structured.  The whole thing bores me to tears and I really cannot pay enough attention to the article or the ordinance to know if it is good, bad or otherwise.  I just don’t care.  But it is important to the Affordable Housing Partnership and they are pissed that the Town Council is ignoring them.  I’m not actually sure they are being ignored, but that is the claim made in the Sun.

But I digress.  The article finishes up by saying that Kevin Hoyle is the individual pushing for the compound ordinance change because he wants to build 3 buildings for his software company on property in Hope Valley, and the ordinance change appears to be necessary for him to do what he wants to do.  And guess who owns the property?  His father-in-law, John Gilman.  Now if you have paid attention, John Gilman is very much involved in the politics and maneouvering that happens in Town.  In fact, it was his property that is now being occupied by Hi-Tech profiles.  My memory is fuzzy in my old age, but I do believe he was a state legislator at one point?    And wasn’t he the past chair of the Hopkinton Democratic Committee, in which position he threw his support behind Cordone and Kenney?  Interesting how Cordone then pushed so hard to get Gilman’s Exit 1 property developed.  Fascinating how all the dots are neatly connected.  And now that the deed is done and Exit 1 is turned into industrial blight, Cordone disappears from the scene.  That’s what I call Rhode Island politics.

I really don’t know if the Town has decided to change an ordinance based on the desires of one powerful individual.  They claim that is not the case.  But I have a sneaking suspicion that if the Town Council had actually polled the citizenry about installing a municipal court, it would have met with a resounding “no”.  I am still trying to figure who is making money from that scam.  And make no mistake, the whole idea is a farce and I can only assume someone is getting something for it (aside from municipal justice).  From all appearances, the Town of Hopkinton is not a government for the people by the people, but a government for the special interests, by the special interests.

I am still waiting for Exit 1 development to lower my taxes.  I have a feeling we’ll all be waiting until the cows come home.  I wonder how much John Gilman made on the deal?

If Nothing Else, Mageau is a Fighter

On September 18th, Councilor James Mageau is scheduled to go to trial for his misdemeanor assault on “cameraman” Cliff Vanover.   He has pleaded not guilty to the assault.  According to the Rhode Island judicial system website, Mageau also had a no contact order issued against him, I guess in regards to Vanover.  Can they be in the same room together?   His lawyer is out of Providence, Richard G. Sahagian.

The thing is, he was caught on tape knocking the camera out of Vanover’s hands.  As an elected official,  Mageau has a responsibility to at least not attack citizens in Town Council meetings.  I have no idea how in the world he is going to turn a taped assault into “not guilty”.  And shame on the judge that lets him get away with it.  I guess we will just have to see if Rhode Island politics lives up to its reputation.

 

-Your Neighbor, Ishmael

“On The Auction Block Again”

According to this mornings Projo, 360 acres on Dye Hill Road are on the auction block again.  This is the plot of land that was slated for the Bushy Brook development.  I never paid much attention to that development but can remember not being impressed.  My most vivid memory was a Town Council meeting in which one of the principals associated with the development got upset at John Matson and a yelling fight ensued.  Thanks goodness Bev Kenney was there to break it up, clearly that was not the kind of thing she meant when she asked the gentlemen in the room “what’s your pleasure”.  

The article goes on to indicate that the most recent use for the property was a proposed subdivision of 110 single family houses for residents 50 and older, plus a bunch of condos.  I assume that the large subdivision on Clark Falls road has died of a similar fate as this one, no financing and no one buying houses.  All in all, I’m rather pleased.  I would prefer we not turn Hopkinton in to the next Cranston, Warwick or Smithfield.  Who says the worst recession since the Great Depression isn’t good for something?  I would say that killing off shoddy housing developments is quite an acheivement.  What the citizenry could not accomplish, economics has handled tidily.

Interestingly, the article mentions that some of the people involved in this property development were the same as those involved with the movie studio.  And in 2006, it appears that the developers tried to strong-arm the planning and zoning commission with a lawsuit but failed and their application ended up being rejected.  Neither of these facts instill confidence.