Planning Meeting Postponed until July 1st

Because so many people showed up to protest the Truck Stop at Exit 1, the meeting was put on hold to accommodate everyone.   Town Hall holds 73 people.  A good bit more than that showed up for the meeting.  While that is good news, the bad news is we all have to show up again on July 1st, when they find a bigger room for the meeting.

According to the Sun,

  ”Love’s Travel Stops and Country Stores, of Oklahoma, is pitching plans for a 145-space truck stop with fueling stations, an Arby’s drive-thru restaurant and convenience store for the 18-acre site.  Planning Board Chairman Alfred W. DiOrio said he was “thrilled” with the turnout, but suggested postponing the meeting to a larger to-be-determined venue because members of the public have the right to be present for hearing.”

So that is exactly what we’ll end up with if we don’t go back on July 1st.  Oh, and lets not forget the aquifer full of diesel….

Mauti v. Scuncio, et al.

I’ve been sitting on this information for at least a month.  Frankly, I was hoping the Westerly Sun would publish it and I could just make snarky comments about it without the liability of being a source.  But the Westerly Sun could not find the truth nor a morsel of journalistic integrity if either bit them on the ass. 

But I can’t wait any longer.

If you recall, our former building inspector (Charles Mauti) sued the Town of Westerly because they improperly arrested him.  It got uglyier but Westerly settled for $100,000 because the WPD had been very, very bad.  One of their Captains retired in the wake of the incident.

Mauti is now suing a lot of people in Hopkinton, including the Police Chief and the Town Manager.  I have attached two documents from the suit that were passed to me off the publicly available PACER database.  To the best of my knowledge, these documents are public documents and I provide them in that vein.  Feel  free to email me if you disagree, I check it once a month.

I have LOTS of PACER documents.  These two are the most telling.  I won’t spoil the details but I have a hard time believing that anyone is going to survive this lawsuit with their jobs intact.  It does explain why DeLibero is trying to get out of dodge as fast as possible.

Main Complaint  

Motion to Extend  

One last irony before you read all the incredibly juicy details: the Sun gleefully published every account of alleged Mauti malfeasance during the time that the fiasco erupted.  In the wake of alleged Scuncio/HPD malfeasance, they have been eerily silent.  I wonder if they have a conflict of interest?  Or any scruples at all?

Ishmael is Batting .500

Not a big deal, I do have some more important stuff to post when I get around to it, but I thought that I should mention that I correctly guessed that Chariho would cut a token $200,000 from the budget before submitting it for another vote.  I think the actually amount is something like $238K.  What a joke, har har har.  Unfortunately, the joke is on us.

But I incorrectly guessed that Felkner would return to the School Board.  They picked Georgia Ure instead. She will certainly be contrarian but I doubt it will make much of a difference.  Chariho is impervious to whining and complaining.

Like I said, lots to talk about regarding the HPD and our former building inspector’s suit against them, just enjoying the warm weather for now.

Analyzing the Hopkinton Budget

Since Mrs. Buck was happy to tell me that voting down the current Hopkinton Budget would increase our tax rate from 3% to 4.5%, I thought this might be worth a little investigation.  Luckily, the budget is posted online and she passed on the link:

http://www.hopkintonri.org/pdfs_downloads/Finance/budget0910PublishedDraft_all.pdf

 

Now lets pick it apart:

2008 Total Budget:  $23,500,248   

2009 Total Budget:  $23,446,077

 

So based on just the totals, we will be spending $54,171 less this year than next.  Now that should relate to a flat budget, assuming Chariho holds to the numbers listed in the budget.  However, I have no idea if those numbers are a guess or are an actual commitment from Chariho.  But hey, that’s great!  But if we reverted to last years budget, however, that $50K does not amount to a 1.5% increase, does it?  The math:  50K/$23,500,248 = 0.25%.  It’s even less when we consider that amount is probably a percentage of $15 million, but I’ll get there in a minute.

So where does that additional money come from?  In other words, what is different about this years budget that is going to save us 1.5% over last years budget.  If you look at the numbers, this year’s budget is a decrease of 0.25%, yet our taxes are going to go up by 3%.  Now obviously, the tax rate is determined by not only how much we spend but by how much we earn.  If we are spending 0.25% less but our taxes go up by 3%, we are earning less money than we did last year.  This is not unexpected, the economy is in the toilet.  Mrs. Bucks contention is that the savings are actually from Chariho, because they are spending surplus on the operating budget, and we will pay less.  But the budget published online does not bare that out.  In 2008, we paid Chariho  $17,720,106.   In 2009, we expect to pay Chariho $17,720,353.  So as far as I can tell, voting down the budget will cost us exactly $54,418 more than going with the new budget.  So in the end, it is probably better to go with the new budget than the old budget, we are actually spending less.  But only 0.25% less.

What becomes imperative now are the revenue projections.  However, the data in the budget is pretty useless.  The reason that it is useless is that the budget makes the calculation that we will raise exactly as much as we will spend.  Ultimately we will, but it does not show you the numbers that get us to that place.   It does not show us the shortfall and what is required t o make it up, or at least, I can’t find it.

If the Town Council had done a better job of crafting a budget, we would have a 0% tax increase.  But that is not the case.  Some rough math for you.  The budget is about $23.5 million.  We need to raise an additional 3% in taxes to cover this cost (this math is rough, I don’t have all the figures to do this right because the budget does not tell us how much we will earn if we don’t raise taxes, but bare with me).  That amounts t0 $702,000.  Our revenues are $702,000 short of our expenses.  Please dispute this figure if it is in error, I don’t know our actual shortfall so this is a guess.  I suspect the number is actually closer to $450,000, however, because the 3% increase will be on property taxes and the total amount we generated on property last year was $15,069,614, not $23.4 million (3% of 23.4 million is about $702,000).

The reason our taxes are going to increase either 3% or 4.5% is that 1.) we did not generate enough money to cover our expenses, even after we drop $50K from the budget and 2.) we spend too much money.  The only way to make this money up in the short term is to cut departmental expenses or to tax us into the stone age. Unfortunately, the only department that really took a hit was Emergency Management.  They went from $38,000 to $8,000.  That accounts for 55% of the budget cut this year.  And that was because of two one-time expenses.   Examining the budget, it appears that general government, the tax assessor and the tax collector also saw some sizable cuts to the tune of about $70K combined.  Great.  What about everyone else:

Town Clerk 2008 to 2009 increase:  $1497 (0.6%)

Planner 2008 to 2009 increase:  $1178 (1.0%)

Police 2008 to 2009 increase:  $19,281 (1.1%)

Public Works 2008 to 2009 increase:  $127,564 (11%) 

Town Manager 2008 to 2009 increase:  $1102 (0.9%)

Zoning 2008 to 2009 increase:  :  $1500 (46%)

So what does the budget tell us?  It tells us that some departments got cut, other departments got increases and we’re robbing Peter to pay Paul.  What we have here folks, is a classic shell game.  Sure, we cut $54K from the total budget, but not all departments got cuts.  If each department listed was about flat, the budget would have been cut by an additional $152K.  If these departments had been cut, we may have seen an additional $200K decrease.  But we decided that some departments and some people were more important than others. Is anyone in Hopkinton surprised that during the first year of the Second Great Depression, the Hopkinton Police Department continued to get increases?

Warwick is cutting police hours, salaries and uniform allowances.  Hopkinton is not.  I would argue that Warwick needs their cops a heck of alot more than we need ours. All over Rhode Island, Towns are cutting budgets.  North Providence, Woonsocket, Warwick, etc.  But not us. 

For the Town Council to cry about Chariho is disgraceful when the citizens can see how poorly we are managing our money.  In the end, it does not matter if we vote the budget down or not, all the Town Council has done is shift money from General Government into Public Works, from the Tax Assessor into the Police Department.  But I guess the threat of the budget being voted down has kept them from spending more, they just continue to spend what they have inappropriately. 

As Mrs. Busk noted, “Perhaps the 3% can become lower. ”  Ya think?

A Guy Without A Clue

Here’s a letter to the editor of the Sun that deserves a retort: 

Town, state employees should try seeing how others live

I triple dog dare all politicians, school teachers and just plain faculty, emergency personnel and all town employees here in the entire state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, to take a pay cut of 50 percent of their pay for one month.  No complaints either on this dare. Just be grateful you have a job. Do this dare for one month. After one month, I want to see each town report as to how much they just saved and how much it helped the budget. This is especially directed to the governor and everyone working for him.  I personally challenge him and for him to man up to his own requests. But just remember, I live on $200 a week and with that weekly amount comes my half of rent, food, bills and cigarettes.  Again, I triple dog dare every last one of you. And the first person to com plain about my dare is “yeller.” Hope Gomes Westerly

To some degree, I concur.  The Governor should give up his private driver and all those perks that make him feel important, yet do little to improve the governance of the State.  Governor Carcieri is used to being wealthy and I do not expect him to live like the rest of us anytime soon.  He’s a spoiled pig of a man and will continue to be one.  Has Rhode Island ever had a Governor that was not a rich spoiled pig? And I will not be surprised when the State and teacher’s unions give up pay increases for the next 3-5 years and start paying bigger chunks of their benefits.  They are, in fact, happy to have jobs and will ultimately do what it takes to keep them.  But there are a number of problems with this idiot letter.

1.  A Chariho teacher went to 5-6 years of college.  They are professionals.  And they would not be doing what they are doing for $10,000 a year, or even $20,000,  as Hope Gomes suggests they should.  I’m sorry if Hope Gomes thinks all our teachers should be flipping burgers.  Clearly his education let him down and his paycheck reflects it.  I’m not sure why he thinks teachers and DOT employees are all wealthy.  They are not, they are middle class Americans.  And many of them have likely seen some degree of poverty.  For a man that does not even pay property taxes, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for Hope Gomes to be crying about the state deficit.  It’s not coming out of his pocket.  As a matter of fact, they are the ones supporting him via the American welfare system, supplying him with an unemployment check.

2.  Adults don’t “triple-dog-dare” each other to do anything.  It’s just not how we behave. I’ll point to his probable  lack of quality education here again.

3.  Mr. Gomes pays for “rent, food, bills and cigarettes”.  I suggest he give up smoking.  He’s probably spending $25-$50 a week on cigarettes.  And if he has that much money for a luxury like cigarettes, he clearly has plenty of discretionary income.  I am assuming that he lost his job recently, as he commands state and municipal employees to be happy they have a job.  Is he spending $50 a week of unemployment checks on cigarettes?

Its much easier to blame others for our failures than to take personal responsibility for them.

If You Are Reading This, You May Be Called As A Witness

Did that get your attention?

A document hit my email this week, it appears to be public record so I thought I would post it here.  It’s quite a doozy.  Charles Mauti is suing Police Chief Scuncio for violating his “constitutional rights”.   I wonder how much this will cost Hopkinton?  Just in time for tax season….

The first deposition of Scuncio appears to have occurred on Dec. 16th.  I’d love to get a copy of that.  If you read the document, there is a huge list of possible witnesses.  You may really be one.

The file is here:  http://hopkinton.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/1611318803.pdf

Cops get sued all the time.  It’s pretty much part of their job.  But most of the time the cases are frivolous and get tossed out or a Town might settle for peanuts.  The police have generally been given pretty wide latitude in treatment of prisoners, etc, sometimes making it difficult to determine when rights have actually been violated (of course, when five of them are beating you over the head with batons, it’s a pretty good bet that your rights are being violated).  But this case seems to be a whole lot different than your normal “arrest retaliation” suit, to juxtapose a phrase.  There is a whole lot of documentation listed in the file above and of course, there is the Westerly precedent for $100K.

Why Does the Sun Insist on Publishing Crap?

Here is the thing:  The 1st Amendment guarantees that the Congress shall not infringe upon the rights of the press, or individuals, to speak.  But a private citizen or corporation may surely infringe upon those rights, especially in their own damn paper.  So I find it strange that the Westerly Sun continues to publish senseless crap.  I do understand that paper media in this century is under fire, advertising dollars are scarce and they need to drum up business using yellow journalism.  But they can and often do censor and edit what they publish.  So why did they publish this rambling diatribe from some jackass who lives in Florida (in fact, why do they ever publish anything written by anyone out of State)? 

Change is coming. Just ask poor Senator-elect Roland Burris.  He was chosen to be the only black in the U.S. Senate. But his dreams are being dashed by the all-white Senate Democrats. They plan to physically block the door to keep Burris out.  How could King Obama let this develop?  Oh yeah, he was busy enjoying a 12 day vacation in Hawaii. Not bad for a mutt.  And why are Democrats, of all people, blocking the door? The answer is simple. George Wallace is dead, and the Ku Klux Klan might look bad.
Roger Dwyer Punta Gorda, Fla. formerly of Westerly

Dear Roger Dwyer,  

WFT?  Are you that bored and retired that you have nothing better to do than write rambling and idiotic letters and submit them across the United States?  Please, grow up.  You clearly have no idea what the problem was with the Burris appointment and you’re picking on a guy for taking a vacation?  George Bush Jr. has spent more time on vacation than ANY PRESIDENT IN HISTORY!  I’m not even sure what you problem is.  Do you like Burris?  Do you hate Obama?  Do you like the KKK?

Dear Westerly Sun, 

Please, don’t waste our time with this kind of stupidity.  Was it that slow a news day?  I’m dying here.

Rhode Island is for Whiners

Remember those old commercials, “Virginia is for Lovers”?  Well the new motto for Rhode Island should be, “Rhode Island is for Whiners”.  

I’m not sure what’s in the drinking water lately but it seems like all Rhode Islanders do is complain about how they are not being treated like they deserve.  The biggest whiner of all is Felkner, but I’ll get to that next week.

Case in point:  The Westerly DMV.  I say let it die.  People are bitching and moaning because the least used DMV branch in the State is being shut down.  Boo hoo hoo.  Don’t we have a continuing financial emergency?  Aren’t we trying to balance a budget?  Shut it down.  Hell, let’s shut down all but 3 of them.  I read people complaining that they don’t even know where the Wakefield branch is.  Get a map, dumbass.  Rhode Island is the smallest state in the union.  Deal with it by acting like it.  The other complaint I hear is, “South County is being ignored”.  Damn straight.  We should be ignored, only a small percentage of the population lives down here.  That’s what  democracy is all about, ignoring the minority!  And the reason I live here is because no one else does.

Some more whining for you:  

http://www.projo.com/news/content/retirees_return_12-18-08_5LCM01V_v25.40bec13.html

The State Colleges have had their budgets slashed and hundreds of people forced to retire.  But the system was under strain 5 years ago, just like most of our other state services.  So they rehired a bunch of people back at hourly and part-time rates.  They get no benefits but they are essentially doing the job they have always done (but getting paid peanuts to do it).  Even if the State had the money to replace these people, it would cost a fortune.  So the service is provided and it costs the State very little.  But if you go to the “survey” section of this article, all you see are people whining about how retirees are “fleecing” the state.  Clearly, the people making these types of comments are mentally incompetent or plain retarded, but once again, Rhode Island is for Whiners.

The other option is to close it all down.  Shut down CCRI, RIC, URI, the DOT, the State  Police, the Governor’s office, etc.  It’s fine by me.  But no one ever suggests this because Rhode Island is full of whiners whose lives are dependent upon the care of the State.  People won’t even publicly admit the Hopkinton Police Department is a completely useless duplication of services, and that one is a no-brainer.  

My advice, shut the hell up.  I’m tired of people crying because they can’t get the services they want and then screaming when anyone suggests raising taxes, because that is all that is left to support their precious services.  It’s just plain stupid and makes those who espouse this attitude look foolish.

Developers have been “mum”

So I asked in the last post if the Town Council has heard back from Katersky on the fate of the movie studio.  Apparently not, says the Sun,

He [Kennedy] introduced legislation for a one-year, 20-percent tax credit for movie production studio construction — a bill that ultimately died in the General Assembly — days after plans were introduced in February for a $75-million studio in Hope Valley. He said he drafted the bill, which would have given developers a $15-million break, with House Speaker William J. Murphy’s office after seeing plans for the first time at a Statehouse press conference.

Developers have been mum on the project’s fate, though lawmakers have presumed that it was killed after the state’s existing film production credit was capped at $15 million — contradicting a contingency that developers said they needed to continue with plans.

“It would be my hope that people noticed that I worked very hard with Sen. [Kevin A.] Breene to bring this project to the town of Hopkinton, but unfortunately this was not the year for this to take place,” said Kennedy, citing cuts to other state programs to close this year’s anticipated $425-million state deficit.

I guess that is the best we’re going to get for now.  But I would like to address Kennedy’s record for just a second.  Firstly, the movie studio was a bad idea.  I’m OK with letting people try out bad ideas, we all have to learn from our mistakes, but Kennedy, Cordone and others apparently jumped on this bandwagon without putting any research into it’s feasibility or it’s managing partner.  That was dumb and sloppy.  There are currently four other studios in development in New England and at least two more in Pennsylvania.  This is what is a called a “saturated market”.  I’ve called it the bandwagon going over the cliff and I think you’ll agree.  

But as far as Kennedy is concerned, he crossed the line when he supported the Chariho revote in the legislature.  He didn’t need Hopkinton’s permission to support the authorization of a bond revote, but he should have had the common courtesy for the Town Council and the the Hopkinton citizens to oppose the authorization.  He does not have a Richmond or Chariho constituency.  He represents Hopkinton and a sliver of Westerly. Perhaps his personal feelings may be that the bond is necessary.  Unfortunately, a major portion of his constituency did not support the bond.  When the will of the people is trampled underfoot, we have a problem.  A big problem.  As a result, I’m voting for his opponent.  

She’s from Westerly, which is unfortunate (but just barely, she lives close to the Hopkinton/Westerly town line), but she made the following comments in the same article,

Similar to prior remarks from Kennedy, she said economic development is essential to increase Hopkinton’s tax base, adding that as part of her profession, “We’re constantly working to try to bring people to the Hopkinton area to build.” And Richmond, like Kennedy, noted the merit of housing rehabilitation efforts in the North End.

 
But in luring developers to the area, she said, “We can’t give the farm away.”

 
“Tax incentives are wonderful to a point, as long as they comply with state of Rhode Island regulations,” Richmond added. “I think they’re ideal, but you can’t afford to bring in these large companies who want every­thing for nothing.”

 
When asked if she thought that happened with the movie studio deal, she replied, “I’m not familiar with exactly what they are negotiating, and it’s all behind closed doors at this point.”

I think I like this woman.  I just wish her name were not “Richmond”.