Tiverton Citizens for Change

I hardly know where to begin. In a nutshell, the Democratic Town Committee/union coalition strategy, as it emerged, was to scare parents into showing up, delay away half the allowable meeting time, rearrange the order of the meeting in completely convoluted ways, distort the meaning of adopted rules to erase all distinctions between amendments [...]

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Just so’s you know, I was on time for tonight’s School Committee meeting, but the committee voted to recess until 8:15 p.m. so everybody could race across town and attend the special Town Council meeting about postponing the financial town meeting (FTM). Upon the gang’s arrival at the Community Center, the Town Council voted [...]

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I can testify that the buzz is out around town: one of the elementary schools is going to close. I’ve actually encountered parents for whom that particular scare tactic of the Tiverton School Committee was the final straw spurring the family to register the kids at a nearby private school. At the [...]

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At the end of last Monday’s Town Council meeting, members of TCC took the opportunity of the agenda item “Financial Town Meeting” to raise the matter of Town Administrator Jim Goncalo’s package of false documents, sent to the state with the intention of getting an uncertified waiver for the council and School Committee’s preferred combined [...]

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I’ve much on my to-write list, but two items from Marcia Pobzeznik’s Newport Daily News report on last night’s Budget Committee hearing merit comment. First:
Just how far over the cap the town can go is not known, but Town Administrator James Goncalo, at the request of the Town Council, has inquired of the state [...]

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Many options presented themselves for my attendance, this evening. Dinesh D’Souza is speaking at Brown. A Tiverton Tea Party group is having its inaugural meeting on the north end of town. But I’m at the town hall. (I’ll have to chide Mr. D’Souza for not better coordinating his schedule with mine.)
I’ve [...]

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Budget Committee Chairman Jeff Caron’s letter in the current Sakonnet Times is not available on the paper’s Web site, so here it is:
To the editor:
I write this letter not as the chairman of the Tiverton Budget Committee but rather as a concerned taxpayer. At the April 12 meeting of the Town Council, Councilor Durfee [...]

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Yesterday evening, Budget Committee Chairman Jeff Caron, Budget Committee member Tom Parker, and I appeared on the Richard Urban Show to talk taxes and Tiverton politics.

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Apparently, I’ve been incorrect about the cap laws that the different elected bodies in town have to follow. As I’ve been saying, the municipal government is capped with regard to the amount that it can increase its tax levy. However, the School Committee is restricted by a parallel spending cap, of sorts. [...]

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Madeline and Jim O’Dell name names regarding the political group that brought the town to perpetual tax increases:
We also find it very odd that while all this criticizing and bashing is going on, no one is offering up any solutions. Also of interest is the fact that when Mr. Medeiros was asked — [...]

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I was a couple of minutes late to the Town Council meeting because of construction on Highland and boy did they jump right in. I’m trying to get a handle on some new budget numbers. The upshot is that, try as they might, the folks at town hall can’t get the tax levy [...]

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So you can watch the drama for yourself:

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They’ve jumped right in with the School Committee’s notes for the Town Council, with two basic points:

The school department believes that they were shorted in the current year. Depending on what funds must be counted in the budget for purposes of the mandated local “maintenance of effort,” it could be anywhere from a quarter [...]

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