Tiverton Citizens for Change

http://vimeo.com/15905452

Support Candidates who Favor  Limited Taxation and Transparent Government 

Saturday October 2

Hors d’oeuvres & Social Hour 5-6PM

Candidate Program 6-7PM

Countryview Estates – 213 Hurst Lane Tiverton

Suggested Donation $25

Thank you for your continued support!

TCC is a registered State of Rhode Island Political Action Committee

Tiverton Citizens for Change Candidate Endorsements

These are the 2010 Tiverton Citizens for Change Candidate Endorsements. This is a talented and motivated slate of candidates who have accepted our endorsement for the November elections. We hope you will support them as we try to bring real change to Tiverton, especially the Town Council and State Representatives.

Please watch for the TCC fundraiser announcement coming shortly.

Candidates Endorsed for Town Council

Jay Lambert

Cecil Leonard

Rob Coulter

David M Nelson

Ed Roderick

Joan Chabot

Jeffrey Belli

Candidates endorsed for budget Committee

Joe Sousa

State Representatives

Nancy Driggs District 70 [John Edwards seat]

Dan Gordon District 71 [John Loughlins seat]

Dedicated to bringing fiscal responsibility and transparent government to Tiverton, RI.

 Citing the important free speech issues involved in the case, the ACLU of Rhode Island today announced it has agreed to represent Tiverton resident David Nelson, the president of a local tax reform group, who has been sued for defamation by two Town Council members. Nelson, head of Tiverton Citizens for Change, was sued for making public comments alleging that Council members submitted “false” documentation to the State Department of Revenue relating to an unapproved proposal for a tax increase. The ACLU called the complaint against Nelson “a classic SLAPP suit designed to intimidate town residents from speaking out on political matters.”

Nelson made the comment after the Town Council filed what it called an informal “checklist for eligibility” with the state to see if the Town could get permission to impose a tax increase beyond the 4.5% cap authorized by state law. The Town Council made this request without the knowledge of the town’s Budget Committee, the entity officially authorized to recommend a budget to the Financial Town Meeting, and which had formally proposed a budget below the cap. Arguing that the request was never publicly authorized by the Town Council and was prepared on the state documents necessary to formally apply for a state waiver from the tax cap, Nelson publicly charged town officials with submitting “false documentation to the State to facilitate a tax increase.”

Last month, two Town Council members, Louise Durfee and Joanne Arruda, sued Nelson for punitive damages, calling his comments “false, defamatory and harmful to plaintiffs’ reputation.” Their lawsuit is also against unknown individuals the council members say participated in preparing and sending the letter. Interestingly, in a letter to state finance officials after the Town Council’s actions came to light, the chair of the town budget committee also called the submission a “falsified document,” but he has not been sued.

Nelson has filed a counter-claim for damages under the state’s SLAPP suit law, and the ACLU has agreed to represent Nelson in getting the lawsuit against him dismissed. SLAPP suits (“Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation”) refer to lawsuits brought to chill people from exercising their freedom of speech on matters of public concern.

Concerned about the use of SLAPP suits to try to stifle public debate on a variety of issues, the Rhode Island ACLU has succeeded in getting a number of similar suits dismissed

Since an anti-SLAPP statute was enacted in 1995. In the first such case handled by the ACLU, the R.I. Supreme Court ordered dismissal of a defamation suit brought against North Kingstown resident Nancy Hsu Fleming for critical statements she made about a private landfill. Shortly thereafter, the ACLU also helped the South Kingstown Neighborhood Congress in a suit filed against it for public comments its members made against a local developer’s activities.

RI ACLU volunteer attorney Karen Davidson, who is representing Nelson, said today that the councilors’ suit was “a classic SLAPP suit designed to intimidate town residents from speaking out on political matters. The SLAPP suit statute was enacted in order to prevent just this type of litigation, and we are hopeful for a quick dismissal of the suit.” Nelson added: “Our bedrock constitutional rights allow us to express disagreement with elected officials and report on matters of public concern. l will not cower from this attempt to intimidate my public participation in local budget and taxation issues.”

In the expected narrative of town politics, one would think it would be the selfish anti-tax Tiverton Citizens for Change–type newcomers to town who would squash an annual charity event that allows amplified music well into the hours of prime time television. Of course, that popular narrative has always been incorrect.

The “community-minded” long-time residents aren’t selfless souls pleading with their fellow townsfolk to put Tiverton ahead of themselves when times require it. Some of them are protecting the substantial pay and benefits of their public-sector jobs (or those of friends and family). Some of them are protecting favored programs from which they individually benefit. And some of them simply want the town to be run according to their vision for it, with contrary views humored but not incorporated.

And so, as Tom Killin Dalglish reports:

By a vote of 4-2, the Town Council Monday night imposed new time and sound limits on the musical fund raiser “Singing Out Against Hunger” scheduled for early September at Evelyn’s Drive-In and Coastal Roasters.

The event must now end at 7 p.m., said the council, not 9 p.m. (or 9:30 p.m. as the sponsors were hoping for this year). And there may now be “no amplification.”

Councilors Jay Lambert and Cecil Leonard voted against the restrictions, and Hannibal Costa was absent, which leaves Louise Durfee, Joanne Arruda, Don Bollin, and Ed Roderick imposing the rules. Durfee made the motion and spearheaded the opposition, and it isn’t surprising at all that a Town Council that permits its appointed Town Administrator to send false documents to the state en route to a massive tax increase and that Town Council members who would then sue the president of the local tax-payer group, David Nelson of Tiverton Citizens for Change, for complaining about that action, would squash a good cause that fills the community’s late-summer air with music.

From the Sakonnet Times:

At the hearing, Councilor Louise Durfee said she had gotten complaints that the music went on after it was supposed to, and that other noise went on after the official ending time. The neighbors nearby, and across Nanaquacket Pond could hear the music and Ms. Durfee later said she could hear the music from her home on Highland Road. …

“You’re on a postage stamp piece of property. Your neighbor goes to work at 4 a.m.,” she said.

From the Newport Daily News:

Council members hear complaints about the noise every year, Councilwoman Louise Durfee said. She made the motion at the council’s meeting last week to prohibit amplification and to cut back the hours. Money should not be raised “at somebody else’s expense, and that is what is happening,” she said.

No businesses. No charity. No public events. And high taxes. Sometimes sleepy little towns aren’t bucolic; they’re dying.

Friday’s Newport Daily News article on possible changes to the financial town meeting (FTM) system in Tiverton contained these worrying paragraphs:

But the council and the School Committee, it was noted, are prohibited from using public funds to influence a vote, per a charter amendment that was crafted by Caron and approved several years ago. How then, council members wondered, would they get the word out to voters about a budget they recommended?

[Town Councilor Louise] Durfee suggested doing away with that charter amendment, which is number 1218.

Section 1218 of the Town Charter (PDF) reads as follows:

No officer or employee of the Town, including the school Department, shall use, or cause to be used, Town property, goods, money, grants, or labor to influence the outcome of an election, ballot question, Financial Town Meeting, or referendum; the foregoing shall not prohibit the distribution or publication of election, ballot question, Financial Town Meeting, or referendum information by the Town Clerk, the Board of Canvassers, or a Charter Review Commission.

There is simply nothing in that language that would make a public hearing prior to an all-day financial referendum or special election different from the open forum of the financial town meeting. Town Council and School Committee members could still use their meetings (all televised on cable and available online) for political theater and manipulation. They could still speak in public and private forums. They could still use their own time and resources to advertise and promote their views in person, in print, on the Internet, on the radio, and on television. Just like anybody who does not share their privileged positions would have to do.

The real impetus behind the otherwise inexplicable introduction of 1218 to the discussion of changing the town’s budgetary process is that certain folks in Tiverton government do not like the restriction that the people of Tiverton voted into the charter just a couple of years ago, and they’ll seize any opportunity to eliminate it. Taxpayers provide various resources — including personnel — to elected and appointed officials in order to conduct the business of running the town, and some of them (Ms. Durfee leading the pack) would like to use those resources to influence outcomes.

Their reasoning isn’t entirely implausible. After all, they see absorbing an ever greater percentage of Tiverton residents’ wealth to be part of the business of running the town. From their perspective, they come up with budgets that they believe to be crucial to the town, and those who disagree are acting in contravention of Tiverton’s best interests.

The point lost in that thinking — and it’s a point that the people of Tiverton desperately need to relearn — is that budgetary control is an invaluable tool by which residents have input into municipal and school operation. It’s a check and balance beyond our regular elections — typically putting into office people with whom few voters are actually very familiar. A budget debate that gives those outside of government a fighting chance against those within is crucial because it requires groups that stand to gain financially from town expenditures to go that extra step beyond promoting preferred candidates and promote the actual dollar amounts that they’d like to extract from residents.

A recent story in the Providence Journal noted that the city’s property values plummeted with the latest revaluation, which raises this interesting question:

What the revaluation means for city finances, the tax rate and residential tax bills remains unclear. A potential 30-percent drop in the city’s $21.7 billion in total assessed property value (as of 2008) could mean a significant loss of revenue. …

Cicilline has pledged not to raise the property-tax levy — the total amount the city raises in property taxes — over this year’s $274 million. But he has not ruled out an increase in the tax rate, which is already one of the highest in the state, at $24.21 per $1,000 of assessed value for residential properties and $28.60 for commercial properties.

Owners of property in Tiverton needn’t worry about such ambiguity. It’s thoroughly accepted, in our local government, that the tax rate is little more than a midway calculation between the levy and the homeowner’s bill. The financial town meeting (FTM) sets the levy, and the town divides it up across all real estate owned, and your percentage of that real estate determines your percentage of the levy. No matter how worthless your house may become — as long as it doesn’t differ from the overall trends for the town — you’ll still receive the same tax bill.

The Sakonnet Times seems to have adjusted its strategy vis-à-vis publishing letters in the paper rather than online, so you’ll have to buy or borrow a copy of this week’s edition to read John Minior’s plea for a business-friendly Tiverton:

The trees on Souza Road do provide oxygen, but the site provides very few tax dollars to benefit taxpayers. There is nothing appealing to the eye from Souza Road to Route 24. …

The rezoning of Souza Road from a commercial to residential zone was a weapon Tiverton used to prevent a multimillion-dollar development from being realized because the simple denial stamp was having difficulty stopping it. Was there some kind of vendetta unleashed on the developers’ plan for the site?

Minior goes on to address the local industrial park and the power plant thereon in a similar way. Do we dare hope that the likes of he will begin to take the reins of town government?

The Newport Daily News reports:

Not wanting to go through another financial town meeting this year — two in May was plenty — the Town Council will not change the way it plans to levy taxes in fiscal 2011 to compensate for a change in the motor vehicle excise tax exemption.

Property tax bills are expected to be printed this week and mailed early next week to more than 6,000 property owners. Their tax rate actually will be 5 cents less than was announced after the second session of the financial town meeting that ended on May 15.

The new tax rate for fiscal 2011 will be $15.35 per $1,000 valuation, instead of the $15.40 that initially was calculated, Town Administrator James Goncalo told the council Monday night. The rate for fiscal 2010 was $14.35.

Taxing ourselves so heavily at a contentious FTM seems to have averted an attempt to increase motor vehicle taxes. That’s for this year, of course. Now the Town Council et al. have two taxes to ratchet upwards.