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1

Selective Recalling in Tiverton

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Ever notice that, when it comes to politics, consequences for behavior seem to have less to do with what was done than with who did the doing?

After the hearings and Town Council vote that threw a roadblock in front of a large mixed-use development proposed by the Carpianato Group, the word “recall” was in the air, particularly for the two council members who ultimately voted to make changes to the town’s comprehensive plan in order to accommodate the development, Jay Lambert and David Perry.

Oddly, as I’ve reported on Tiverton Fact Check, the first recall petition pulled appears to be against Council Member Joseph Sousa.  Sousa’s well known for his tendency to speak his mind even when his mouth would serve him better by remaining shut, and the impetus for the recall appears to be a short, snarky response to an email from the petitioner’s teenage daughter.

That said, neither Lambert nor Perry have been free of bad behavior, and after all, they voted against the large group of residents who advocated so strongly against the development.  But Lambert and Perry are candidates supported by the radical local political action committee Tiverton 1st, and vacancies for the council are filled by the next-highest vote getter from the last election.  In this case, the replacement council member would not be from that group, but in opposition to it.

The date is still early, of course, so perhaps more councilors will find themselves in the cross hairs, but for now, politics appears to reign in town:  Elections in Tiverton are, on paper, non-partisan, but that doesn’t mean that the left-wingers don’t protect their own, no matter how badly they behave or how damaging their decisions.

2

Tiverton School Committee Nixes Full-Day Kindergarten

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With the victory of the petitioner’s budget that I submitted for the town of Tiverton, the most significant question facing the School Committee was whether to go forward with plans to implement full-day kindergarten or to deprive another 120 Tiverton children of that service, which the school department has declared to be critically important.  The five members — all of them endorsed by the local political action committee Tiverton 1st and (I believe) the Tiverton Democratic Town Committee — chose student deprivation.

From a budgetary standpoint, I find the move inexplicable, for reasons I describe over on Tiverton Fact Check.  Even folks in other cities and towns may find the situation telling of the ridiculous way in which Rhode Island law splits local government into the school department and the municipal government.

Because the town is legally bound to whatever number it estimated for state aid, and because the estimate included a $63,000 bump in state aid based on kindergarten’s going to full day (which effectively doubles the number of children for that grade for the purposes of the funding formula), the town must now come up with that money.

As a separate matter, for its proposed budget, the school department underestimated its expenses by around $423,000.  That would have been the case no matter which budget won the vote at the financial town referendum.  By cancelling full-day kindergarten, the school committee effectively transfers $63,000 from the state (for full-day K only) to the town (for any purpose), helping it to close its own estimating gap.

Not counting a somewhat-protected reserve required in the town’s home rule charter, the municipal government already has a much lower unassigned fund balance than does the school department, and the Town Council and administrator are already in a quest for any dollar they can find in order to accommodate the budget vote of the people.  Yet, nobody on the municipal side has commented on the school department’s decision, whether because they don’t understand the budget implications or just don’t care.

Returning to the School Committee, while it may be difficult to explain its decision from a budgetary standpoint, it isn’t at all difficult to understand from a political standpoint.  From the members’ comments at their last meeting (video linked in my Fact Check post), it’s obvious that they just don’t want to prove the supporters of the petitioner’s budget right.  They don’t want to admit that their scare tactics are scare tactics, so they followed through on the threat.

These are the people whom Tiverton has chosen to oversee the education of its children.

3

The Budget Fight in Tiverton

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For those who take a keen interest in Tiverton politics, local politics in general, or seeing a town employee shout at me and threaten to “get in my face,” I’ve put up a number of posts on Tiverton Fact Check in recent weeks:

  • An explanation of the 0.9% budget (Budget #2) that I submitted.
  • Video clips of outbursts from Town Administrator Matthew Wojcik’s (a Cumberland resident and Republican) directed toward residents, including me.
  • A video clip of my explanation of the budget.
  • A review of misleading statements from town officials and activists at a one-sided infomercial that they produced for public-access television.
  • My letter to the editor describing the positive vision for Budget #2.
  • Some additional points to dispel the fear that the school committee will cancel plans to go to full-day kindergarten if they don’t get $126,000 that they don’t need.
  • A review of a falsehood promoted by Tiverton 1st coordinator Brian Medeiros that one of Tiverton’s many massive tax increases in recent years came because the town didn’t have money in its reserves to soften the blow of a reduced state reimbursement for the now-forgotten car-tax phase out.
  • An analysis of the misleading comparison of Portsmouth’s larger reserve fund to Tiverton’s (still very large) one.
  • An explanation of the utter falsehood pushed by Tiverton 1st in a mailer that went out to some residents.
6

The Consequences of Bad Government, Tiverton Edition

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So, the Tiverton Youth Soccer league — an independent community group in our town that works with networks in Rhode Island and Massachusetts to provide (not-for-free) year-round soccer programs for interested children in the town — has sent out an interesting request by email:

Dear Parents,

Every year the town has rolled our fields at the beginning of each season. With the recent departure of our Town Maintenance Person and helper the DPW said it is too busy to do it at this time.

If you have a roller or access to a roller and could possibly complete such a task please reply to this email ASAP.

In general, I’m energized by the idea of people in the community coming together to accomplish things for each other without having to make people who aren’t interested pay the bill. But here’s the thing: The fields are town property, and maintenance is factored in to our tax bills. This is a service for which we’re paying.

So, what were the circumstances of “the recent departure of our Town Maintenance Person”? Well, Channel 10 filmed him stealing time from the town, doing work on his own rental properties while on the clock.

And what were the circumstances of the departure of his “helper”? Well, the (now-former) town administrator fired him for being a whistleblower, which is explicitly against the law, and for which the town is now being sued.

The Tiverton Town Council allowed both the maintenance foreman and the administrator to retire gracefully (while being dishonest about the background of their decision). In fact, Maintenance Foreman Bob Martin is technically still employed by the town, until his retirement on April 22.

The local political action committee Tiverton 1st, which promoted the current town council and worked closely with Democrat state Representative John “Jay” Edwards, ran on assertions that they were the real supporters of community and alternatives were evil interlopers trying to “destroy the town.” Somehow, I don’t think the folks who voted for them thought they meant that they’d build our sense of community by forcing us to do volunteer labor because corrupt town employees were busy enjoying early retirements.

7

Tiverton Illustrates How to Encourage Corruption, Foster Apathy, and Ruin a Civilization

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Readers may recall that Tiverton Maintenance Foreman Robert Martin was filmed by News 10’s Parker Gavigan spending 60% of his workday doing his own, personal projects. Such behavior could be characterized as theft of 60% of an employee’s salary from the taxpayers of the town.

As Gavigan also reported, when an employee whom Martin brought along on his sideline went to Town Administrator Jim Goncalo, his reward was to be fired. As Goncalo explained: “certain allegations he made toward other employees [made] it impossible for him to work in the presence of these employees.”

Goncalo has since gotten off with mere retirement, and it looks like Martin will get the same deal… and then some:

According to the town, Martin will officially retire on April 22, although he’s already off the job.

Between now and his retirement date, he’ll collect $19,396 for unused sick time and some back pay, and an additional $35,375 for unused vacation and comp time.

Martin will begin receiving his union pension after he retires. He was the local president of Council 94.

Perhaps the worst part, though, is that the discussion and vote were behind closed doors — you know, “personnel” matters in “executive session.” A convenient excuse not to take responsibility for assisting in the sort of Rhode Island corruption that contributes to citizen apathy and civic decline.

This isn’t entirely surprising, though. The Town Council is dominated by the slate promoted by the Tiverton 1st political action committee, which I’ve mentioned before. The group’s electoral strategy was to proclaim the importance of “community” while proving by its actions that disagreement with them meant exclusion from the community and being targeted for vicious attacks. This is also the Town Council that heard a case argued by its own lawyer that undermined the town’s complaint process for residents.

Between the target placed on anybody’s back who actually wants to turn things around and the impossibility of holding any insiders accountable for anything, it’s beginning to look like Tiverton and Rhode Island are locked in the cart for the full, painful ride to the bottom.

(Addendum at “continue reading.”)

9

The Left’s Intimidation Game

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As usual, the content on this Prager University video — featuring Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel — won’t be new to readers of the Ocean State Current, but it’s well done and worth the reminder:

Progressives are in the intimidation game for the long haul; indeed, Strassel points out that Southern Democrats used the tactics progressives now focus on conservatives (or any non-progressives) to suppress blacks.  The strategies are:

  1. Harass, as with the IRS targeting Tea Party groups
  2. Investigate & prosecute, as with Wisconsin prosecutors raiding the homes of conservatives, or our own U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s attempts to criminalize opposing views and activities
  3. Blackmail, for which Strassel provides the example of threats made against corporate sponsors of ALEC
  4. Expose, by which progressive seek access to lists of donors and other supporters in order to apply the first three techniques

On the last count, Democrat Tiverton/Portsmouth Representative John “Jay” Edwards had a coup this latest legislative session with his legislation to harass with regulations any citizen who attempts to have a public say on any local ballot question and to open such local activists and their supporters to harassment by vicious groups like Tiverton 1st, which not only succeeded in making public office seem like a costly volunteerism, but also in driving some of its opponents clear out of the town and the state.

10

On the Razor’s Edge Between Citizen and Subject

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I’m actually surprised, sometimes, how directly lessons from local politics apply even at the national level.

A few years ago, a friend of mine submitted a charter complaint, as allowed by Tiverton’s Home Rule Charter, against a school employee for disseminating political material in a school.  In contravention of the clear process for such complaints, the Town Clerk conducted an investigation, including being party to the discarding of evidence, and dismissed the complaint.

Now, I happen to like the Town Clerk, but thinking it vital that the process for complaints be clear, strictly followed, and universal in their application, I filed a complaint against her for this activity.  Ultimately, the Town Council let her off by finding that she didn’t “knowingly” violate the charter.  The ruling was ridiculous.  In general, “knowing” action means the person knows he or she took the action, not that he or she knows it was illegal, and the clerk didn’t accidentally conduct an investigation.  Making matters even clearer, section 1211(d)(2) provides for distinct additional penalties when a town employee knows his or her action is a violation.  There is simply no ambiguity, here.

But the council members liked the clerk, and most of them had a political interest in protecting the school employee and the political group whose material she promoted (Tiverton 1st).  So, they simply declared the law to be something different than what it clearly was for this one case.

Now, at the national level, despite what could accurately be described as “gross negligence”… a week after her husband met with the nation’s top law-enforcement agent in a clearly inappropriate, nearly clandestine meeting… the same day the President of the United States takes to the campaign trail with her, Hillary Clinton has dodged prosecution for sending classified information using a private email server because, in the words of FBI Director James Comey, the investigators did not find “some combination of clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information or vast quantities of information exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct or indications of disloyalty to the United States or efforts to obstruct justice.”  She didn’t know, despite having been warned against the server, so that’s that.

As in Tiverton, the reality is that the people whom we have entrusted to enforce our laws simply don’t want to do it, in this case, so we’re stuck.  And that means the only thing keeping us as citizens, rather than subjects of a ruling oligarchy, is our behavior.  If we accept this new reality, we’re serfs.  On that count, I’m with Kurt Schlichter:

They don’t realize that by rejecting the rule of law, they have set us free. We are independent. We owe them nothing – not respect, not loyalty, not obedience. But with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we will still mutually pledge those who have earned our loyalty with their adherence to the rule of law, our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

11

Local Politics in Poetry

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You know an election season is bound to be odd when it’s scarcely begun and already poetic letters to the editor are hitting the local papers.  Tiverton entered this phase this week when one activist associated with the local big-government, high-tax political action committee Tiverton 1st sent a poem in to the Fall River Herald attacking me.

By way of background, I proposed a budget to voters (who approved it) that held taxes down to a 0.9% increase for the upcoming budget, leaving the line items up to the Budget Committee.  After achieving around 84% of the adjustments needed, the committee backtracked and instead eliminated most of the budget for curbside trash pickup, expecting people either to bring their trash to the dump or for the Town Council to set up some sort of new fee to force people to pay the money that the town initially wanted in taxes, but that the voters refused to pay.  (The move is legally questionable, particularly because the very same activists have long argued that the Budget Committee has no authority to set policy, while now the Town Council president is insisting that her council has no authority to refuse the committee’s decision.)

 

You’re Welcome, Dear Susan

Responding to a personal attack masquerading as a poem by Susan Scanlon, whose sister, Deborah Scanlon Janick, is a member of the Tiverton Budget Committee.

Hi, Susan! Your poem in these pages
thanked me for the referendum results.
As when your sister, Deb Janick, rages,
your real goal seems to be your sharp insults.

Could it be your sister didn’t tell you,
when she wrapped up work with the budget board,
ending trash was what she wanted to do?
So many non-trash options were ignored!

On June 7, here’s what Deb had to say,
writing on Tiverton 1st’s Facebook page:
“The residents of Tiverton will pay
the price for voting for Budget 2.” Rage!

Now it’s the Town Council’s turn to decide
on the administrator’s Option E,
which moves cash around to keep trash alive,
or a sneaked in tax or fee, then blame me.

So, my dear Susan, you are most welcome.
My goal, as always, is one of service.
Now our neighbors can see from the outcome
what sort of people we have in office.

12

Local Politics Should Work Out Problems, Not Put Them Off

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I’ve put a post up on Tiverton Fact Check that takes up an aspect of the mixed-use Tiverton Glen project — which opponents are calling “the Mall,” now “the MegaMall” — that hasn’t been mentioned.

The issue and, especially, the opposition have really picked up steam in the past few weeks, in part perhaps because the process has set off a number of alarms.  Notably, after a long and controversial planning-board process, the developer submitted additional requests for zoning changes to the Town Council just before a town hearing.

Still, as often happens around here as issues heat up and a local political action committee called Tiverton 1st turns on its machine, personal attacks are poking through discussion of issues and there’s a frenzy for conformity that makes a too-simple “yes” or “no” question into a heated single issue under which all substantive discussion is rolled.

One larger question that’s been lost is what sort of development will ultimately go in that location.  Somebody’s paying around $20,000 in taxes on that land every year.  Making its sale and development a question of raw political power raises the possibility that the next proposal will come from somebody with more political power and less regard for the interests of the community.

With the state continuing to expand its push for affordable housing — including cut-rate tax bills for affordable developments — those opposing every commercial development that comes down the pike may be setting up a new neighborhood that, far from promising at least some fiscal benefit in the long term, comes nowhere meeting the costs of the government services it uses.

13

Trying to Conduct Civic Debates in Town Politics

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On one hand, people engaged in political and policy arguments at higher levels of government seem likely to have more experience engaging with people who disagree with them.  On the other hand, one would think folks would be more hesitant to play political cards like black-and-white “my opponent is just evil” games when they’re dealing with neighbors they see around town on a regular basis.

So much for expectations about how people would act.

Earlier this week, I published a commentary that went through the history of Tiverton Budget Committee elections and argued that, if the new Town Council does not appoint the next-highest vote getter from the Budget Committee election to fill a vacancy, it would be a divisive, precedent-setting move.

Until 2002, Budget Committees were elected biannually at the financial town meeting, and any vacancies were automatically filled in order of their totals from the previous  votes.  Since then, it has only happened once before that a Budget Committee member won an election to Town Council and had to be replaced immediately after the election.  In that case, the Council unanimously appointed the next-highest vote getter, even though she was from another faction in town than arguably a majority of the Council.

I acknowledged that the same Town Council had not appointed the next next-highest vote getter to fill vacancies the following year.  However, time had passed, and she doesn’t appear to have expressed interest in the job.

In the current situation, if the next-highest vote getter (from the slate of candidates whom I supported) is passed over for somebody more in step with the Town Council majority (from the slate of candidates whom I opposed), it would be a sign that endorsees from Tiverton 1st and the Tiverton Democratic Town Committee don’t really believe that stuff they say about “uniting the town” and “working together.”

The chairman of the Democratic Town Committee, Michael Burk, responded to my argument in the local Sakonnet Times.  Actually, he didn’t really respond.  It’s more like he took the opportunity to attack me as a villain.  It’s Saul Alinsky for locals.

I responded on the merits, here, but didn’t really convey how disappointing Burk’s response is.  It’s clear that there will be no arguing in good faith.  Whoever started town politics on this nasty path (I’d say it’s obviously them; they’d say the opposite), there’s no hope for bringing down the temperature when one side makes an argument supported by facts and the other side replies as Burk did.

14

Keeping a Record of the Controversies

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One bit of advice I’d offer to folks who are just starting to put together grassroots political organizations at the city or town level is to spend some time on an online repository right from the beginning.  Put up an inexpensive Web site and use it as a place to house all of your arguments about the issues in your city or town.

My points and research about controversies in Tiverton over the years are scattered all over the place — on Anchor Rising, on all of the local news sites (some in subscription-only archives), in the Providence Journal, on a defunct taxpayer group Web site, and probably in other places I’m not remembering.  Without a centralized place where all of those points, arguments, charts, and links can reliably be found, the local opposition is able to refer vaguely to past events in a one-sided way that is time-consuming to rebut.

Fixing that problem is one of the motivations behind Tiverton Fact Check, although because it’s a volunteer activity, it’s going to take time to fill it out, and it’s going to be more difficult to come up with easy-to-search organization with so many issues/controversies already in the mix.  On the other hand, the people advocating for the status quo in town offer helpful reminders of the issues that need to be addressed.

I’ve started the process with a response to a letter to the editor that is bursting at the seams with errors and misleading rhetoric:

One of the challenges of serving your community by getting involved in civic debate is that it’s so much easier for people to say things about you that are wrong and misleading than it is to actually explain issues.  Honest people are at a disadvantage, and often they give up when the special interests make things nasty, as Tiverton 1st and Mike Silvia have made them nasty in Tiverton.

Another bit of advice that I’d offer is to never give up.  Part of the strategy of local activists in the progressive–labor union mold is to create the illusion that everybody hates somebody who speaks up against them.  That’s not true.

Unfortunately, your city or town is mostly filled with normal people living normal lives, and they aren’t going to fill the papers with letters about how wonderful you are or put up Facebook pages in your honor to combat the Facebook hate-pages.  The periodic thumbs up at the store, back-slap at the soccer game, or encouraging question after church is going to have to suffice.

15

About that “Outside Special Interest” Thing

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I’ve got a new post on Tiverton Fact Check that looks at the first offering of the FakeCheck site that the local political opposition has created to spread fog in the public debate in Tiverton.  Most of the post is a lesson in how to judge the credibility that a Web site deserves, but this point may be of broader political interest:

The idea that distant political forces are funding a targeted campaign in Tiverton through me is pure paranoid delusion. (Although the Tiverton 1st crowd may be thinking of the way that national labor unions and progressive groups leverage their members in our town and its government to manipulate the political system. In that case, they may just assume that those of us on the other side would naturally do the same thing.)

16

UPDATED: Assessing Credibility and Intention in Political Fights

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Over the course of my education, teachers and professors reinforced multiple times the need to assess the credibility of sources of information.  There are external cues — like the people and organizations that testify to the source’s credibility — and there are internal cues.  Is the author constructing his or her argument so as to mislead or to inform?  For example, are the sources cited and comprehensive, thereby showing an interest in the author in having readers check his or her claims?

The gang of anonymous activists in Tiverton who serve as the plants in the crowd for those who support the status quo and oppose my friends and I locally illustrate the point very well, having set up yet another anonymous Web site with the same URL as my group’s TivertonFactCheck.org, except with dot-com.  Call it “Tiverton FakeCheck.”

Over time, we will undergo the tedious work of reviewing their factual claims, which range from debatable to misleading to plainly wrong.  In the meantime, I’ve put up a post reviewing some of the cues that show the different intentions of the two sites:

The bottom line is that FakeCheck is not how people act when they’re trying to clarify the public debate.  It’s how they act when they want to create fog and get people to vote based on hatred, fear, and some of our other more-base emotions. …

For now just keep an eye on how they argue.  It’s the same old Tiverton 1st tactic of insult and manipulation for political benefit.  Judge both sides for how we act, and use every resource available to you to make up your own mind about what the truth is.

17

Using Transparency Tools

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Part of the mission for the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity’s joint online transparency app with the Tiverton Taxpayers Association — beyond the first-order goal of increased transparency — is to help people to learn how to use the tools that are already available to them.

To that end, in my role as the editor of TivertonFactCheck.org (on my volunteer time with the Association) I’ll be offering brief tips and tutorials.  My first one is on the use of payroll data in conjunction with the state campaign finance search:

Selecting Tiverton 1st and then viewing its “Amendment of Organization” shows who was in charge of the group at the time it was filed and also which candidates the group worked to elect.  Notably most of the people on the Tiverton 1st list are on the Town Council, and all three of the endorsed school committee candidates won, which is a majority on that committee. …

In this case, two of the three people listed as “Co-coordinator/chair” show up as employees of the school department.  Gloria Crist was already receiving a little over $1,813 per year as a drama coach.  More significantly, soon after her endorsed candidates won a majority of the school committee, Linda Larsen was appointed by the school department as the School to Career Coordinator, which paid her $18,988 in fiscal year 2014.

The lessons aren’t all local, of course.  Government is interconnected and incestuous from one tier to the next, so it makes sense that political opportunism would cross the breach, too.  I also look at the Tiverton Political Action Committee for Education, which is just the local PAC for the teachers’ union:

In fiscal year 2012, Mr. Marx was the second-highest-paid teacher in Tiverton, making $91,394.  That might help explain why he became the treasurer of a group that works to elect specific candidates to government offices. The new treasurer was Amy Mullen.  Mullen isn’t making Marx money (yet), but $73,521 in fiscal year 2014 is quite a bit of incentive.

Just imagine if every town’s financial information were easily accessible to everybody in the state and a significant number of people understood how to use it to connect dots!

19

Advocacy for Children Not Allowed

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While we accept that teacher unions advocate to extremes for their members and that school committee’s strive to balance interests, parents or others who try to push just a little bit harder in the children’s direction are quickly denounced.

22

Whose Fault, RI?

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The question of blame for Rhode Island’s political culture requires an accurate view of how politics (and media) operates in the state. It’s not sports or business competition; it’s life.

24

When the Opposition Is Evil

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This short Instapundit post by Sarah Hoyt caught my attention for two reasons:

The Problem With Politics Today? The Opposition Must Be PUNISHED! This is what comes of confusing civil law and religion. When your politics are your religion, those who don’t agree are evil.

First, the Tom Knighton post on PJMedia to which she links is about a “small town of less than 20,000 people” in which residents recently “voted down a tax increase,” and the social media reaction of some who wanted to punish voters.  If anything, Knighton’s example looks mild compared with the open, broad, and organized aggression we’ve seen in Tiverton after merely reducing a tax increase to 0.9%.

Second, the mention of “evil” brought to mind the reaction of RI Future writer Steve Ahlquist when I wondered why the Central Falls school district insists that substitute teachers have a “commitment to social justice”:

Because a commitment to social injustice is evil?

One can see the level of zealotry, here, by the assumption that a substitute teacher who would not claim to have an active “commitment to social justice” must therefore have an active “commitment to social injustice.”  As I argued yesterday, progressives believe everything must be political all the time, whereas conservatives are comfortable with the idea that some areas of human activity can be distinct from other areas.  A substitute teacher, for example, can keep the classroom safe and maybe even advance students’ learning without having to invoke the doctrine of “social justice.”

My ensuing discussion with Ahlquist became mired in his trying to have it both ways.  On the one hand, he wanted to seem less like a zealot by implying that “social justice” isn’t a political ideology at all, but simply a term for such beliefs as all Americans agree are obvious and correct.  On the other hand (and here he broke off conversation before we could really explore this inquiry), he clearly has a progressive’s concept of what “social justice” means, as does the Central Falls district, inasmuch as the job ad in question had other telling phrases, like “cultural pride.”

Honestly, I think there’s a real issue evident in progressives’ inability to structure their thoughts and beliefs logically as a step toward assessing and comparing contrary thoughts and beliefs.  What they believe is simply correct… because it is… and in order to believe differently, one must be evil.  And if you’re nice, or at least willing to engage in discourse, while being evil, then you are, as Ahlquist repeatedly accused me of being, “not an honest interlocutor.”

The attractiveness of this approach is obvious.  One’s own beliefs are so plainly correct that none can legitimately argue against them.  The opposition’s implicit evil justifies just about any strategy required to win political fights, and if the good guys should lose, they are further justified in lashing out to punish the maleficent victors.

25

When the High-Tax Advocates Feel Free to Speak Their Minds

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If the Town Council follows through with the Budget Committee’s threat to end trash pickup in Tiverton (or charge extra for it), it will be because elected officials and their supporters want to teach taxpayers not to attempt to control their taxes.  But the real lesson will be that we must be more careful about whom we elect to office.

At the May 21 financial town referendum (FTR), 1,224 voters out of 2,210 approved Budget #2, for a 0.9% tax increase, resulting in zero increase in the property tax rate.  That made supporters of a much-bigger tax increase angry; here are some examples of things that they wrote on the Facebook page of the local activist group Tiverton 1st:

  • May 21. Budget Committee member Deborah Scanlon Janick: “Make sure you all personally thank Justin Katz when you lose the services you are used to.” (Somebody even printed up business cards at this time, telling people to call my cell phone and complain.)
  • May 22. Former Town Council Vice President Joanne Arruda: “First thing… snow plowing… I know this is awful, but those people who put in this budget out there and had their minions vote for it will have to be affected.”
  • May 22. Tiverton 1st organizer Mike Silvia: “… in this town, the uninformed and greedy followers who outnumber the community-minded aren’t smart enough to know they’re being played.”
  • May 26: Tiverton 1st activist, school department employee, and school committee candidate Linda Larsen: “Unfortunately, [voters] won’t care until they feel pain. … It won’t make a difference unless it becomes personal.”
  • May 26: Tiverton 1st organizer Kelly Anne Levesque: “I would like to see trash pickup removed which will require you to schlep your maroon bags to the dump or hire a private company.”
  • June 7: Deborah Scanlon Janick: “The residents of Tiverton will pay the price for voting for Budget 2 or for not voting at all.”

Continue reading on Tiverton Fact Check.

26

Don’t Vote for Them? You Don’t Exist.

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Because progressives have a coordinated belief system and playbook, politically active readers may have come across this at the local level: The city or town has a very close election (in which, perhaps, the Democrat Left outspends its opposition by wide margins), with the progressives winning a majority of seats.  After the election, they pick up the habit of declaring that their opposition “failed,” and that election results prove that the voters “rejected” them.

(Naturally, when votes go the other way, and the Left loses, the election was unfair, somehow, or the victors fooled the public, which is the current rhetoric of Tiverton’s progressives about the 0% budget that I submitted for the town last spring and that voters supported by nearly a two to one margin.  Elected officials are literally screaming at public meetings that it was all my doing.  But I digress.)

I’ve got a post up on Tiverton Fact Check addressing this tactic of the local Democrats and progressives.  They’re declaring that my friends’ message didn’t “resonate” with voters even though the Democrat Left spent five times as much money and even though the results would have been reversed if we’d received less than 1% more of the total vote.

Overall, of course, elections are elections, and they won.  But the prize is the privilege of representing one’s neighbors, not the ability to believe that very nearly half of voters just don’t count.

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