Council Disruptions Continue
By Cynthia Drummond for BRVCA
November 8th 2023
RICHMOND – The acrimony continued at Tuesday’s Town Council meeting with four agenda items introduced by councilor Michael Colasante, as he had promised to do on the Oct. 25 edition of the “#InTheDugout” radio program.
Colasante, told program host Mike Stenhouse that he had filed complaints with the ACLU and the office of the Rhode Island Attorney General regarding his treatment at the Oct. 17 council meeting, during which council President Mark Trimmer would not let him finish a statement he was reading from the podium normally used during the public forum.
Contrary to his promises to “hit the reset button” and work with his fellow council members, Colasante told Stenhouse that he was already preparing for Tuesday’s council meeting.
“Do you expect to do or say anything there in furtherance of this situation, Michael, or are you just going to wait for the ACLU?” Stenhouse asked.
Colasante replied,
“No, I’m going to put it on the agenda that I notified the ACLU and there’re going to be a few other things on the agenda too, concerning these issues.”
Colasante added four items to the council agenda:
The road work bond approved by voters in 2022,
The bid for a generator for the Town Hall,
Fees charged by Town Solicitor Karen Ellsworth for Open Meetings Act complaints made by council member Samantha Wilcox and attorney Mark Reynolds,
and
A discussion of the accounting of revenue from the Beaver River solar project.
The Roadwork Bond
This was not the first time Colasante had proposed that the amount of the road bond, for which voters approved up to $2.5 million, could be reduced if the town used state funding.
“We can use the windfall of the road grant, save the taxpayers money,” he said Tuesday. “We go out to bond for $2.1 million and use the road grants to fill the gap of the $2.5 million and that would be actually more in line with what the voters voted for.”
Colasante made a motion, seconded by councilor Helen Sheehan, that the town go out to bond for $2.1 million and use state grants for the remaining $400,000.
Karen Ellsworth asked,
“Isn‘t that what the Finance Director already said to try and do?”
Finance Director Laura Kenyon was not present at the meeting, and Ellsworth suggested the council wait for her to return before making a decision.
Colasante made a motion to put the item on the next meeting agenda, but it was decided that the council would wait for the next meeting where Kenyon was present.
The council approved the motion, with councilor Samantha Wilcox voting against it, because, she said, the matter had already been discussed.
The Generator
The town went out to bid for an emergency generator for the Town Hall and announced the winning bid, $99,234, on Oct. 3.
Colasante had previously mentioned that he had reached out to a company that had not bid on the contract but could do the job for $73,000. Since the project is not an emergency, he urged the council to delay the work and consider the lower bid.
Trimmer pointed out that the bid from the firm Colasante had contacted did not include site work.
“You got a bid for a commodity, a generator,” he said. “The bid we got for the town, which was $98,000, was not only for the commodity, but for the extensive site work to run the conduit from the pad, through the pad, under the ground –
Council Vice President Richard Nassaney added,
“and re-wire the entire building.”
Colasante said he was trying to save the taxpayers money, but Nassaney warned that circumventing a legal bidding process would end up in a costly lawsuit.
“If we want to save our taxpayers any money, we don’t even entertain this, because the contractor that was awarded the bid would turn around in a heartbeat and sue the town for breach of contract,” he said.
Town Solicitor Fees
Colasante asked what Ellsworth had been paid for defending the town against complaints of Open Meetings Act violations filed by Samantha Wilcox and Mark Reynolds.
“They both were denied and there was no OMA violation, so I would like to know how much it cost the town,” Colasante said.Ellsworth replied that the same request had already been made by Raymond Pouliot, a Colasante ally.
“I think it was about $1,500 and the second one was $2,052,” she said.
Colasante reminded the council that Wilcox had wanted to know what attorney Joseph Larisa had been paid to defend the town and Clay Johnson before the Rhode Island Supreme Court, a case that the town lost. Larisa was paid $22,242.
“Mr. President, the only reason why I brought this up was because councilor Wilcox wanted to know how much the fee was for attorney Joe Larisa, so, what’s good for you is not good for somebody else,” he said.
Beaver River Solar Revenue
Colasante’s fourth item pertained to the revenue from the Beaver River Solar project.
Since Finance Director Laura Kenyon was not at the meeting, Colasante made a motion, seconded by Sheehan, to postpone the discussion until she returned.
However, Wilcox said she had wanted to discuss it Tuesday, because of a quote from Colasante in the meeting packet, stating that Town Administrator Karen Pinch had said that the fee the developer had paid to the town in June had been “spent around town.”
Wilcox said,
“The quote was misquoted. What was said was, typically those revenues are accounted for in the budget process to be spent on whatever other town services.”
Wilcox suggested Colasante could get the information he was looking for by filing an Access to Public Records Act, or APRA request.
With Wilcox, Trimmer and Nassaney voting against Colasante’s motion, it was defeated.
License Renewals
A considerable portion of Tuesday’s meeting was devoted to victualling and holiday sales license renewals for businesses in the town.
In the case of The Preserve, the license renewals were contingent upon the payment of local taxes. In theory, the town could refuse to renew a business license because of unpaid taxes, however, it has never done so.
The Preserve did end up paying its tax bill on Tuesday afternoon, $37,069.45, and an additional town water bill of $11,543.36.