GOP Candidates Answer Questions at Forum

Stenhouse asked the candidates whether they support property tax breaks for The Preserve.

Colasante: yes

St. Onge: not sure

Carpenter: yes

Marron: needs to know more

Dinsmore: yes

By Cynthia Drummond for BRVCA

November 3, 2024

Editor’s Note: In the interest of fairness, we are reporting the participants’ statements without rebuttal or comment.

RICHMOND – After declining to participate in the Oct. 2 candidates’ forum, the Republican candidates for Town Council appeared on the Ocean State Current’s Election Waves online forum on Oct. 10.

There was an earlier forum, on Oct. 9, for Chariho School Committee candidates. Both were organized by the Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity and moderated by the center’s CEO, Mike Stenhouse.

This time, it was the Democratic and unaffiliated council candidates who declined an invitation to participate in the Election Waves forum, leaving the five Republican candidates: incumbent Michael Colasante, Thomas Marron, former council member, Nell Carpenter, Jeffrey Dinsmore and Roger St. Onge.

Each candidate was given 75 seconds, without interruption from other candidates, to answer each question. There were no rebuttals, unless permitted by Stenhouse. Some questions required detailed responses while others called for a simple “yes” or “no.” Several questions were optional, so candidates were not required to answer them.

·     Excerpts From the Opening Statements

Carpenter: “I’m a country girl who believes in limited government, eliminating wasteful spending, and I support prioritizing economic development and creating a business-friendly Richmond.”

Colasante: “With my experience being on the council back in the early ‘90s, I reduced the taxes here in Richmond three years in a row. And, the difference then is, I had the blessing of the Town Council that I sat with then. They would pat me on the back and say ‘good job, Mike,’ unlike the ones today.”

Dinsmore: “My question to taxpayers is this: do you want lower taxes and relief, or the status quo of tax increases with little to show for it?”

Marron: “It’s clear cut, critical distinction between higher taxes and lower taxes, bigger government, lean and efficient government, no-growth economy and a healthy growth economy that will be the catalyst for lowering taxes.”

St. Onge: “While our opponents have a wish list of years’ worth of increases, spending on the backs of taxpayers with no examples of saving, this is so important, in a time where every dollar saved means the difference between paying the power bill, putting gas in your car, doing things with your kids.”

·     Stenhouse asked why the candidates had not chosen to participate in the Oct. 2 forum, sponsored by the League of Women Voters of South County.

Colasante replied,

“It was because the League of Womens [sic] Voters sponsored that. The League of Womens [sic] voters, a lot of their hierarchy, you can check right on their Facebook page, all right? that they’re anti-military. They’re dead set against our law enforcement, and I’ve got sons, relatives in both military and law enforcement.”

Dinsmore: “They don’t share our values, and I watched that event, because my wife was doing the School Committee part. I mean, they didn’t even stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.”

(Dinsmore’s wife, Louise Dinsmore, who is running for the Chariho School Committee, asked the moderators to make time for the Pledge of Allegiance before the forum got underway.)

Carpenter: “For a non-partisan organization, there’s a lot of partisan practice amongst their leadership, and it can be viewed on social media – screen shots of various inappropriate comments that were brought to our attention.”

Stenhouse divided the questions into four general areas: the town budget, including schools and taxes, economic development, town infrastructure, and transparency and partisanship.

·     The first question pertained to maintaining town services while keeping taxes low.

Carpenter: “I believe we can allocate services within our departments and save money. I believe we can mirror certain rural communities, how they utilize services from their departments as opposed to outsourcing.”

Colasante: “The economic development portion of this is that they’ve been pushing businesses away. Amazon looked here. I know the owner of both huge parcels of land. … Basically, Richmond would have had absolutely almost no tax bill every single year, if we didn’t push Amazon down into Johnston.”

·     To a Yes or No question about the defeated school construction bond, all five candidates said they had voted against it.

·     Stenhouse’s next question was about accusations that town employees are being driven out, although he mistakenly assumed that town employees are unionized when the only unionized employees are the police.

Carpenter: “I think that’s fear-mongering and scare tactic, that our opponents are putting out there that we are driving away employees. The Town Planner left. He took another job. The solicitor left – she had served the town for more than 20 years. If that’s driving out employees, I’m at a loss for that.”

Marron: “Allegations are so easy to make. Accusations are so easy to make. The first thing I would say to these people is okay, prove it.”

Colasante: “Employees are Number Two in my book. Number One is always the customer and the customer is the taxpayer. And it seems like the last two years, I appreciate our Town Hall employees, but it’s always big pats on the back to the Town Hall employees and me and Helen [Sheehan] are the only ones that have been advocating, and we always speak out for the taxpayer.”

·     Candidates were asked about their “out of the box” ideas on how to expand the tax base,

Colasante: “I just thought that, you know, most towns would favor, especially in the areas that are already designated for industrial or commercial, that they would want to develop these as quick as possible. They gave Richmond Commons a hard time for 30 years, John Aiello, and he’s the one that was discussing the Amazon facility here, and again $7.1 million is now in Johnston.”

Marron: There’s an interest on the part of one of the businesses [The Preserve] in the town to put up an urgent care center. To put up a gasoline station. To put up a convenience store. Now, that’s an expressed interest. That’s on the planning sheet.”

Carpenter: “I think we need to support our business initiatives, both current and future and potential business initiatives, and I think that happens with a friendly environment. I think an economic development coordinator can streamline this process.”

·     Asked whether they supported continued solar energy development “like at Beaver Road,” all five candidates said no.

·     Stenhouse then asked which entity should be responsible for economic development,

Colasante said he supported hiring an economic development director.

“That’s exactly what I proposed a little over a year ago, is to get an economic development person into the town hall to work with the Town Administrator, as an employee. It was ARPA money that would have paid for the position.  We had voted on it. We had put aside $135,000 for that economic developer position. And the grand wisdom of a few of the other people on  the council decided to rescind that and put the money back in, and it didn’t happen.”

Dinsmore: “I think it should be the Town Council and the Town Administrator. They need to work collaboratively. They need to have the same vision.  I’m not sure that’s true right now.”

Carpenter: “The EDC actually resigned in a mass exodus earlier this year. The Economic Development Commission. Several members resigned in a mass exodus, of all political ilks. … They believed they weren’t being respected by the current Town Council.”

·     On land use and economic development:

Dinsmore: “I think the land use policies could be relaxed a little bit, but I think we should concentrate on places like Chariho Plaza that are already set up for business.”

Colasante: “We have already designated land and nothing has been done because they put road blocks. They don’t even want the land that is there to be developed for industrial, commercial to be developed. I call them – some people aren’t going to like it, but too bad – I call them the environmental Nazis, okay?”

Carpenter: “I think we should focus our development, for commercial development, exclusively on our industrial and commercial zones, which are literally right off the highway.”

·     On attracting large scale economic development,

Marron dismissed an idea proposed at the Oct. 2 forum by Democratic candidate Dan Madnick that would introduce composting as a way to reduce trash volume, and therefore, the town’s tipping fees at the landfill.

“There is one person on the other team of candidates who wants to do composting at the transfer station and use that as economic development. I thought he was kidding, but actually, the guy’s serious. No, that’s out of the question, composting.”

St. Onge: “I briefly remember the truck stop debacle between  all the different towns, kicking it, you know ‘we want it, we don’t want it.’ That was free money. It was right off 95. The state would have picked up a tremendous amount of that cost.”

Carpenter: “I’m not sure that our infrastructure could support something like that, to be honest. … I think a strong council that holds them [businesses] accountable would be more successful and actually having those vacant buildings occupied.”

Colasante recited a list of businesses that would have established themselves in Richmond if they had not been “chased out:” U-Haul, the state welcome center, John Aiello’s Richmond Commons.

“If you look at where all the major developments are, they’re off [Interstate] 95 and they’re off 295, and a lot of them have been former gravel pits. So, you know, when you look at Richmond, we’re right there too.”

·     On property rights and local versus state control over municipal zoning:

Colasante: “They want to put in sewers going down 138 to be able to be able to take care of all that low income-moderate housing. … The price of bringing sewers down 138 would be $40 million and a lot of that would be on the backs of Richmond taxpayers. And then on top of that, when you look at the amount of kids that would be brought into the system, it would overwhelm our schools. It would basically bury the middle class here.”

Marron: “There are these progressive liberals, or whatever they are, and they come from the cities and they’ve got the same ideas and they want to be the nanny state and all that. The people of Richmond should have the power to determine their destiny.”

St. Onge: “I think this is the very item that’s the canary in the coal mine which shows me … progressive Democrat social programming literally on the back of the taxpayers.”

·     Stenhouse asked the candidates whether they support property tax breaks for The Preserve.

Colasante: yes

St. Onge: not sure

Carpenter: “Build, Baby, Build. If they build it, we tax it, so yes.”

Marron: needs to know more

Dinsmore: yes

·     Asked if they support the $15 million bond for the maintenance of Chariho schools, all five candidates said ‘no.’

·     On the state housing bills passed during the last session:

Carpenter: “I think there are creative ways that don’t include the building off the 138 corridor for hundreds – hundreds, of rental units. … These units are not for our residents. That’s the cold hard truth.”

Marron, who moved to Richmond from Chicago, cited the example of the infamous Cabrini-Green housing project in that city. The last unit was demolished in 2011.

“They were water view units, playgrounds adjacent, unbelievable. And all the people living in the slums then moved back into these units, which then became vertical ghettos. So you can get the people out of the ghetto, but you can’t get the ghetto out of the people, kind of thing.”

·     All five candidates said they opposed the creation of a municipal court for Richmond.

·     The candidates also agreed that they oppose the elimination of the third police shift.