To the editor:

I believe the recent Financial Town Referendum vote and the upcoming Town Council vote on amending Tiverton’s Comprehensive Plan share a very important something: a need for our elected representatives to listen to the will of the people they represent.

Tiverton voters, on May 16, again chose the budgetary option which promised lower taxes and demanded fiscal accountability and transparency of how their tax dollars are collected and spent.

Our Town Council is about to vote on changing Tiverton’s currently approved comprehensive plan to create an exemption to make it possible for the ever-changing (in substance and name) Carpionato mall development to proceed. Our Town Council would do well to heed the wishes of the people they represent and not play games with our comprehensive plan for something that clearly is alien to the rural nature of, and designated historic districts in, Tiverton.

Like the recent arguments for the casino, the most often expressed argument for the mall is to obtain revenues for the town. But, instead of exploring proven ways to do this, our elected Town Council is on the verge of electing to change the very nature of the town delineated and mandated in our current chosen comprehensive plan. One proponent of the mall, a realtor, talks of how a new resident of Tiverton complains that there is nothing to do in this town as a reason for having this new mall town center in Tiverton. My question to this recent home buyer is, why did you buy here in the first place?

Our Town Council’s energies should be directed at figuring out ways of lowering residential and business taxes to encourage families and small businesses to move to the town of Tiverton. That is also the hope expressed in the voters’ choice of Elector Petitioner’s Budget #2, and not pursuing the promise of exceedingly vague and elusive mall revenues which definitively ensure the demise of many small businesses already here, the future entry of small entrepreneurs, the real possibility of decreased home values, and an exodus of Tiverton’s current residents who value Tiverton’s rural, country character.

Nancy L. Driggs

Tiverton