Letter: Incumbent Tiverton council does not deserve re-election

Posted 10/16/18

To the editor:

Should the incumbent Tiverton Town Council be re-elected?  That is the first question that Tiverton voters should be asking.  Based upon the actions of the Town Council over …

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Letter: Incumbent Tiverton council does not deserve re-election

Posted

To the editor:

Should the incumbent Tiverton Town Council be re-elected?  That is the first question that Tiverton voters should be asking.  Based upon the actions of the Town Council over the last two years, the voters in Tiverton have many actions upon which to base their decision, and to answer — the incumbent Tiverton Town Council cannot be trusted to make the proper decisions, and should not be reelected. 

The Town Council rejected all recommendations of the duly elected Tiverton Charter Committee, after their year of work collecting, discussing, and summarizing the charter recommendations of the Tiverton citizens. 

The council did not bother to discuss each Charter Committee proposal and list the reasons for not approving them (most likely because listing the reasons for not approving them would disclose reasons that 90% of Tiverton residents and voters would find distasteful and abhorrent). 

Then the Town Council presented the Town Council-recommended charter changes as a replacement for the Tiverton Charter Committee changes in the November election.  That improper and untrustworthy decision should be familiar to all Tiverton residents and voters, a true indication of what the TTC thinks of the rights of Tiverton voters.  The Tiverton voters had exercised their rights by presenting their proposed charter changes to the duly elected Tiverton Charter Committee, and those changes had been discarded by the Town Council. 

A review of the charter changes being proposed by the Town Council gives some indication of what the Town Council would like to accomplish. 

Proposed Charter Amendment 6 is intended to give the Tiverton town solicitor (hired by and under the control of the Town Council) the power over the review and prosecution of charter complaints. 

Proposed Charter Amendment 10 is intended to give the Town Council the power to limit the use of the casino gaming revenue to debt service, capital development, or infrastructure and prohibit its use on the operation budget (i.e. prohibiting the use of the casino gaming revenue to reduce the taxes upon the residents and taxpayers of Tiverton).  Most Tiverton voters were convinced to vote to allow the casino in Tiverton because they were told that the casino revenue would be used to lower Tiverton real estate taxes. 

Proposed Charter Amendment 11 is clearly a proposal that has the intent to cripple the FTR, and severely restrict the power of Tiverton citizens to use the FTR to control the budget. 

Any person who intends to cripple the FTR and use casino revenue as a slush fund should not be elected. 

Roger A. Bennis

Tiverton  

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