Good Morning to everyone and thank you for taking time out on your busy weekend to be with us this morning for CCA’s 2nd annual citizens meeting. Volunteers were passing out handouts with today’s agenda and other important information on CCA, our web site and e-mail address and mailings. If you don’t have a copy or today’s agenda, please raise your hand and we will get you a copy. Before we move forward with today’s agenda which will culminate with a Q & A segment for folks in the audience there are a couple of points I would like to address. I want to say a heart felt thank you to the citizens of Charlestown for having the courage to stand up at public meetings and speak out in the effort to restore Good Government to Charlestown.

As many of you know, CCA was formed out of citizens meeting in this building in January 2007. Since the election of November 2006, citizens have expressed their concerns about what has been happening to our town and the dysfunctional nature of our Town Council and government. Citizens have expressed their shock, anger, dismay, and frustrations with the current state of our Town Government.

I don’t want to belabor all the negative things that have happened since Nov. 2006. However, I want to acknowledge how painful it has been for anyone who cares about civility in the process of creating public policy, free speech, and treating citizens with dignity and respect. Citizens expect an open government not one that shuts out citizens and violates the States Open Meeting Act as it makes inappropriate hires, and creates public policy that reflects the will of special interests and personal agendas and not the wishes of its citizens.

CCA has been quite candid about these violations against the Law and its citizens, we have had the CCA Chronology and Report Card of the Charlestown Town Council published in three local papers, the Chariho Times, Providence Journal, and Westerly Sun. If you would like to see just some of the violations, instances where citizens have been abused by Town Councilors, false criminal complaints and lawsuits filed against citizens, and other assorted unethical acts that reflect on why some of our Town Councilors are unfit for public service, go to our CCA Web Site which is listed on today’s handout and read for yourself just what has transpired since Nov. 2006 and as incredible as the list might seem this is only a partial list. And for folks who might think we made this information up, we are reporting incidents that were previously published in local newspapers, appeared on TV, or were captured on tape at public meeting and were presented on Cable TV. Everything in the CCA Chronology has been previously been reported by other news sources.

As the 2008 election cycle begins, I want to assure all citizens that CCA as a non-partisan organization is committed to restoring Good Government to Charlestown but we will need to have a new slate of political candidates to run for office and we will need the help of all concerned citizens to make this happen. I will talk a little bit more later this morning about the November 2008 Election and what CCA plans to do, and the role citizens can play in the next election.