I read with amazement Mr. Collette’s letter about CCA (The Sun, Oct. 11). It kind of reminded me of the things kids used to whisper in junior high: be scared of the unknown, beware of that group called CCA, and just who are they?

Is he kidding? CCA is your neighbor, your relative, your friend — it’s you. We’re as transparent as they come — hundreds of you have attended our public meetings at the grange, you’ve met us collecting signatures on petitions, you know us from candidate Meet and Greets, and we’ve had newspaper articles written about our Steering Committee and what CCA believes. Secret society? Hardly.

What Mr. Collette is — a tried and true member of a political party — is what CCAis not. We’re Democrats, Independents and Republicans. We agree and we disagree. You read our emails, you know how our writers feel. There’s no smoke and mirrors about anything we do. But that might be really hard for Mr. Collette to understand — after all, to be in a political party like he is means you have to be in lockstep with the party line. So, I understand how Mr. Collette could be so confused about such a group like CCA and spread some pretty dishonest claims about us.

As for why CCAis not supporting the current town councilors. I have a confession to make: they duped us. They said they were for open, transparent government. They weren’t. They said they would respect boards and commissions. They didn’t. They said they would have fiscal restraint. They couldn’t. So, what did CCAdo? They explained to the public what this group promised they would do and didn’t. I guess Mr. Collette would have liked us to keep our mouths shut and march right along with the incumbents like they do in his political party. Sorry, no can do.

This all leads to the fact that Mr. Collette is for the incumbents. That must mean he liked it when they ganged up on the Planning Commission and berated these hard working volunteers in public. And I guess he’s OK with the incumbents closing the town golf range but conveniently forgetting to tell the Parks and Rec commission. And I guess he’s fine with the Town Council trying to buy a spit of land for $800,000 to create another boat launch on Ninigret Pond even though the land was worth probably less than $100,000. And he must love the fact that the incumbents wrote a custom zoning ordinance for one developer, took over the powers of the Planning Commission and the Zoning Board to review the application, scheduled a public hearing without a complete application, waived all the fees for the developer, and supported freezing their tax assessment at an artificially low level for up to 20 years all at the expense of taxpayers. Mr. Collette is right about one thing: we did abandon the incumbents because they are way out of the mainstream and what Charlestown voters want. And he is right about another thing. Our candidates are leaders. That’s why I ask you to vote for Tom Gentz, Dan Slattery and Cliff Vanover on Nov. 2 for Town Council and Jim Abbott, Gordon Foer and George Tremblay for Planning Commission.

Kallie Jurgens