In this lovely Rhode Island fire district, an ugly dispute over cabanas and voting rights won’t end

Voters will go to an annual meeting in late June to have their say on various pieces of district business, including who serves on the governing council. And, to the dismay of one faction in town, the district says it will let people vote even if they don’t actually live there, so long as they own a certain amount of property. That includes people, and even corporate entities, who own cabanas or locker units at the Bonnet Shores Beach Club.

To resident Robert Patterson and his allies, the situation is untenable, antidemocratic, and contrary to a legal settlement. He fears it could allow one particular institution — the Bonnet Shores Beach Club with all its beach lockers and cabanas — to drown out residents’ votes.

“No one in the state is willing to say, ‘We have to look at this, this doesn’t seem right,’” said Patterson, who’s been involved in legal wrangling and fruitless pleas to state leaders in an effort to kick cabana owners and other non-resident property owners off the voting rolls.

But to people on the other side of the dispute, Patterson’s faction is going about things all wrong. The fire district’s governing council, which was elected under rules that a judge found unconstitutional, is among those pushing back.

“The majority of the council wants inclusiveness,” Carol O’Donnell, the chair of the current fire district council, said in an email.

The beach club is an independent entity from the fire district. And it will stay that way, its president said: They have no intention of trying to take over the fire district. But its supporters argue it does have enough of a stake in the district that it should continue to be able to vote in district elections in some form.

“We want to be good partners and good neighbors,” beach club president Kevin Lynch said in an interview.

The dispute might be hyperlocal, but it has broader implications for anyone in Rhode Island who cares about local democracy, especially one of local democracy’s most unusual expressions here. Fire districts dot coastal areas of the state, and despite their name, they often don’t actually fight fires. Instead they act like a limited-function town within a town. When they act with government powers, they have to let all adult citizens vote under the state and US constitutions.

But Rhode Island fire districts haven’t always done so.

“At some point, our Affiliate may need to establish a special civil liberties project dedicated solely to dealing with fire district issues...” remarked Steven Brown, Rhode Island ACLU’s executive director.

Brown said the ACLU’s legal committee will review the current situation in Bonnet. It might take some doing, because it’s sort of a long story.

For years in the Bonnet Shores Fire District, only people who owned a certain amount of taxable property — $400 — could vote in its elections. That excluded adult citizens, whose names may not have been on their homes’ deeds. It also meant people and corporate entities that owned cabanas or lockers at the Bonnet Shores Beach Club could vote in district elections, even if they lived somewhere else. And since multiple people might own one unit, that opened up a lot of potential beach club voters. In 2020, a group of residents sued to change both of those things.

The Bonnet Shores Fire District Council fought in court to maintain the property ownership requirement in its elections, but it lost. A judge ruled that the district actually had governmental powers and, under both the state and US constitutions, needed to let all adult citizens vote.

That ruling, though, left open the question of what to do about the other side of the dispute: People who owned property in the district but live somewhere else. Some residents argued that allowing them to vote diluted their own votes. The two sides reached a settlement in 2022. The district council acknowledged by way of the settlement that allowing unfettered numbers of property owners to vote diluted the votes of people who lived there.

But the settlement didn’t explicitly set new voting rules. Instead it outlined a process for changing them. That’s where things started to go sideways. Under the settlement, an internal district committee had to propose new rules. Then the proposal had to go through the General Assembly. Once the General Assembly signed off, it would go back to the Bonnet Shores Fire District voters for final ratification.

Last year the internal district committee duly proposed new rules. They would have kicked non-resident property owners off the district’s voting rolls while allowing certain seasonal residents to vote. But the proposal stalled in the Assembly.

One problem was the actual substance of the new rules: some argued that non-resident proprerty owners still had enough of a stake to be able to vote. But the process of changing the rules drew pushback, too. The proposal that was before the General Assembly last year would apply the new rules to the vote on whether to start using those new rules in future votes. In other words: Cabana owners wouldn’t get to vote on whether they should no longer be allowed to vote.

“It’s a cart before the horse situation,” said Thomas Dickinson, an attorney who represents the fire district council.

To district residents like Patterson, it actually makes perfect sense. You can’t cure an unconstitutional election by holding another unconstitutional election. And the fire district council acknowledged in their settlement that the current voting rules diluted the votes of residents.

“It’s so obvious on its face that this is crazy,” Patterson said.

The General Assembly went home for the summer last year without passing the legislation. And this year, a slightly different proposal wasn’t even introduced.

State Representative Carol Hagan McEntee, a South Kingstown Democrat whose district includes Bonnet Shores, said the reason was simple: When the Assembly session started in January, residents were going to court. The Assembly wasn’t going to take up an issue that was the subject of active litigation. And by now, though the litigation has died down, it’s “very late” in the session to take up such a controversial topic, McEntee said.

McEntee lives in South Kingstown but also owns a unit at the beach club and a residential property in the fire district. The latest version of the proposal that she declined to introduce may have affected her right to vote, because it would no longer allow seasonal residents to vote.

But “it’s not going to be the end of the world for me if I don’t vote in Bonnet Shores,” McEntee said.

Critics like Patterson say McEntee has actively stood in the way of changes, effectively maintaining the beach cabana voting status quo by not advancing the legislation.

McEntee says, to the contrary, she’s been fair and evenhanded. She is friends with O’Donnell, the chair of the fire district, but “I’m friends with everybody down there,” she said.

“I grew up there in the summers,” McEntee said. “I’ve known these people for a long time. ... I’m getting emails, phone calls, from both sides, and most of the emails and phone calls I get don’t like this proposal.”

An annual meeting has now been scheduled for late June, where people will vote on various district business. And, the fire district council’s lawyer said, it will include all eligible voters — which the council considers to be adult citizen residents and property owners, including cabana owners.

Dickinson points to a judge’s comments at a recent hearing to argue that eligible voters still include non-resident property owners. The judge said “the Bonnet Shores Fire District Council represents all qualified voters, including the nonresident property owners.” To Dickinson, the judge made clear that non-resident property owners can still vote, unless and until the people of Bonnet Shores decide otherwise.

“That’s what should be resolved in the democratic process,” Dickinson said in an interview.

Opponents, naturally, disagree with Dickinson’s analysis of the judge’s statement and the settlement.

If history is any guide, they seem destined to end up back in court. That’s where McEntee, the state representative, said things might need to be resolved.

Or they could take another route.

“At this point, I think we ought to consider dissolving the fire district,” McEntee said.

Brian Amaral can be reached at brian.amaral@globe.com. Follow him @bamaral44.