Woodstock CT Café

Useful statistics for understanding this post: Woodstock is 61.8 square miles, or 39,550 acres. According to the Plan of Open Space and Conservation accepted June 20, 2001 (pg. 15) there is approximately 22,721 acres in PA 490 (or 58.9% of Woodstock’s entire acerage). Including the holdings of the state, there are only approximately 3,038 acres that can be considered committed open space.

While increasing the tax base is controlled by Proposition 46 the proper application of PA-490 isn’t. There are quite a few approved subdivisions in town that are presently taxed at the rate a farm qualifies for. These people are literally stealing from the town. ‘Burning Up’ mentions windfall profits. Well, this is exactly what these people are doing. They keep the land in PA-490 for 10 years and pay no tax penalty when they re-sell it. Some have existing lots of 2.5 or more acres with values of $150 K and more being assessed at $700 or less. Other abuses are the people that buy a house with 5 or more acres and put everything over the 2.5acre building lot into PA-490. This is an abuse of a program that is intended for farm protection. Why is PA-490 applicable to lots of 2 acres or more when the minimum lot size today is 2.5 acres? There is the fear that if property is taxed properly, it will cause mass building due to sales of land. This isn’t so since the present sub-division regulations limit the number of homes on a private driveway to 5 houses, and 50% of the buildable property is given up to open space. Read the rest of this entry »

My fondest memories as a kid were my visits to my grandparents’ farm in Mclean, Virginia, in the late 40′s and early 50′s. At that time Mclean was rural, not the high-rise Washington suburb that it has become. The crossroads at the center of town had a general store, a garage (yes they had cars back then), and a white church where my mom and dad and my mother’s two sisters were married. Many of the roads were still dirt. The big development for me in Mclean was the arrival of the Dairy Queen. I recall one hot summer day at the farm when Grandfather suggested that my Grandmother, he and I take a ride into town for a Dairy Queen. Grandmother grudgingly agreed to go only if Grandfather agreed not to go over 25 miles per hour. Grandfather gave me a wry smile and wink from the other side of his Woody and we headed off to town at 25 mph.

I ‘helped’ Grandfather put up the fence for the front pasture of what is now Roger Mudd’s front yard. We put up the fence pole by pole, sinking the pole, then hand drilling two holes so that we could string smooth wire through the holes. It must have taken him many months to get this done. When it was finished I was able to take Sparta, a Tennessee Walker, into the front pasture on my own. One day maybe a year later, I was in the front pasture on Sparta when Blue Jeans, his girl, whinnied back at the barn. Sparta’s head darted up and we took off for the barn. I remember holding on for dear life as we galloped close to the barn, and Grandfather running toward me shouting, “Put your head down when you go into the barn” … and so I survived without falling or wacking myself as Sparta and I entered the barn.

A few years ago I had some extra time in the Washington Read the rest of this entry »