Woodstock CT Café

THE DISRUPTORS AND THEIR AGENDA – “A handful of individuals – with the usual support of the disruptive CPS clowns – working with a key officer of the Planning Commission to derail a 2-year effort to develop a basic set of land use regulations.”

Well, the shenanigans at the scheduled special meeting of the Planning & Zoning Commission continued the other night.

This special meeting was called to begin a series of working sessions to review new proposed Zoning Regulations. As explained by commission member Ken Goldsmith, the proposed zoning document does not change the town’s current zoning for various uses, but does address the poor organization and chronic language gaps so as to improve the town’s ability to enforce the rules already in place. Apparently, this enforcement problem has been highly problematic for many years according to current and former zoning enforcement officers Delia Fey and Terry Bellman because of the vague language of the current ordinance. Second, as explained by commission member Mr. Breen, the “Special Permit” structure is the only guide to commercial development in the town, and its requirements are so vaguely written, that the Planning Commission has little ability to manage growing and critical issues into the future relating to larger-scale commercial development projects.

Based on past discussion, the Woodstock Planning Commission recognized the need to upgrade its zoning regulations for many years, but chose first to revise its Subdivision Regulations, which guide residential development in the town. The new Subdivision Regulations continue and broaden the policy of setting aside conservation land in most residential developments in the town. Once these regulations were completed and enacted two years ago, the Planning Commission reassembled as a new commission after the last election and established its next most important priority – upgrading its Zoning Regulations as the “foundationâ€? for managing land use in the town.

None of this was controversial until the other night, Read the rest of this entry »

“Let’s worry LESS about protecting the individual property owner in their quest to maximize their land values, and let’s worry MORE about balancing the needs of our community.”

Folks,

The Republican members running for P&Z are typically pro-development, hiding within the language of “protecting property rights of owners”. I will follow up more later but REPUBLICAN FRED RICH (previously on P&Z, but not re-elected last election; his wife is also running for re-election as Woodstock treasurer unapposed) & Republican Dexter Young (currently on P&Z running for re-election; his son excellent engineer also a principal of CME Engineers, a local company working with many developers) voted to approved the Pulpit Rock Development, which included nine (9) amendments by the P&Z board!?!? Pulpit Rock Road was a flagrant example of the “good old boy” network trying to push a completely unacceptable development through PZC when development applications were obviously flawed. It was not so much a question of needing new P&Z rules as it was a question of FOLLOWING THE EXISTING RULES!!

Some examples of past Republican Control of PZC are:
(1) incomplete developer plans being accepted for review,
(2) accepting LATE applications,
(3) NEVER forcing the developers to completely address or answer citizen’s comments and/or outside engineering comments,
(4) utilizing/hiring “weak” consultant engineers to review developer plans for P&Z – allowing questionable development to occur,
(5) allowing public safety concerns with traffic to NOT BE ADDRESSED, and
(6) attempting to approve incomplete and flawed plans by “offering amendments” rather than having the developer/engineers rework/re-submit their complete plans and suggesting that these issues could be managed sufficiently well through the Woodstock inspection system. Read the rest of this entry »

Perhaps we should give some credit to the Academy BOT and Sandra Fredrickson for ‘letting’ Ernie resign. Could this be the first step in reconciliation between the BOT and BOE? Citizen Cain’s comment under “More Subterfuge…”

Tomorrow the Villager will publish an anonymous Sound-Off article by a purported Brooklyn father vigorously attacking the new Brooklyn high school proposal that is up for referendum on October 10th. On that day residents of Brooklyn, Scotland, Chaplin & Hampton will vote on this referendum in their respective towns. All four towns will have to vote YES (by majority) to approve the proposal of a new high school for the project to move forward. A second letter to the editor by a non-anonymous author from Brooklyn against the new high school will also be published in this same issue.

The author was clearly targeting Brooklyn residents at the expense of residents from Scotland, Chaplin, and Hampton. Yet in Brooklyn, the YES vote may be stronger than in these other three towns. This strategy to undermine the high school initiative in Brooklyn may actually backfire if enough residents from Scotland, Chaplin, and Hampton read the Killingly Villager. This is because the author’s arguments against the high school for Brooklyn residents may be viewed by the residents of the other three towns as a strong argument for voting YES in favor of the new high school. It has been my understanding that the larger risk for approval is in one of these other three towns.

In reading this very long, detailed anonymous Sound-Off, I could not shed the feeling that I was reading the Academy’s own words and position on the new high school and its referendum. Read the rest of this entry »

The resolution proposal for the clean energy 2010 program is on the agenda for 10/4/2007 the BOS meeting. See everyone there!!!

Also, a research team led by Professor Vivian Alberts of the University of Johannesburg (formerly Rand Afrikaans Universiteit) has developed an advanced photo voltaic system that is providing the final push needed to make solar power an accessible energy option. See the link for more info:

http://www.scienceinafrica.co.za/2006/april/solar_panel.htm

Information supplied by Jim Stratos

See the Norwich Bull for Ms. Wholean’s positive spin on the salt barn fiasco. Other residents were not so positive. Why was the barn loaded up with tons of salt just this last winter and early spring which was allowed to spill down into puddles of brine at the base of the pile?

This is a reprint from today’s Worcester Telegram.

“Town road salt pollutes wells

By Jim Esslinger CORRESPONDENT for the Telegram

WOODSTOCK— The state has ordered the town to clean up an area on farmland where road salt has seeped into the soil and contaminated the water. The order comes about 18 months after the contamination was discovered on Rene Bennett’s farm on Coatney Hill Road, adjacent to the town’s Highway Department storage shed.

Last week, William Warzecha of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, told the Board of Selectmen the DEP has seen “a lack of progress� in mitigating conditions at the source of the leak and warned of possible future contamination.

“We’ve seen this contamination before,â€? Mr. Warzecha said, noting that road salt seeping into groundwater is a health hazard often unseen. “Sodium can damage the plumbing.â€? Read the rest of this entry »

See the article about Mike Alberts running for Selectman in the Norwich Bull.

From Joe:

Newcomer,

I’ve expressed my views concerning what’s happening in town many times on here. I’ve had harsh criticism and crude responses from several wackos, but there has been some that were in agreement from those with similar values to mine. I don’t remember all of the articles I’ve written but one comes to mind that I recently submitted in August of this year that reflects some of my opinions (see this August article).

The troubles we face are all about differences in values. I prefer Woodstock to remain a quiet place with less traffic, less bureaucracy, and, generally, less people … more people mean more problems. Big spending liberals like mean Joe Breen want “progress” which means more spending, more taxes, with rising property values being the bottom line.

I see the trend moving fast towards “progress” as I go to work in the morning and drive the posted speed limit. Cars with long distance commuters stack up behind me honking their horns and flipping me “the bird”. Many of them still have Massachusetts or Rhode Island tags on their cars. They pass me in no passing zones that are new because of their arrival (until recent years, there were many places in town where you could pass legally. Now because of the increasing traffic, they’re gone – just another chip off the quality of life in Woodstock). Read the rest of this entry »

This is the pdf form you need to mail with your bill to Northest Utilities/CL&P – THE FORM . You need Adobe Acrobat to view it. Just print the first page and cut out the application.

I work for the organization that is running the 20% Clean Energy by 2010 Campaign and wanted to answer a few of the questions mentioned above (see comments under Jim Stratos’ article here).

The first step that needs to be achieved before the town will receive the free solar system is getting the Woodstock Board of Selectman to pass a resolution committing to 20% clean energy by the year 2010.

The next step is for the town to begin to make an effort towards achieving the 20% by 2010 goal by purchasing clean energy or installing onsite renewable energy.

The third step is then to obtain the 100 sign ups to the CTCleanEnergyOptions program. Once all 3 of these steps are achieved, the town will then receive the free 1kW solar energy system (valued at approx. $10,000) from the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund.

The town does not have to pay for anything related to the installation. Read the rest of this entry »

Town of Woodstock Zoning Regulations Article I, section 16. Sign Regulations
A.5. “Temporary political campaign signs…may be displayed for a sixty (60) day period prior to an election.”

Since Valentine placed her’s around town in mid-August, shouldn’t they be taken down for three weeks some time in the next six weeks???

In the last 24 hours, we have had two comments posted by an individual which have been deleted. Why? Because we have a letter from this individual threatening a lawsuit. The dilemma that we have is, if we post potential litigants’ comments and these individuals get their nose bent out of shape, the Cafe opens itself up to a lawsuit no matter how frivolous. From time to time the Cafe feels the need to reveal a little of the behind the scenes events that have trained us to be more cautious and alert toward a minor few contentious Cafe visitors who have a negative mission that may be described as devious and disruptive. This is not an uncommon problem in the blog world. But the clear goal of the devious and disruptive activities of these small few is political and vendictive personal gain.

The following comment was submitted by this frequent visitor who shall remain nameless: “Paul Lynn is endorsed by the Democratic Town Committee and Ernie has resigned from the Academy Board of Trustees. I think it could be a good thing if the WPZC decided to be stringent with the Academy.”

The first point is a fact. Point “two” is an unsubstantiated ‘fact’. And point “three”, we agree with. We suspect that the unsubstantiated ‘fact’ was put in to get us to publish erroneously or to publish information meant to manipulate readers. I will elaborate on this below. Read the rest of this entry »

Under the guise of requesting information, trying to understand oblique/minute issues and ‘innocent’ curiosity, there is a group in this town that has adapted political rules and the cultural expectation of political correctness as a strategy to paralyze our governing bodies.

Freedom of Information has become a legal cudgel by which boards must now second-guess their every consideration. Attorney-Client privilege apparently does not apply if one is paid by or supervises the spending of public dollars. If one is a public servant, paid or otherwise, there is almost no guarantee of privacy.

Tell me again, why is it so hard to find good people to run for office?

Then there are the participants of this group in town who have neither shame nor anything that even remotely resembles social acumen. They attend board and commission meetings and, by their behavior, bring the public’s business to a grinding halt. They interrupt, accuse and berate as a method of hog-tying those we have elected to shepherd the business of our town. For some time now, they have focused on the Board of Education, but now seem to be branching out. The Planning and Zoning Chair, Gail Dickinson, bore the brunt of an onslaught from this group just this last week. Our sympathies to those who, in the name of Woodstock, are trying diligently to make a difference (even if not all of us agree on the specific issues). Read the rest of this entry »

Woodstock Academy presented their application for a special permit for the first stage of their new playing fields. Several Academy representatives were there including Joe Campbell, Bob Derico (Athletic Director), Jerri Musamecci (Trustee Chair), Ed Higgins (WA football booster), and Margaret Wholean (First Selectman and wife of Trustee James Kaeding). Also attending were Nora Valentine; Jerry Ralston and Ernie St. Jean who sat together. Several residents of the historic district also attended, including Jean McClellan, Dan Atwood and some others. Lindsey Paul, Board of Education chair, sat in the front row.

The current request – the first step in development of the new fields – is to mow a portion of the hillside above the current soccer field for overflow parking and practice fields. WA presented a plan of the existing site identifying generally the location of the practice fields and parking area. The WPZC commissioners asked several questions about conditions on the site, access, ingress and egress from the state highway, grading, traffic circulation, parking issues, drainage and how the hillside would be used for playing fields. The WPZC chair made the point in response to a question that the Academy would be able to regrade the site once the change in use was granted. Campbell and the Academy engineering representative CME answered questions with minimal information, declining to identify the boundaries of the parking and playing areas on the site and stating there would be no grading “at this time�. One key safety issue seemed to be the secondary access road from the overflow parking area directly onto Route 169, adjacent to the main Bentley field entrance. When asked if this should be gated off to avoid a safety issue on the state highway, Joe Campbell replied the Academy might do something but had not decided yet. When asked what sport would be practiced on a hillside, Campbell responded playing catch or calisthenics or running. One commissioner asked where the football field and access road would be located and received several objections to the question which remained unanswered.

Then came public comments. Dan Atwood asked the WPZC to examine carefully Read the rest of this entry »

It might be a good time to hear from or about Allan Walker, Republican TC endorsed candidate – information about Allan from another party or himself presenting his views. We will strictly enforce “Candidates’ Rules” given on the right. Many are thirsting for a better candidate. Admin

Newcomer, I’ve been looking into these issues for the past year and a half and I still don’t have a good idea of what goes on in this town. Our government is opaque, our elected officials play their decisions close to the chest and no one seems to be forthcoming with posting unedited hard data in an easy to access location.

We as a town need to hash out the issues and come to a conclusion where we want to spend our limited resources and elect public officials whom we feel are most likely to do that. In order for that to happen two things must exist.

1) There must be an open forum for people to get together and discuss the issues in a candid manner. The Cafe has been serving in that capacity for me and it is probably about as good as we can currently get.
2) Have information about what our leaders think, what they are doing, what they plan to do. This includes full board minutes, budgets, actual spending, communication from our leaders on what they are doing and why. This has been a major problem. Without this information the effectiveness of our open forum, as you have noticed, is greatly diminished. Read the rest of this entry »

Thirteen years ago in the spring of 1994, I was driving on Route 80 somewhere west of Cheyenne on my monthly jaunt from the Air Force Academy (a place where I did not like to be) to the warmth of Palo Alto CA (where I loved being). I had to go back and forth between Colorado Springs and California because of some work I was doing on the bio-effects of high energy laser pulses (the reason why soldiers in the battlefield have to wear laser light-filtered goggles). As I enjoyed the beauty of the Wyoming terrain I found myself listening to an interview of Thomas West about his new book entitled “In the Mind’s Eye” about visual thinkers, people with dyslexia and other learning difficulties.

I was so captivated by the discussion that I could not shed these thoughts for the remaining 20 hours of the trip and I read his book while sitting in the Printers Inc, my favorite coffee house in Palo Alto. If mothers or fathers want to know what might be possible for their struggling children (in school), they might get a feel for what to do and what might be possible by reading this book (if anyone wants my copy, stop by).

The author was talking about the role of the two sides of the brain in learning and creative thinking, sometimes referred to as ‘left-brain’ and ‘right-brain’ dominance in ‘learning’ or ‘thinking’. I prefer to speak about this concept using these phrases metaphorically because I am in no way a neurophysiologist, nor do I have any real expertise in learning theory. The only expertise that I have is my own experience and observations in life. But for sure, hearing someone talk about left-brain learning (or ‘textual thinking’) versus right-brain learning (or ‘visual thinking’), helped me to answer some long-standing questions about myself and my family. West was saying that a majority or people emphasize the left brain in their learning process while the right-brain learners struggle in their youth to learn. This is because historically teaching in schools was geared more to left-brain learners rather than those whose right-brain skills were more developed or dominant. Read the rest of this entry »

The most honest answer that I can give you is that I have been dilligently reading many posts here (both current and in the archives). I simply haven’t been able to grasp which side is correct yet beyond a reasonable doubt. I see dueling figures from both sides quoted in here. One side stating that there is indeed room in the BOE budget for more cuts. Or at the very least, many feel there ‘may’ be room for more cuts but the public hasn’t been privy to the numbers to determine this. The other side, in support of the BOE, seems to feel that there is more room for openess of the “books” to the public, but that K-8 has been fiscally conservative thus far.

I lean from an emotional standpoint toward accepting the word that I hear in the halls at WES; that if we had more money we could do this or that. Admittedly though, I am hearing that much less since money not needed for WA tuition was put back into K-8. My general impression (and this is strictly my personal opinion) is that while every school is generally underfunded and could always benefit from more funding, I would not state that K-8 is starving as much as it was a year or two ago, per se. My feeling is that they are managing with what they have and doing a great job while they’re at it. I think it only fair to say that while there may not be a boatload of room for further cuts, most budgets usually have some room nevertheless. I assume that this same principle would apply to WA as well, and even the town’s overall budget. Read the rest of this entry »

PRESS RELEASE
CONTACT: Superintendent’s Office – 928-7453

September 20, 2007

Another school year is off to an energetic start! The members of the Woodstock Board of Education would like to share some thoughts with you as we look to the year ahead.

First off, thank you for your support of the town’s budget which passed on June 5, 2007. This budget provides resources for student success, including the reinstatement of Gifted and Talented programs in the elementary and middle schools; the maintenance of full day kindergarten, funded athletics at the middle school, a remedial math program in the middle school, and teacher aides in the lower grades. This budget also provides for new textbooks and technology, and the addition of an English Language Learner teacher aide. Your support for this budget enables our schools to meet identified student learning needs, and represents a good investment for all in the community.

Second, we would like to share our Woodstock Board of Education Goals which were developed over many months and adopted on May 24, 2007. These goals are as follows:

1) Promote measurable academic improvement while challenging each student to reach their full potential.
2) Develop well-rounded and creative citizens by promoting and assessing their physical, social and mental well-being.
3) Promote the alignment of curriculum grades K through 12.
4) Improve student achievement by providing continuing improvement of quality instruction.
5) Encourage community ownership of the Woodstock Public Schools.

At our Board meeting of September 13, 2007, we began to discuss action steps for implementation of these goals. We are planning for opportunities to gather parents’ and citizens’ input into these action steps; please look for further information to come on this. Read the rest of this entry »

When I was asked to run for First Selectman as the endorsed candidate of the Democratic Party, I could not say “no”. I realized that if I said “no” that this would be a contradiction to approximately 250 articles and position statements that I had published at the Cafe…besides after escaping a twister in Pomfret in mid-May I was feeling rather invincible so I said “yes”. To say “no” would mean that I wasn’t going to back up my words with actions. This concern has been foremost in my mind for over a year. Some commentors at the Cafe have criticized other Caf’ers for not getting involved in Town matters beyond their anonymous statements at the Cafe. The fact of the matter is that a very high percentage of Cafe’ers are activists, or are becoming active, in Town for the benefit of the issues that they each feel most strongly about. Indeed, recently we have seen other issues surface at the Cafe such as promotion of clean energy and concern about the impact of cell towers in our environment.

My new found activism in recent months was not limited to local politics though. After I wrote the article about siRNA as a promising science that would revolutionize the drug industry and recommended purchasing stock in Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, several of my colleagues purchased Alnylam’s stock. Then I realized that I needed to back up my words with action so I purchased this stock also … and fortunately Alnylam’s stock more than doubled since early July in the face of a troubled market. Finally I decided to enroll in clean energy for the sake of the globe (thanks to the advocacy of the Stratos’) even though it would increase my energy bill .

There could be no question that my positions on many key issues in Woodstock would be viewed as politically incorrect Read the rest of this entry »