Woodstock CT Café

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 »