Woodstock CT Café

BlogNetNews ranked the Cafe 6th in the state for this last week.

See the website “Our Better Nature.” Bet Zimmerman has an article about clean energy and how to sign up for only $4 per month. To date 51 residences have signed up. The first milestone will be 100 residences for which the state will give our town a $10,000 solar panel.

Woodstock Academy Football loses a close game to 5-1 Stonington 13-7.

Yesterday we recorded the debate held on WINY between the three candidates for First Selectman, Ms’s Wholean and Valentine, and Mr. Walker, and we listened to this debate last night. After all was over, I was left with the impression of three clucking chickens circling and pecking at a small pile of bird seed. I wondered if the bird seed had been soaked with grain alcohol. Although the voices were different, all three sounded the same when it came to answering Paul Coutu’s questions. Naturally my ears perked up when the question came up ‘How do you feel about the Cafe?’

Ms. Valentine talked about how she had been libeled at the Cafe I wondered if she had ever read “Libel for Idiots”? Ms. Wholean doesn’t like the Cafe but I was relieved to hear that now and then she and her husband get a chuckle from statements at the Cafe. Allan Walker thinks anonymous contributors are “cowards” but he does not pay much attention to the Cafe anyway. All three equated anonymity with first degree criminal activity. Whoever is elected as First Selectman, will be elected by 1000 to 1200 mostly anonymous votes including my own - 1000 to 1200 cowards. Nevertheless, I forgive Allan for using the word “coward.”

The Cafe has discussed the anonymity issue ad nausea and even voted on it – 59% said that anonymity should be discretionary, 13% said anonymity should be always, and for 28% anonymity should never be used. We had one commentor who tried to purport himself as someone else, so if real names were to be required, how would we confirm the identity of that person? We prefer as the poll says that people decide for themselves. One can make a case for the following - If one makes an articulate and persuasive statement and then identifies his or herself, this can detract from the message because of political bias against that individual. For example, gender bias is removed by anonymity. I prefer the premise that the words should be able to stand by themselves. Read the rest of this entry »

I did read your (RC’s) post in response to Hawkeye and saw your following statement:
“Local and Regional Boards of Education are charged (among other things) with “implementing the educational interests of the stateâ€?. The “agents of the stateâ€? is reserved for the agents of the State Board of Education…THEY are the “agents of the stateâ€?. ”

I then wrote: “If by that statement, Reality Check is saying that the local BOE does not have responsibility for implementing the educational interests of the state, and that only the State Board of Education has that responsibility, then he/she is incorrect.”

I guess you are now saying that you never stated what I read in your statement. (By the way, who did you mean when you wrote “THEY”?) But, I did attribute my understanding of what you wrote conditionally by beginning with the word “if”. So, can we now assume that you believe that a local Board of Education does serve as dual agents of the local government as well as the state government consistent with the law of Connecticut? It would seem from your last post here that is a safe assumption.

I believe that you have mistaken the “minimum educational expenditure” as the maximum legislative authority for spending that is vested in a local board of education when it acts to meet its legal obligation. I think the correct view is that the MER is a floor, not a ceiling. I find no support for the view that a local spending limitation, such as Proposition 46, can be imposed upon an agent of the state, when that agent seeks to fulfill is obligation to the state. A fair reading of 10-220 would suggest that the artificial limitation on spending imposed by a local ordinance (Prop 46 in Woodstock) upon a BOE is not referenced in that statute which requires the BOE, as you have noted, to “implement the educational interests of the stateâ€? and “provide such other educational activities as in its judgment will best serve the interest of the school districtâ€?. Read the rest of this entry »

Bill Warzecha, Eastern District remediation supervisor for the DEP, said the town is in the process of entering into a Pollution Abatement Order being drafted by the DEP. It would put the town on a strict timeline to take steps to solve the salt contamination problem. See the Norwich Bull.

I know it is harder to come up with an idea than to try and poke holes in it like I did so I don’t want to loose sight of that fact. Your idea on its face is a good one that basically amounts to taking a segment of the student population and working to increase their academic performance. Creating a situation where the best and the brightest receive a better education will undoubtedly have a positive long term outlook for our community and country.

My problem comes down to the fact that it will cost money here in Woodstock to implement: in new books, planning, curriculum, possible education on the teacher’s part and (oh no) possibly hiring a new teacher if the ratio of “gifted” to “non gifted” students doesn’t work out right. Now don’t get me wrong, I think it would be a good use of money. But I now have some experience with some of the factions at work in town and can reasonably come to a conclusion what their reaction is likely to be.

I think you know the people of whom I speak. From my experience they are not at all concerned with improving educational outcomes, they are concerned with maintaining the financial status quo. Any new spending is viewed as an opportunity to attack the BOE in a effort to keep public opinion against any proposed increases in spending. I doubt it would matter if your cut the money from somewhere else to fund it; even if you did whom would you cut off? Read the rest of this entry »

The Cafe would like to thank Ms’s Wholean and Valentine for the free advertising they gave us on WINY this morning causing our readership to spike. It’s apparent that Allan Walker is the only candidate who believes “…everyone’s opinions and ideas are valid…” … It’s our impression that most of the Cafe contributors are Republican and Independent voters, Ms. Val. Admin

Dustin Racioppi interviewed the three candidates for First Selectman of Woodstock in an article in the Norwich Bull this morning. Dustin records his interviews and this is what they said:

Ms. Valentine (U) speaking to the issue that few people know the candidates, and ‘getting a feel for what the people want in town,’ said
“That is my goal,â€? … “I am the one who is going to be in charge and grouping everyone. You can’t be in politics and live in a bubble.â€?

Ms. Wholean (D), who feels that ‘she has formed a good relationship with residents’ and feels that ‘people don’t want change,’ said
“They really want the town to stay rural and agricultural,� … “But at the same time, they understand people have the right to develop land, so it’s kind of a balancing act.� …“With that comes all the issues with school quality and the rapidity of our own emergency responders.�

Mr. Walker (R), who said that growth is inevitable and feels that ‘he has the skills to manage growth properly,’ said
“I’ve seen the changes first hand. You’re always going to get growth. You’re not going to stop it,� … “One of my goals is to make sure the town preserves its rural character. And when you do that you have to respect the property owners.� … “I don’t think anybody has the formula to keep it the same,� … “But to do it, that’s a collective thing, that’s a community thing.�

Which statement makes the most sense? (see more below) Read the rest of this entry »

Generally, the following is directed toward everyone who comes to this site but there are some questions to Mr. Joe Breen that I think he should address to all of us.

There are definately provisions in the new P&Z document that will help to keep Woodstock safe from the type of growth that most of us would consider unattractive. However, I’m betting that most Woodstock residents are not only concerned with that, but also about the number of people that will ultimately live here. I’m betting that most would agree that, no matter how you slice it, more people means more problems for Woodstock.

I agree with you, Joe, that we must respect the rights of all landowners – even those who are developers or development minded. This is the USA, after all, and one of the rights that we enjoy as citizens is the right to private property and the right to use that property to further our own well being. I have no problem with that, whatsoever. We have limits, however, when the property owner’s actions affects the general population in a negative way.

So where is the “line” that determines what is negative and what is positive where development is concerned? This is a very complicated question. There are so may variables to consider that it would take someone who is a lot more knowlegeable than me a lot more time than I intend to take (in writing this response) to answer. However, perhaps the most important variable would be the different cultural values that our P&Z members bring to the planning and zoning table. These values, of course, affect how they see Woodstock evolving. Read the rest of this entry »

“…the quality of academic perfomance at WA will begin to suffer if we underfund K-8…”

I simply do not agree with Reality Check and/or Mr. Wajer that K-8 “should” cost less than high school. That statement is an oversimplification. It would be ideal if K-8 education would cost less than high school and I would hope that in many given years it would. But there can’t be a blanket guarantee of that until the students get into the classroom each year and the teachers have an opportunity to assess their students needs. It’s ridiculous to think that a child’s score on one day out of 180 school days and on one test is enough to accurately measure whether or not a child’s overall performance is up to grade level. Yet there does need to be some way to try to measure such a thing. The debate as to the accuracy of standardized tests to give the info one is searching for is a completely different debate.

My point was simply that if you skimp too much in the early grades, it will catch up to you eventually. Whether you are aware of it or not, there are children in K-8 who do not qualify for SPED but who also need help to complete grade level work if they have a deficiency in reading, math, etc.. Often, these students arrive at WES from home (if in pre-k/K) or from other school districts already behind. If a family chooses to move their family here and the children are behind, surely you wouldn’t suggest that we just do nothing. Those test scores that you like to talk about depend on a child being able to read each question in order to be able to answer it. There are some regular ed and SPED kids who are currently struggling to do that. Thankfully, they have patient and skilled teachers to assist them. If a student needs such extensive help that a teacher can’t instruct the rest of his/her students because he/she has to spend so much time with one child, then it sure is nice that there is a teaching assistant and/or reading specialist available. Otherwise, one child would receive one-on-one instruction while the rest of the class started to fall back. Read the rest of this entry »

Woodstock Academy won its first varsity Football game in 83 years beating Putnam 35-14 tonight 10/12/07. Fullback Jeff Corey scored 2 touchdowns.

Global Warming On Mars?

Reality Check and Al tell us that the referendum failed miserably in Brooklyn but not the other three towns. See comments. See the Bull article.

The question that appears on the voting ballot labels for Chaplin, Hampton, and Scotland is:

“Shall the Region 11 Board of Education enter into a cooperative arrangement with the Brooklyn Board of Education to supervise, establish, construct, manage and operate a high school for all eligible resident students from the school districts of Regional School District No. 11 and the Town of Brooklyn in accordance with the Amended and Restated Cooperative Arrangement Agreement as approved by the Boards of Education for Regional School District No. 11 and the Town of Brooklyn?” Read the rest of this entry »

First, I believe that taxpayer funding of the Academy is money well-spent and not at an inappropriate level. Let me stipulate that every dollar that goes to the Academy is well spent. Likewise, every dollar that goes to the pK-8 system is also well spent.

I believe that the Board of Trustees wants accurate information about the Academy disseminated to its constituency. But I found the ad published in the Shopper’s Guide on page 11 of the October 3rd issue inaccurate and misleading. In the lower half of this ad under “Economic Snapshot - Relative Cost Comparison” figures are given for spending per pupil and tuition rate for the Academy, Woodstock pK-8 school system, and 10 other eastern CT school systems. The message that the Academy wished to convey was that the Academy’s tuition rate was only $9425 for the 2005 year, the lowest of all 12 institutions listed. This ad is giving the costs for 2004-05 for comparison purposes. The tuition rate of $9425 is correct if one looks at the Academy budget for the “tuition rate,” but all of the other ‘tuition rates’ are wrong because they are inflated by debt service costs that are not found in education budgets of any town.

What is tuition anyway? Tuition is the cost for instruction and the administration that goes along with instruction. If you look at college costs, tuition is always separated from room & board because it pertains only to the cost of instruction. Bond debt service is not even a part of the education budget because the facilities are owned by the town not the school system, and bond debt service has nothing to do with instruction which teaches students. If a town built a school but had no instruction, no learning would occur, so the measure of instructional costs is a measure of the potential teaching and subsequent learning. If the Academy had not added debt service costs to the eleven towns listed in their ad, then per pupil spending in Brooklyn ($8933) and Woodstock pK-8 ($8360) would be well below total per pupil spending at the Academy ($9425 + SPED funding from the BOEs). Because debt service costs in each town have no direct bearing on spending levels for instruction, the state also separates out these costs. Read the rest of this entry »

Two small opinion articles on the new Brooklyn High School in the Norwich Bull: article 1 and article 2 .

This was a big event for Woodstock Academy and the town.

Today Woodstock Academy played its first football game in Woodstock in 80 years and lost to the Montville Indians 28-17. How do I write an article on this football game and make it interesting to our readers who are for the most part ambivalent about high school sports and the spector of high school football…I don’t think I can, but I will try.

After all, Woodstock is not Odessa, Texas, with its perennial powerhouse, Permian High, where “Friday Night Lights” was put to the pen. Texas football is so ‘big’, that the author of “Friday Night Lights” actually lived in Odessa for a year to understand the culture of high school football in these backwater Texas towns. He then wrote a top selling book that was made into a movie, and a successful TV serial (see Friday Night Lights at the Cafe). I said that Woodstock is not Odessa, but then I wondered if some at the Academy have more ambitious dreams for the future of football in Woodstock. I’ll get back to this at the end of this long, tedious article.

The culture of eastern Connecticut is not at all like Odessa with its high Mexican/Latino population and its dominant blue-collar industry, oil and gas fields, and Halliburton… little grows there so I would hardly call it agrarian.

When I attended the inaugural game of WA football program two years ago, I was impressed with the play of the kids who were very much over-matched by Fitch at the JV level. Today, I saw a very good football game Read the rest of this entry »

I’m confused. Didn’t the DTC vote to endorse Leavitt for First Selectman 14-3? So, when Wholean decided to challenge that result, wasn’t that ‘giving the finger’ to the all the Democrats in town via their representatives? I just checked the town clerk’s website for the figures and it turns out that 82% of the Democrats in town did NOT vote for Wholean. And, given who has Valentine signs on their lawns, a lot of those who did vote for Wholean in the primary will not do so again in the general election.

If I remember correctly, there was a big brouhaha in 2005 with Wholean’s campaign financing….. first, she wanted to run stuff through the town committee, then she wanted to do her own thing. The result was that the town committee ended up having to refund monies in order not to be in violation of campaign finance law. This disjointed, scattered decision on Wholean’s part shorted her fellow Democrats on the team slate. Wasn’t that ‘giving the finger’ to her fellow Democrats? Read the rest of this entry »

Dean says:

Mr. Klusek, as part of my profession, I have worked with public entities, private companies, and lawyers to try to find where someone would have the best opportunity to get projects permitted by a town. While I don’t do this with developers, it is the exact same process with the more sophisticated regional or national developers. These people are always looking for the towns with the least regulation, and steer away from towns which have onerous requirements that will either be expensive or questionable whether they can get a permit.

In fact, I have seen other regions where development flocks to a particular municipality because their land development regulations are weak.

If the town doesn’t include specific requirements in their regulations, they can’t dream them up in the middle of an application process. If it goes to court, they will lose. If there are weak rules, the developer still gets to follow the weak rules to the tee and still gets his permit at the end of the day. We absolutely need to have tough standards to reduce development impacts.

Just Do It says:

Mr. Klusek has it backwards. Read the rest of this entry »

Republican Town Committee News Flash: Mike Albert’s has withdrawn as a candidate for Second Selectman and has been replaced with Chandler Paquette by the RTC. This was reported by WINY this morning.

A Pina Colada at Trader Vic’s says:

Just to clarify a point- the moratorium of 2004-2005 was enacted to revise the Subdivision Regulations (based on the model devised by Randall Arendt). These regulations are different from Zoning Regulations. The Zoning Regulations were modified slightly back in 2005, only to legally empower the “cluster development� model in the Subdivision Regulations. The Zoning Regulations remain a huge, disorganized, self-contradictory mess.

The Commission has known that the Zoning Regulations need updating, but has not, either in its Regular Monthly Meetings or in its Regulation Review meetings, agreed on an approach, a timeline, or a “writing team.� Anyone familiar with these meetings, the makeup of the Commission, or having a brief conversation with the Town Planner could verify this. Mr. Breen, who led the re-drafting of the Subdivision Regulations along with then-Planner John Guszkowski, was appointed to that role by the Commission, and he and Mr. Guszkowski presented both an outline of approach and regular updates to the Commission. At no time did a document just appear without many Commissioners’ expecting it.

That is the fundamental difference in approach here. The Subdivision Regulations were written by a few people, with the explicit permission of the Commission, and based upon agreed-upon philosophical underpinnings. In this case, the proposed Zoning Regulation update was written basically by one person with no explicit or implicit permission from the Commission. It was not collaborative, and, on a Commission that clearly can’t agree on basic philosophical underpinnings- this document can hardly claim to forward some unified approach. Read the rest of this entry »

We have posted a link to the DRAFT of the zoning regulations on the right in the ‘Links’ section. The document is 220 pages so give your machine a little time to download it. Admin

I wanted to clarify recent events surrounding the new proposed Zoning Ordinance.

I have served on PZC for four years and led the effort to draft the Subdivision Regulations which follow Randall Arendt’s “Conservation Development” model. We worked extremely hard to tailor this document as closely as possible to the objectives of the APOSC (A Plan of Open Space Conservation) and PCD (Plan of Conservation and Development) reflecting the political balance of the PZC membership at that time. This was a very intensive effort by PZC to get these regulations drafted and adopted and I think represents another in a long line of steps toward a land use plan for the town that fulfills the vision of the APOSC.

After the last election and reflecting a full discussion by PZC, we made a new Zoning Ordinance our next priority, primarily to address major language gaps that make its enforcement problematic. This is especially true of the Special Permit section which guides ALL commercial development in town. The proposal does not change the town’s basic zoning plan so the update is a matter of providing a modern, legally enforceable platform – especially regarding commercial development. The changes are legalistic, technical and should be relatively non controversial. The cost to get this done by a consultant is $75,000-$100,000, an investment the town is unlikely to support.

Based on the complexity of this task, the PZC’s increasing time commitments, and its exhausting experience drafting the Subdivision Regulations, it was felt that another section-by-section group drafting exercise carried the risk that the task would overwhelm the commission and never be completed. So we adopted a practical approach Read the rest of this entry »

The Candidates:…………………………..Walker (R)/Wholean (D)/Valentine (U)

Years in Woodstock……………………………………..most of life..12..2
Extended Family in Woodstock………………………YES…..NO…..NO
Attended Woodstock Public Schools……………….YES…..NO…..NO
Graduated from Woodstock Academy……………..YES…..NO…..NO
Children graduated from Woodstock Schools…YES…..YES…..NO
Corporate Management Experience………………..YES…..NO…..?
Master’s Degree – MBA or Accounting………………YES…..YES…..NO
Shouts at board members at town meetings…..NO…..NO…..YES
Supported by Ralston, E. St Jean, & P. Shultz….NO…..NO…..YES

Walker’s stated emphasis (from Villager 9/28/07 pages 1 & 9):
• “Civility and communication�
• “Do away with negativity in Woodstock politics�
• “Open and honest communication�
• “What you see is what you get�
• “Fiscal Responsibility�
• “Better efficiency on Prop 46 and the town budget�
• Will “not impose my will� on Prop 46
• “Open and thorough budgeting process�
• “Identifying costs and benefits of the town’s services�
• “Promises to take a fresh look at the budgeting process�
• “Supports every dollar that goes into education�
• “Wants to see the best education for the town�
• “Farming has remained an important part of his life�
• “Respect for property rights for the landowners�
• “Preservation of the towns agricultural land�
• “Preserving open space�
• “Will be working alongside state Rep. and former Selectman Mike Alberts�

Wholean’s stated emphasis (from Villager 9/7/07, pages 1 & 13) Read the rest of this entry »

John Penny stated in his article in the Norwich Bull on Sunday entitled “Woodstock: ‘We plan to grow smarter’� that a 30-year study predicts a 53% population increase in Woodstock by 2030. The quote was actually attributed to Ms. Wholean our incumbent First Selectman. She also was credited with that statement that her biggest concern in the coming years is ‘the nature of the new residents’ (see the Norwich Bull article).

Penney stated that the 30-year study indicated that Woodstock would grow by 3195 more residents but there was no reference cited. Also, Pomfret residents are predicted to increase by 55.4% or 1752 for a land area of 40 sq mi (compared to Woodstocks 62 sq. mi.)

I found the following projections from the Connecticut State Data Center which provided the following Household populations from 2005 to 2030:

Pop……year…..delta…..est. Household Growth/year
7845….. 2005
8459….. 2010….614……41
9108….. 2015….649……43
9766….. 2020….658……44
10400… 2025….634……42
11040… 2030….640……43 Read the rest of this entry »