Woodstock CT Café

The Putnam Bank, formerly the Putnam Savings Bank, posted a $4 million dollar 3rd quarter loss. Yesterday afternoon I heard a glowing ad by Putnam Bank on WINY touting the successes and safety of the bank. The article is in the Worcester Telegram on Nov 15th yesterday. Thanks to the Cafe’er who provided us with this news. Admin

Well, the fine art of bullying isn’t one ONLY practiced by CPS or Academy supporters.

The initial posting that began this riff of chat between me and Snuffy was a submission of an e-mail from Eric Thomas of CT DEP. Along with that, I expressed hope that the waiver granted to Woodstock by the DEP would someday be reversed so that future development in town will be more responsibly planned for a sensitive environment.

I do not and could not speak for all Hill residents or even some of them. The group, like any other group, is a collection of individuals. We do work together well as a group and we do share a core value in that we’d like to see the district preserved.

I sit on the Woodstock Water Pollution Control Authority not the Historic District Commission. I do not speak for or represent the WPCA in my postings. There are two members of the Hill neighborhood on this commission out of five. I sit on the WPCA because I recognize that zoning in Woodstock is weak; therefore, maintaining a strong “sewer avoidance” policy has some ability to exert control over development.

I am not opposed to development nor do I strive to see the Hill neighborhood or any other area of town “frozen in time.” I am however, strongly supportive of good zoning and good planning – neither of which we have currently.

Four years ago, residents of the Woodstock Hill neighborhood requested that WPZC sponsor and host a public forum with speakers from all the various fields of expertise related to planning, preservation and zoning. At no charge, the speakers remain ready to go, but Woodstock’s WPZC refuses to hold the forum. The goal of the forum is simple – to give INFORMATION about what’s available, what works and what doesn’t and why. Read the rest of this entry »

From ‘Snuffy’ (vis a vis Woodstock) “The town has to do three things:
1. Support its public education system.
2. Support proper land use regulation.
3. Support proper fiscal reform.
Then go neighborhood by neighborhood and replicate the effort. And after you do that, and you develop true support, and have some people who will stick with it, attend meetings, serve on boards, and demand change, week after week, month after month, year after year, and not fade when things become controversial…”

Also see the situation described in “A Neighborly Act” – the 11th article down (next page).

If you consider protecting residential property values a “hobby” (suggested by one commentor ‘Disgusted Watcher’) then you don’t understand property rights. The right of a property owner under the adopted Zoning Regulations to contest the development of adjacent property in a way not permitted by the Zoning Regulations, that will significantly reduce property values, and diminish the residential quality of the neighborhood – then that’s my hobby and right.

The issue isn’t the logging operation; it is the “work yard” and “pad” that Bob Lussier established. When the complaint was filed, the logger was starting diesel equipment early in the morning, fueling (est. 1,000 gallons of fuel a week) from tanks on site that were not on impervious pads, he was cutting logs on a portable sawmill, he was chipping wood on one or two commercial size chippers (think noise), and trans-shipping logs (think very large logging trucks coming and going on rural Pomfret residential roads); and all this at the end of a narrow private driveway with 4 residential homes plus 2 houses at 34 Weatherbee Road at the end. Two of the properties were put up for sale and sold at prices substantially below assessed valuation.

Did the equipment and industrial activity on the pad reduce the property values?
“Life’s too short people, move on.”

Your solution is unacceptable (to find a hobby suggested by ‘Disgusted Watcher’). Why should an activity that is incompatible with an existing residential neighborhood and contrary to the Zoning Regulations that have gone to Public Hearing and been adopted by the Town’s Planning and Zoning Commission have to “move on” because a person wants to start a heavy industry in a residential neighborhood? Not the logging of a property, but an industrial operation. I suggest that you were not told all the facts when you had your talk with the logger.

This isn’t a case of a compatable home occupation just parking his equipment on his property, this isn’t a property logging operation that will be completed in a year or two and cease; this is Lussier trying to establish another Hull industrial operation (and there is no question Hull’s operation preceded zoning and is properly zoned) in a residential neighborhood and the neighbors have every right to protect their property values in face of this incompatible development.

The balloon is the location of 34 Wetherbee Road according to Google Maps. Admin