Selectmen celebrate arrival of state funds, plan cell tower talk

FALLS VILLAGE — The Board of Selectmen voted to retain Day Pitney LLP as bond counsel on the replacement of the water tanks on Beebe Hill Road and appointed Greg Marlowe as an alternate on the Planning and Zoning Commission during the regular monthly meeting Monday, April 13.

First Selectman Pat Mechare said that Judith Blank, an attorney with Day Pitney, came with a favorable recommendation from town attorney Donna Brooks.

“That’s good enough for me,� said Selectman Chuck Lewis.

The water tank replacement project involves two tanks. (A model is available for viewing at Town Hall.)

Last week Mechare learned that the town could be in the running for federal money for the endeavor.

Mechare said that an application has already been made but the town is trying to revise it. “With our recent troubles, we can check off more problems� and “demonstrate a greater need.�

There was a break in the water lines last month that disrupted service.

The selectmen agreed to renew an agreement with the Red Cross to use Town Hall as an emergency facility. Mechare said she would ask the Volunteer Fire Department members if they are willing to have her sign a similar renewal for their building.

And the board authorized Mechare to sign a renewal of a contract with Berkshire Alarm, to continue to maintain the alarm system at the firehouse, at a cost of $132.50 annually.

Mechare announced that the $17,951.49 reimbursement check from the state Department of Transportation for the Johnson Road project had, at long last, arrived.

She also noted that the Concord Group, consultants working with the Northwestern Connecticut Regional Planning Collaborative, had done an on-site visit in Falls Village. The consultants are looking for appropriate areas in which to locate Incentive Housing Zones, places where affordable housing can be constructed or created from existing buildings.

And Mechare said that the matter of the proposed cell phone tower at the site of the new firehouse will be item number seven on the agenda at next Tuesday’s town meeting, 7 p.m. at the Lee H. Kellogg School.

Town residents, upset with a plan to allow a cell phone tower to be erected on part of the new firehouse property, circulated a petition to stop the move.

The petition has about 120 signatures and was received by Mechare on Friday.

The petitioners claim that, by entering into a deal with a commercial entity, the Volunteer Fire Department is breaking the terms of the 2002 agreement in which the town made the Route 7 site available to the fire company.

Mechare said attorney Brooks will be on hand to explain the town’s position.

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less