Winds of change blow through in 2009

KENT — It was a year of change, controversy and belt-tightening for the town of Kent. Several longtime businesses closed their doors — but a few new businesses moved to town. And a long-running national jazz festival relocated to Kent from Litchfield.

The year was not free from controversy: A nationally known talk show host threatened to (rather forcefully) intervene in a debate involving a proposed town memorial to a victim of the World Trade Center terror attacks.

The town put a stop to a proposed development on Schaghticoke Indian Tribe land.

And at town meetings throughout the year there was debate on budgets that impacted taxes, sewers and theresident state trooper.

This is was the year that was in Kent:

January: The year began with Land Use Officer Jennifer Calhoun asking the  town to pay for $585 in damages for a scratch inflicted on her car during a land inspection. During the Board of Selectmen’s regular meeting on Jan. 6, First Selectman Ruth Epstein said the town’s insurance company did not cover damages that occured when employees use their own vehicles on official business.

However, at a meeting in June, the board approved Calhoun’s request.

Later in January, the Planning and Zoning commission approved an ordinance that would allow the Litchfield Jazz Festival to be held on the grounds of the Kent School.

In the middle of the month, 56 years of publishing history came to an end as the last issue of The Kent Good Times Dispatch was published. The paper was one of several weeklies owned by the financially troubled Journal Register Co.  The paper notified readers that it was shutting down with a four-sentence statement printed inside the last issue. The GTD was launched by John and Jane Green in 1952 as The Good Turn Daily.

At the end of the month, Kent Center School held the fifth annual Mother vs. Daughter basketball game. The contest, which ended in a 20-20 tie, benefits the Jane Lloyd Fund, in memory of a Salisbury resident who died in 2005 after an eight-year battle against breast cancer. The fund helps cancer patients pay for day-to-day expenses.

February: On Feb. 2 during their regular meeting, the selectmen voted to hire Cornwall Treasurer Barbara Herbst to be the treasurer for Kent. The appointment came three months after a special town meeting on Oct. 1, 2008, where voters approved an ordinance that makes the town treasurer job an appointed position. A week after the meeting, Town Treasurer Fremont Besmer formally resigned.

Later in the month, on Feb. 11, Kent Center School was transformed into a chocolate fantasia for the 14th annual Chocolate Fest. It raised $3,900 for the Kent Center School Scholarship Fund, which gives college scholarships to students from the elementary school. Served up at the festival was every kind of chocolate imaginable, including pies, cakes, cookies and candies. There was even a chocolate fountain.

The Rev. Thomas Berberick of the Sacred Heart Church won the Kent Volunteer Fire Department’s annual Ice Watch competition by guessing that ice in the Housatonic River would break on Feb. 23 at 11:10 a.m. The ice officially broke on Feb. 23 at 10:58 a.m., making Berberick’s entry the closest to the actual time.

March: Early in the month, the annual audit was released by Myers and Company Certified Public Accountants of Danbury. It showed the town’s unreserved, undesignated fund balance standing at $1,781,992.  Both First Selectman Ruth Epstein and Board of Finance Chairman Todd Cole called the balance a healthy number.

However, under the section “Reconciliation of Town Clerk Receipts and Disbursements,†the report showed that the town clerk’s bank account was overdrawn by approximately $2,300, “. . . the result of a town business not remitting to the town clerk the full amount of fees it collected for fish and game licenses. As a result of the deficiency in reconciling activities, the town clerk’s office remitted more license fees to the town treasurer and the state than it collected.â€

The business was not named in the report.

Later in March, at a party in Town Hall on March 12, resident Ruth Batstone celebrated her 100th birthday.

“Too many richer people are getting richer and too many poor people are getting poorer,†she said during the party. “In the 21st century, we are sending other people to other planets. I think we can use that money for more important things and hopefully get out of this Depression.â€

Break-ins were reported at several businesses on March 19, including North End Trattoria at 14 Kent Green Blvd.,  and the Kent Pizza Garden at 17 Railroad St. Two cash registers were reported stolen from North End Trattoria, but an alarm system scared away the culprits at Kent Pizza Garden.  The owners of the Shanghai Restaurant returned from a vacation and discovered that their restaurant had been broken into and a cash register with money in it was stolen.

The culprits still remain at large.

On March 20, Kent Center School held its annual eighth-grade spaghetti supper and basketball game. More than 250 people attended the fundraiser for the students’ end-of-the-year field trip, with the teachers team beating the student team by a score of 45 to 36.

“We just don’t want to die,†teachers team coach and physical education teacher Marci Perotti quipped before the game. “We hope we won’t need an ambulance or oxygen tanks.â€

April: A planned “pyramid†development by Michael Rost, coordinator of the Schaghticoke Indian Tribe (SIT), was shut down by the Inland Wetlands Commission. Rost was planning on developing the “Great American Freedom Pyramid†on Schaghticoke Indian reservation land.

The plan, according to Rost’s Web site at algonquinfieldstone.com [which has since been shut down], would have included the building of a pyramid-shaped structure that would contain a holistic healing spa retreat and recreational facility with a 2,000-to-5,000-room hotel.

The “pyramid†would have been constructed from 200,000 tons of neutral sedimentary bluestone with a base measuring 400-by-400 feet, rising up to a height of 400 feet.

However, in early April, a site walk by the commission on the land turned up several land use violations by Rost. The commission noted a road had been cut on the property without any permits, a watercourse crossing apparently had been rerouted, and land on Kent School property had been disturbed. A vernal pool was also spotted within 200 feet of the work being done by Rost and his group.  At a subsequent special meeting, the commission issued a cease-and-desist order against Rost. The commission held a show-cause hearing on May 4 for Rost to answer the violations cited in the order. He did not attend the hearing.

In June, the Board of Selectmen approved a legal budget line item for the commission in order for it to take legal action against Rost. There have been no new developments in the case since then.

In happier news, the 10th annual Quiz Night was held at the Community House on April 18. It is a fundraiser for the Kent Children’s Center.

Organizers Clive and Diane Lodge reported that 165 people took part in the game, which combined “Jeopardyâ€-style questions with a festive atmosphere. Overall, $2,216 was raised at the event.

Young and old helped to spruce up the town at the Garden Club’s annual Earth Day cleanup on April 25.  The volunteers worked in front of and behind buildings in town, and around Bull’s Bridge and the town Green.

“I have a philosophy that slobs make slums,†volunteer Bud Brady said before he set off to gather litter. “It’s not the other way around.â€

May: Taxpayers approved the municipal and education budgets for fiscal 2009-10 at the annual town meeting on May 15. At the beginning of the meeting, Board of Education Chairman Karen Garrity announced that the school budget had been reduced by $10,000 due to ongoing negotiations with the school’s health-insurance provider, bringing the spending plan total to $6,210,848.

Then First Selectman Ruth Epstein announced that the Board of Selectmen’s budget had been reduced because of a decrease in insurance quotes. This brought the total town budget to $10,555,895, a $3,211 increase from the prior year’s budget.

The main topic of debate at the meeting was the elimination of the town’s resident state trooper program, which saved $100,260 in the town’s budget.

“I will clearly say there was a poor budget process,†Selectman Vince LaFontan said at the meeting, urging residents not to approve the budget. “There were no attempts to bid annual contracts or to carefully review this year’s expenses to see if there were any lines that could be reduced. There were no real attempts to see how much less some town departments were bringing in this year.â€

First Selectman Ruth Epstein objected to LaFontan’s statement.

“We worked very hard on this budget and we spent hours and hours going through every single department line,†she said at the meeting. Of the resident trooper program, she said, “I don’t think it was a rash decision. We had several meetings where people said that it was time to take another look at the program. We worked darn hard on this budget.â€

The budget was approved by a vote of 112 to 28.

On May 18, state Department of Agriculture officers and troopers from the state police took 21 horses from Todd Cipolla’s property on Mountain View Road. The horses were declared to be in poor condition, lacking adequate food and water. Several of them were discovered to have overgrown hooves and skin infections. Cipolla was reportedly a recent winner of the “Love Your Horse†sweepstakes sponsored by Blue Seal Feeds, Inc.

Two longstanding businesses met their demise during the month. The town’s only car dealer, Southworth Dodge on Bridge Street, shut down in early May. Later in the month, Stroble’s Bakery on Main Street closed its doors.

While no other business has taken over the Southworth Dodge building, in December there were signs in the windows of the Stroble’s Bakery building promising that it would reopen with a new business.

Meanwhile, Davis IGA on Main Street celebrated its 35th anniversary with a large party, and the Annie Bananie Ice Cream Shoppe opened up in the Backcountry Outfitters building on Bridge Street.

June: Early in the month, First Selectman Ruth Epstein and Selectman Vince LaFontan announced that they would not seek re-election in November. Epstein, a Democrat, served as the editor of The Lakeville Journal from 1997 to 2005 , was elected to office in 2005 and re-elected in 2007. LaFontan, a Republican, served two terms as selectman and was first elected in 2005.

On June 13, the Kent Volunteer Fire Department held its 98th annual ball.

It was the first one held in the department’s new firehouse on Maple Street, which opened in October 2008. Organizers estimated that more than 500 people attended the ball, which is the major fundraiser for the department.

On June 15, 22 young men and women graduated from Kent Center School.

Graduating eighth-grader Daniela Malca said in her speech that, “Kent Center School is like a family to me. The school taught me how people should not be afraid to live up to their full potential. All of the teachers take time out of their own day to help the students. The school inspired me to earn higher grades. I will never forget the friends I made here and they will be my friends for life.â€

July: On July 3, David “Rocky†Rochovansky, 66, former resident state trooper, former owner of the Kent Market and owner of the Kent Laundromat, died at the laundromat of an apparent heart attack. In an e-mail to The Lakeville Journal, Peter Pecora wrote that Rochovansky moved to Kent in 1979 from Westport and became the town’s resident state trooper that year. He retired some time in the 1980s.

“The small town of Kent lost not just a neighbor, but a friend and legend,†Pecora wrote in his e-mail. “When the words ‘truly’ and ‘generous’ are combined, the first thing to come to mind is David Rochovansky. Rocky was indeed respected and loved by all who knew him. Always smiling, laughing and polite. He will be missed by all who knew him, and sadly missed by all who knew him well.â€

On July 21, Kent resident Betty Pacocha, 75, pleaded guilty to bank fraud before United States District Judge Mark Kravitz in New Haven. Pacocha started with the NewMil Bank at 19 Main St. in New Milford in 1961 and continued to work there for 35 years.

During her plea in court, she revealed that during her years at the bank, she defrauded the company by removing funds from customer certificate of deposit accounts and converting the funds to her own use.

Pacocha was sentenced in December to pay a $250,000 fine and serve 300 hours of community service per year over the next five years.

From July 31 to Aug. 3, the 14th annual Litchfield Jazz Festival literally jazzed up the town when it was held at the first time at the Kent School.

The festival brought together world class performers from all over the globe, including the Preservation Hall Jazz Band from New Orleans, Dafnis Prieto from Cuba, Trio Da Paz from Brazil, Wycliffe Gordon from Georgia and Lionel Loueke from West Africa. Organizers estimate that more than 2,000 people attended the festival each day. 

August: At their regular meeting on Aug. 4, the selectmen approved $1,500 for a new town Web site. They approved the lowest of the two bids for the project, which was from Global Business I.T., a local company owned by Vilem Frubauer.

The Kent Chamber of Commerce  held its annual Sidewalk Festival from Aug. 6 to 9. Festivities included live music throughout town, including “Kent’s own Elvis,†Drew Dyal performing on Main Street, and the Footlighters Barbershop Quartet.

A new home-decorating shop called Chanticleer opened in the Kent Green shopping plaza, offering yarns, hand-hooked rugs, furniture, home accessories, kits and products by Claire Murray.

The annual firemen’s fair was held from Aug. 27 to 29 at the Kent Fairgrounds. While it marked the end of summer activities, it also marked the end of a very rainy summer. The event included rides, music — and for the fair’s last two days, rain, rain and more rain.

On Aug. 31, Kent Center School began its new school year with the dedication of a new basketball court dedicated to the late Don Gowan.

Gowan was the dean of students at the Kent School but was active in town recreation and sports. A $30,000 donation from Kent native Seth MacFarlane, creator of the popular “Family Guy†television show, allowed the state- of-the-art court to be completed.

The school year began with 285 students, which is the exact same number of students the school had the previous school year, according to Principal Rima McGeehan.

Meanwhile, the town’s private schools opened to full enrollment numbers: 568 students at the Kent School, 154 students at South Kent School and 170 students at the Marvelwood School.

September: Kent EyeCare opened up in the Kent Green shopping center. The store offers a full selection of eyeglasses and contact lenses and offers eye examinations as well.

At a Board of Selectmen’s meeting on Sept. 1, the board discussed a proposed plaque, which would be in front of Town Hall, honoring the memory of James Gadiel, a native of Kent who died in the Sept. 11 World Trade Center terror attacks. Unfortunately, Selectman Bruce Adams said, town officials could not come to an agreement with Gadiel’s father, Peter, about what the plaque should say.

Peter Gadiel wants the plaque to read, “James Gadiel, lifelong resident of Kent, killed in the World Trade Center by Muslim terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001.â€

In late October, television personality Bill O’Reilly spoke about the situation on his show The O’Reilly Factor on the Fox News cable network. He said if the town did not relent he would “march into Kent†and tell the town to “put it up.â€

“I’m saying the town should give in and stop this politically correct madness,†O’Reilly said. “If we have to charter a bus, we will do it.â€

By the end of the year, O’Reilly still has not visited Kent, and the debate over the plaque has not been resolved.

The month closed on an upbeat note with the annual fall festival at the annual Connecticut Antique Machinery Association. The festival, from Sept. 25 to 27, featured antique farming and engineering machines, as well as antique cars and tractors.

October: The Trust for Public Land, a national conservation organization, announced that 705 acres on Skiff Mountain have now been put into conservation easements. The easements, which were funded by the U.S. Forest Service Forest Legacy Program, protect the land from development, according to Trust for Public Land Project Manager Lisa Bassani. Six property owners were involved in the project, as were numerous government agencies and  non-profits.

On Oct. 10, the first case in the Region One School District of the H1N1 virus, also known as the swine flu, was reported at Kent Center School. Kent Center School Principal Rima McGeehan and school nurse Betsey Levesque sent a mass e-mail to parents confirming that a member of the school community had contracted the virus.

On Oct. 25, the 33rd annual Pumpkin Run was held. The 5-mile course went from Town Hall up Route 7, through Route 341 and back again; 220 runners participated, 55  fewer than at last year’s race.

“As long as it doesn’t snow, it’s still a perfect event,†organizer Dan Schiesel said.

November: On Nov. 3, Democrat Bruce Adams was elected first selectman. Democrat Karren Garrity and Republican George Jacobsen were elected selectmen.

On Nov. 7, the Kent General Store on 12 North Main St. closed.  The store had closed the previous year, in November 2008, when it was owned by Dawn Molnar.  Caralee Rochovansky, who owns the property, re-opened the business a few weeks later. However, in the middle of the year, a sign appeared in the window that said the business was for sale. The store remained closed and unoccupied by the end of the year.

On Veterans Day, Nov. 11, 63 years after it was first proposed, the town dedicated its new Veterans Memorial, located in front of the town-owned Swift House on Route 341.

The memorial includes three stone monuments listing the names of veterans of World War II and the wars in Korea and Vietnam  from Kent.

December: Almost 22 years after it first opened, the Bachelier-Cardonsky Gallery held its final exhibition. The gallery, located on North Main Street, had showcased artwork over the years from a variety of artists working in a variety of media. The gallery officially shut down on Dec. 13. Its owners said the decision was not a financial one; they were simply ready to move on to other things.

The Blu Grill restaurant on 14 N. Main Street shut its doors.  The closure was announced by Executive Chef Jason Pierre, who posted a message online saying that the restaurant had shut down on Dec. 9.

And finally, after eight months of disagreements over how to pay for the repairs, work on the Bridge Street sewer line started. Since May, town officials and residents had vigorously debated how to fund repairs to the line, which runs from Elizabeth Street to the bridge on Route 341. Earlier in the year, Sewer Commission Chairman Will Gawel, who has since stepped down as chairman, asked the town for $350,000 to fund a project that would have repaired and replaced the line.

At a Board of Selectmen’s meeting in early June, the board voted to recommend that sewer customers foot any and all bills for the project. Gawel repeatedly told the selectmen that sewer users could not afford to pay those costs. 

At a special town meeting in late June, voters shot down a plan that would have had the town loan the commission $350,000 for the work. While some residents at the meeting argued that the town should share the burden of the project, a majority voiced the opinion that sewer users should pay the entire cost of the work.

In the end, the commission decided to do  the least expensive option, and the costs will be paid for by the sewer users. The relining of the problematic section will cost approximately $3,500 and will only address a 6-foot section of pipe.