Special town meeting is July 21

SALISBURY — On the agenda for a special town meeting Thursday, July 21, are three items: transferring responsibility for the Dr. William Bissell Fund to the town; approving the Local Capital Improvement Program (LOCIP) for 2011-16; and amending the statute creating the Recreation Commission so the meeting time and place can be changed.The Bissell Fund, in its 93rd year of operation, was established to assist residents of the town with medical expenses. In recent years it has distributed about $50,000 yearly, according to First Selectman Curtis Rand.The committee that oversees the fund and its $1.3 million in assets has decided it would be wise to turn the management and disbursal of the fund over to the town, primarily to save some $10,000 a year in investment expenses, fees, insurance and taxes.The oversight committee’s new role will be to review with the town comptroller and social worker the expenditures from the fund; to recommend to the Board of Finance and the selectmen the maximum amount to be spent annually from the interest and dividends the fund generates; and to recommend the maximum expenditure rate, which is currently 3.5 percent of the annual fund balance.The LOCIP plan has some adjustments, as Rand spelled out at the last selectmen’s meeting, caused by a project coming in under budget.And the ordinance that created the Recreation Commission specified a time and place for meetings, and the members of the commission would like to change that.The town meeting is at Town Hall on Thursday, July 21, at 7:30 p.m.

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