LEEF awards underwrite purchase of new equipment in three towns

The Northwest Corner towns of Falls Village, Kent and Sharon were awarded Lawn Equipment Exchange Fund (LEEF) Awards by the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). LEEF Awards are grants given to towns to help pay for the cost of purchasing new equipment that is environmentally friendly. The program was announced last fall. Interested towns were asked to submit applications and equipment inventories by December 2010. On March 24, 2011, the DEP announced that Falls Village would receive $1,975.12 to replace three pieces of equipment, Kent would receive $2,479.77 to replace seven pieces of equipment and Sharon would receive $2,855.72 to replace seven pieces of equipment. To qualify for the funding, which covers 80 percent of the cost of the new equipment, the towns had to show proof to the DEP that the old equipment had been destroyed and would not be sold or used by anyone else. “The main objective of the project was to eliminate polluting equipment,” said Kent First Selectman Bruce Adams. Kent Highway Foreman Rick Osborne purchased new equipment as soon as he heard that the town would receive the funding. “I made the old equipment inoperable and then brought it to a scrap yard,” Osborne said. Kent has now purchased four new chainsaws, a backpack blower, a weed trimmer and a pole pruner. The town of Sharon applied to have 15 pieces of equipment, but only the seven oldest were approved by the DEP for replacement. No new equipment has been purchased yet, and First Selectman Bob Loucks is planning to wait until the new fiscal year, as the town is still responsible for 20 percent of the cost. Sharon also plans to replace its chainsaws and weed trimmers. Falls Village First Selectman Pat Mechare was not available for comment.

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