Breaking News
February 29, 2008 on 10:21 pm | In Local, Main |
It took about an hour and 15 minutes, but almost 170 people braved an impending snowstorm to debate and approve plans for a new firehouse tonight at the Salisbury Congregational Church.
The vote to approve the plan, which could cost a maximum of $3.3 million, passed by paper ballot 158-11. Interestingly, there was some new information from Mike Flint concerning the listing of both the ITW site and the current Lakeville Hose Company firehouse on the DEP’s web site as potentially polluted sites. More on that later.
Several questions and observations came from the trio of former Selectman Peter Oliver, his wife Sandy Gomez and her brother Mark Gomez. Some guy named Mike LaRose spoke for 10 minutes about what an honor it was to be “able to vote on your own safety.
And there were some other questions, most of which had been answered before at previous meetings. First Selectman Curtis Rand looked a little nervous but fielded questions from the voters and offered answers for just about everything except for Flint’s revelations.
Then when the meeting adjourned at about 9 p.m., we were treated to a blinding snowstorm and a parade of slow moving cars down Route 44 all leaving at the same time.
When we arrived for the town meeting at 7:30, it was merely cold, but when the meeting got out, there had to be 4 inches of fluffy white stuff on the ground and it was accumulating quickly.
As I made my way out of the building I got stuck behind one of Salisbury’s many elderly citizens. This fellow, who was headed to one of Noble’s vans, had a walker and was proceeding extremely slowly out the door because the snow made his footing treacherous. Hat’s off to that fellow for braving the elements to exercise his civic duty.
I’ll have a complete story in Thursday’s LJ.
10 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
Powered by WordPress with Pool theme design by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds.
Valid XHTML and CSS. ^Top^
Terry!
It was what I expected of a town meeting…some new ifo, some old info, some laughs, some sarcasim (the rush to leave comment because of the snow!) some questions, and some answers…and then there was what seemed like a nominating speeech, that would never end, by Mr. Larosa. Now, I am sure that Mr. Larosa is a nice man, but, he reminded me of Hank Kimball, the county agent on Green Acres! Whenever Kimball spoke on the show, he went into long orations, with patriotic music in the background! All I could think of as he continued on was the Green Acres theme song….Green ACres is the place to be…farm livin is the life for me….
My thanks to our moderator for stepping in, or I fear we might still be there!
All in all, I wouild have perfered to vote earlier in the day, and have been snug as a bug in a rug at home at 9 PM (not trudging thru the snow!
It was filmed an will be on CATV 6 next week!
Congratulations to the Lakeville Hose Company!
Comment by Marshall Miles — March 1, 2008 #
“…tonight at the Salisbury Congregational Church.”
Lordy, someone missed the ACLU memo about separation of church and state.
Comment by Jake — March 1, 2008 #
Jake,
I’ve been saying for years that some ACLU do-gooder would get wind of this and file suit against the town of Salisbury for holding town meetings in the church on the grounds that it’s a hostile environment for atheists and non-Congregationalists.
Nothing yet. Take it away, Alan Dershowitz …
Marshall,
My recollection is Hank Kimball could barely put together 2 or 3 sentences, to say nothing of an entire oration. Were you thinking of Mr Haney? Now that guy could talk …
Comment by Terry — March 1, 2008 #
ACLU be damned. Way back when, the church was the main meetinghouse in a town. Salisbury is just going back to the old ways: meet in the church, and the town gets to vote on an important issue.
Comment by Amy Deitz — March 1, 2008 #
No wasnt Hank Kimball the COuntry Agent? He always started to speak, and blither on, and had patriotic music in nthe background!
Hank Kimball was the fictitious county agent of the 1965-71 American television comedy Green Acres. The show was about a rich New York City couple who decide to buy and run a farm in the wacky and surreal town of Hooterville.
From Wikipedia
Kimball was an unusual, perhaps unique, comic creation (played by Alvy Moore) who was a friendly, helpful but scatterbrained man apparently educated past his intelligence. Like most Green Acres characters he didn’t start out as confused and scatterbrained. Over the first season he developed into the man who couldn’t seem to remember anything, unless, as Oliver found out, you specifically told him NOT to remember it. He had an unusual self-correcting manner where he would make a statement, qualify it, correct it again, correct it further and then lose track of what he was saying entirely.
Haney was a flim flam man, not a lond, disjointed talker!!
Comment by Marshall — March 2, 2008 #
By the way…Salisbury Congregational across from the town hall IS NOT A CHURCH.
It is specificly..”A MEETINGHOUSE”.
Ask the church elders and they will tell you where they congregate is a “Meetinghouse” not a church
Comment by Marshall Miles — March 2, 2008 #
My point exactly, Marshall!
Comment by Amy Deitz — March 2, 2008 #
Terry,
When three voters sit in the same row (related or not) they do not constitute a “trio”.
My questions (the only ones I am responsible for) were not idle, they were requests for clarification including why the appraisal(which were given to the Selectmen in January 2007) was somehow replaced by a higher appraisal dated February 2007. After the meeting I gave my copy of the original appraisal to Board of Finance Chaiman Bill Willis for his record to be copied and returned. This is the second time a document has been provided to the Selectmen and then magically is changed when it hits the public purview, the first being the Buonome report which concluded that the fire house “sucks” to a rewritten report, both bore the same date of authorship.
The question about contamination at the firehouse was sparked by the history of my having been the receipient of a DEP request for my performing a Phase I study (at the Factory building) when there was oil detected in Factory Brook only to find out later that the source of the contamination was an oil tank at the firehouse.
I am not opposed to the ITW acquisition or the assumption of the Fire District responsibilities and property by the Town of Salisbury, however, I am concerned about process of accepting the potential of liabilities of contamination and the cavelier “I’m sure the State will help if such contamination exists”. Ask John Fitch about site cleanup.
Comment by Peter Oliver — March 2, 2008 #
Actually, the Congregational church was the official state church of Connecticut until the passage of the “new” state constitution of 1815 or thereabouts. Didn’t know we had such things as official state churches here, did you?
Comment by Geoff Brown — March 3, 2008 #
Geoff,
Colin McEnroe poked fun at the Congregationalists in yesterday’s column.
Comment by Terry — March 3, 2008 #