Terry Cowgill

Feeling the Pain

I’m working on a story for next week’s print edition about fuel prices and am looking for some people willing to be quoted about the impact gasoline prices have had on their lives.

Anyone out there have a long commute? Or is there anyone else out there heavily dependent on their vehicles for business and have had to reduce spending in other areas in order to fill that tank?

I’m looking mostly for stories about the impact (or lack of impact) rising fuel prices have had on your lives and what steps you have taken to offset any hardship. I, for one, have started cycling to work when the weather is good, as it is today

Do you drive to Massachusetts, for example, where prices are lower than either Connecticut or New York? How do you view the prospect of $5 gasoline? Is there a larger lesson to be learned from this recent round of skyrocketing fuel prices?

Kindly respond to this post to submit a comment for the print edition article. Thanks.

What A Country!

With apologies to Howard Zinn, I love America, especially on Memorial Day with all those flags and good feelings. I was in North Canaan this morning for the parade down Main Street and the observances at the Doughboy Monument. I still get misty-eyed when I hear taps being played to a respectful audience. See the video footage above.

As he has been for several years, Selectman Tom Gailes, himself a veteran, was the master of ceremonies. He introduced his son, Master Sgt. Wade Gailes, who has been in the Army for 18 years. Wade’s own son is in Iraq. The theme for the day, which everyone seemed to agree on, was “let’s bring them home safely as soon as we can.”

To all those who served their country and died for it — not only soldiers, but police, emergency responders and members of the intelligence and diplomatic communites — you once again have my deepest gratitude.

Paying for the Privilege

You know, now that the kerfuffle over the purchase of land for a new Salisbury-Sharon transfer station has subsided (at least for the moment), I’ve had time to consider some other thoughts about garbage. Yes, it’s time to talk trash!

One of the central questions posed by opponents of the Luke and Fitting properties was “What about Sharon? She hasn’t committed on paper to anything. She will get all of the benefits of the new transfer station while assuming none of the up-front costs and the associated risks.” [apologies to Mike LaRose for the use of the feminine pronoun!]

Still others have asked, “What about Millerton? Would we want to invite Millerton to join us since residents there have been without a transfer station for 15 years?” Well, if you listen to my simple proposal, the answer to both of those questions will be: “Who cares about them? Build it and they will come.”

Continue reading Paying for the Privilege…

Backpack Journalism

Just read a really cool piece in Editor & Publisher on the new breed of mobile journalists (known as “mojos”). Unfortunately, the article is only accessible online if you are a E&P subscriber, so you’ll have to take my word for it that it will change the way I work.

Actually, I’ve been moving in this direction for some time. While at the NYPA convention in Albany last month, I attended a seminar on backpack journalism. The concept is pretty much what it sounds like. With advances in technology, it’s now possible to work from almost anywhere. Plus, what better way to serve the interests of your readers than to get out of the office and look for news at street level?

A typical backpack journo rides around on a bicycle or in a modest car and carries with him a wireless-capable laptop, digital camera, tripod and cell phone. The LJ has provided me a with a pretty good camera and I already own the other four items. That means I’m ready. Watch out.

The advantages of this approach are many: you can stumble upon news, write a story or take some video and have it up on the web within minutes.

I’ve already practiced what I call tote-bag journalism, as when I videoed a couple of guys paddle surfing last September at the Salisbury Town Grove and filmed part of the Salisbury Memorial Day festivities a year ago. The difference is that now I can upload the clip quickly via a wireless connection on my Macbook.

Of course, I also experimented with live blogging the town meeting earlier this month on the purchase of land in Salisbury for a new transfer station. I got positive feedback from a woman who walked up to me in the Stop & Shop and said she loved the immediacy and informality of it.

As soon as the weather turns nice (Monday?), I’m going to make a practice of bicycling to work. I will pack my journo tools and see what happens. And I’ll even save some bucks on gasoline. Wish me luck.

P.S. Eat your heart out, Sam Herrick.

P.P.S. Sam is the business manager for the Region One School District. During the warmer months, he regularly bicycles from his home in Sheffield to the office in Falls Village. I’d say it’s 15 miles each way. Iron Man Sam is amazing.

Vote Today (but not for prez!)

No, this is not Indiana or North Carolina, where presidential primaries are taking place as I write this. But this is also the day we can all vote of the proposed budget for the Region One School District, which serves six NWC towns and features a regional high school.

Click here to download a relatively recent copy of that document (PDF- Adobe Reader required), then get over to your town hall, where the polls opened about half an hour ago and where they’ll close at 8 p.m.

Here are the thumbnails:

Polls open at noon at local town halls and remain open until 8 p.m.


Hey, if you were one of almost 600 people motivated to go to Friday’s town meeting in Salisbury to weigh in on spending $2 million for a piece of property for a new transfer station, then you owe it to yourself to vote up or down on a budget of close to $14 million.

And Marshall is right. I’m not sure I agree with Peter Halle, who said in an earlier comment that low turnout is a sign of “contentment.” A yes vote would be such a sign. Staying away from the polls shows an unwillingness to participate. Sounds more like “disengagement” to me.

I will post the referendum results in this space shortly after the polls close tonight — not that very many people will care about spending $14 million …

The Mother of All Meetings

No, the headline of this post is no exaggeration. I’d say Friday’s town meeting in Salisbury was easily the most crowded and eventful I have seen since I started writing about the town more than three years ago.

On a personal and professional level, it was also a first for me. Since wi-fi was working inside the Congregational Church, I live-blogged the event (see the post below this one) and took notes for a news story for this week’s print edition as well.

I’ve heard from several people who said they appreciated that approach. One of them walked up to me Saturday in the Stop & Shop and said she was out for dinner Friday night and unable to attend, but wanted to know what the verdict was. She was delighted to be able to learn about here it as soon as she got home.

As for the meeting itself, it went pretty much as I expected it to. It was passionate and well attended, attracting about 500 taxpayers. But the thing that has always amazed me is how few people usually turn out for town meetings and public hearings on routine budgets, but then fall all over themselves to come to meetings like this last one.

The town of Salisbury, for example, will hold a town meeting May 21 to approve the proposed town and local education budgets, which total $7.5 million. The Region One School District, which includes our regional high school, will hold a referendum Tuesday on a proposed budget of almost $14 million.

In Salisbury, perhaps a couple dozen people will vote on the annual town budget. And in Region One, they’re lucky to get 10% of eligible voters to weigh in on that huge sum of money. But try spending a relatively paltry $2 million to acquire a piece of property for a new transfer station and everybody and their grandmother (literally, in some cases) shows up to be part of the seething throng. Go figure …

I am convinced the opponents of the Luke-Fitting site are done yet. Here’s my shot-in-the-dark prediction and you heard it here first: The Belgo Road crowd will hire Michael Klemens, the Salisbury resident and eminent herpetologist, to scour the site for bog turtles, blue spotted salamanders and any other protected species they can find to derail the project. Then there will be expensive litigation that will double or triple the town’s line item for legal fees.

As Bill O’Reilly would ask with faux humility, “Am I wrong? I’ll give you the last word … “

Transfer This - The Movie

The town of Salisbury is buzzing about tonight’s BIG town meeting on a $2 million proposal to buy land for a new transfer station. I haven’t seen this much anticipation since the 2004 meeting about letting a cell tower into town.

The meeting starts promptly at 7:30 p.m. in the Congregational Church, but I’m told officials are expecting a packed house of possibly several hundred voters, so I would advise getting there by 7.

Two big questions for me:

#1 (and most obvious): Will it pass? Notwithstanding the relatively late effort by the (mostly) Belgo Road residents to derail the project, I do not sense enough of a groundswell to defeat it. But hey, I’ve been wrong before.

#2: How long will the discussion last before the vote is taken? In the town meeting form of government, citizens act as the legislature and so they are permitted to engage in deliberations before voting, just as elected legislators would. I’d say you can expect a motion to vote if the deliberations take more than 45 minutes. If the motion passes, then we fill out our ballots and let the chips fall where they may.

There has been a flurry of emails making the rounds just since the LJ came out yesterday. One in particular between Selectman Jim Dresser and Elaine Laroche is most interesting. Click here to read the exchange. And click here for two more emails from Betty Mitchell and Maureen Jerome.

Meanwhile, if the wireless network is working in the church, I will live blog the event right here and perhaps even upload a brief video report. If not, I will simply get the results up as quickly as possible.

Horror on the Left: Horowitz and Academic Freedom

In watching David Horowitz’s transformation from lefty radical, confidant of Huey Newton and the son of communists, all the way to conservative Republican, I have always marveled at how deeply the hard left despises him — more so than they do most right wingers.

I suppose it’s because he is seen as a turncoat — someone who used to be one of them, but has peered through the fog and rejected heroes of the left such as Howard Zinn, whom Horowitz condemned last night as “a Stalinist fraud.”

Once Nancy Johnson country, the Northwest Corner is now solidly blue. Still, about 75 people turned out see Horowitz at the Elfers music hall at The Hotchkiss School [see photo at left]. Before he began, Horowitz worked the room, introducing himself to everyone there. I chatted briefly with him about being a community journalist — a job he professed great respect for because “you really get to know the people you cover.”

The appearance was sponsored by the Hotchkiss Republicans and Young America’s Foundation, a conservative young people’s organization Horowitz has supported for years.

Horowitz, a nationally known author and activist who appears regularly as a guest on cable news shows, has long been a champion of academic freedom and has lamented the extent to which academia has been dominated by the left, especially on college campuses, but also in settings such as Hotchkiss.

In her introduction, Natalie Boyse, a junior at the school and a member of the Hotchkiss Republicans, lionized Horowitz in a way that would probably even make the Heritage Foundation blush.

Continue reading Horror on the Left: Horowitz and Academic Freedom…

FYI …

… I am scheduled to appear this morning at 9:10 a.m. on WAMC’s Journalists’ Roundtable. On the agenda will be President Bush’s visit tomorrow to Kent and possibly some NWC real estate talk. Click here to listen live. Just before that at 8:30 a.m., I will will make my usual appearance on Marshall & Mike.

Truck-Off

After sitting through that marathon informational meeting on the proposed new transfer station Saturday in Salisbury and listening to all the complaining about truck traffic, I decided to conduct an experiment.

At 2 p.m. today, I opted to spend an hour sitting in my car in front of the Scoville Library and counting the number of trucks that passed me on Route 44. By “trucks,” I don’t mean panel trucks, UPS delivery vehicles, noisy Harleys or pick-ups. We’re talking heavy equipment here: industrial-sized dump trucks or semi-tractor trailers.

I tried this experiment once when I was editor of The Millerton News during an era when there was so much traffic on the narrow Main Street of that village that elderly people and the young were afraid the cross Route 44 in front of my office (now Irving Farm) and others were known to have had their car doors ripped off the hinges by the lorries passing in front of Phil Terni’s store.

The results of that survey were surprising. If you had to guess, how many heavy-duty dump trucks and tractor trailers would you say pass by my selected Salisbury location in a hour during mid afternoon on a weekday?

I’ll post the results tomorrow. You might be surprised by the number here, too. I’ll also tell you the single worst stretch of road in these parts for truck traffic, hands down.