Brush fire near Burr Pond State Park burns 9 acres, draws multi-agency response
Emergency crews direct traffic following a nearly nine-acre brush fire near Burr Pond in Torrington, April 14.
Madi Long
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Region One voters approve $19.5M budget
Patrick L. Sullivan
May 13, 2026
FALLS VILLAGE – Voters in Region One towns approved the district’s proposed $19.5 million 2026–2027 school budget Tuesday, May 5, by a vote of 333-120.
From noon to 8 p.m., 453 total voters turned out from Cornwall, Falls Village, Kent, North Canaan, Salisbury and Sharon.
The budget passed in every town except Falls Village, where the proposal failed by 12 votes. The vote passed with the highest percentage in Cornwall and Salisbury, with 94% and 91%, respectively.
The budget totals $19,533,640, an increase of $1,048,431, or a 5.67% increase over the current year.
The Region One budget is divided into three components: Housatonic Valley Regional High School (HVRHS), Pupil Services and the Regional Schools Services Center (RSSC), also known as the central office.
Votes by Town
Cornwall: 60 yes, 4 no
Falls Village: 33 yes, 45 no
Kent: 69 yes, 11 no
North Canaan: 46 yes, 39 no
Salisbury: 94 yes, 9 no
Sharon: 31 yes, 12 no
Town Assessments
Region One town assessments were also approved, and are based on the number of students each town sends to HVRHS, meaning costs can shift as enrollment changes.
Cornwall
$2,168,169
increase of $163,895
Falls Village
$1,752,589
increase of $208,904
Kent
$2,783,359
increase of $171,360
North Canaan
$6,140,112
increase of $519,526
Salisbury
$4,798,928
increase of $17,835
Sharon
$1,890,486
decrease of $33,356
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Falls Village moves spending plans to vote
Patrick L. Sullivan
May 13, 2026
File photo
FALLS VILLAGE — Following a May 8 public hearing, the Falls Village Board of Finance voted Monday, May 11 to send the proposed 2026-27 municipal and education spending plans to a town vote scheduled for 7 p.m. on Friday, May 22, at the Emergency Services Center.
Voters will weigh in on the Lee H. Kellogg School spending plan of $2,449,328, an increase of $59,063 or 2.47%, and the municipal spending plan of $2,503,382, an increase of $80,556 or 3.32%.
The Region One budget passed a referendum vote last week, with the town’s assessment approved at $1,752,589, an increase of $208,904, or 13.53%. Total education spending will be $4,201,917, an increase of $267,967 or 6.81%.
At the May 11 meeting, the Board of Finance trimmed about $42,000 from the selectmen’s spending plan with cuts to the Recreation Commission, the transfer station, and health insurance.
The finance board made no changes to the Board of Education’s proposal as presented at the May 8 hearing.
Prior to the May 8 public hearing, the finance board asked the selectmen for $100,000 and the Board of Education for $50,000 in cuts.
The school board came up with $41,387 in reductions, which included eliminating an early Kindergarten (EK) assistant position with a salary of $24,667, reduce the hours of a part-time physical education teacher by $5,214, cut the telecommunications/internet line by $3,696 in anticipation of a state grant, eliminate the principal’s cell phone (saving $1,069), reduce a combined $11,443 from Chromebooks and textbooks, and cut $4,774 by not purchasing EK furniture.
The selectmen made roughly $75,000 in reductions for the hearing, including reducing the garden maintenance line from $3,000 to a $1 placeholder, eliminating the special events line by $1,500, reducing the town bus line by $500, and reducing contributions to non-recurring capital accounts by $50,000.
“Painfully we decided we would not put as much in this year. I know this puts us behind,” First Selectman Dave Barger said at the hearing.
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Letter to the Editor - May 14, 2026
Lakeville Journal
May 13, 2026
Grateful for community on National Day of Prayer
Our hearts are filled with thanks to our wonderful Salisbury/Lakeville community for sharing the goodness of the Lord as we celebrated the 75th National Day of Prayer.
Windy, cool conditions didn’t keep you hearty New Englanders from turning out to pray, a hundred strong.It was a privilege to have an eighth grade Eagle Scout lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance with such clarity, an Army Sergeant and his daughter praying for our military and veterans and a family all delighting in praying together.There was a warmth of fellowship and spirit in singing patriotic songs interspersed with prayer that nourished our souls.
As this is the 250th celebration of our country’s founding, we thank Town Historian Lou Bucceri for joining us as narrator giving historical vignettes of how prayer has played an important role in our country from its inception. Sharing quotes from our CT governor Trumbull and Noah Webster and our own Congregational church Minister Jonathan Lee, he brought us up to the recent past with quotes on prayer from FDR and Martin Luther King, all reminding us of the integral part prayer has played in our nation.
Thank you to all participants, Salisbury Town Hall, National Day of Prayer team and all of you who attend and make this day so special each year.
With grateful hearts,
Newt and Barbara Schoenly
Salisbury
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Agricultural hurdles ahead
Mac Gordon
May 13, 2026
Most of us tend to take food supply for granted.Our grocery stores and supermarkets are full of most everything we might wish to eat except for the occasional out-of-season fruit or vegetable---and even these have become more available. But there are someincreasing signs that our food complacency may be short-sighted, that there may be trouble down the road.
Over the past eighty years, the world’s human population has quadrupled and still continues to grow. Just providing food for people in the less affluent regions is more and more difficult. All over the world forests are being torn down to make way for economically viable but strictly for export crops like palm oil trees. In many parts of the U.S., clean, fresh water, a basic requirement for agriculture is becoming scarcer thereby making agriculture considerably more expensive and food scarce.Drought caused by climate change is making more land around the world unsuitable for growing crops. Over-harvesting can devastate land; 2,000 years ago most of North Africa was forested and fertile but largely through poor management it became over the centuries nearly desert.
President Trump’s war in Iran has disrupted global commerce beyond expectations. The predictable closing of the Strait of Hormuz has limited trade of most everything coming to or going from the Middle East, the most obvious commodities being oil and gas which run most industrial (and agricultural)operations worldwide. The Middle East also supplies a major portion of the world’s fertilizer, both the finished product and the raw materials and that is for most of the world not just Europe and America. A significant reduction in world food supply is expected.
Currently before the U.S. SupremeCourt is a case regarding the legal liability ofMonsanto, now a subsidiary of Bayer, for its herbicide, Roundup, the country’s most popular weed killer. The suit concerns whether product liability warnings issued by a state agency are overruled by a differing federal ruling. While the state has a warning label on the container saying that the contents are “probably carcinogenic” to humans, the federal Environmental Protection Agency has said Roundup is not carcinogenic.Countless lawsuits and billions of dollars of possible settlements await the Court’s verdict.
To help diminish future lawsuits, a homegardening version without glyphosate, the key ingredient, has recently come on the market. Should standard Roundup actually be banished, the effect on conventional industrial agriculture would be huge. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has campaigned repeatedly for organic farming, has backtracked, speaking out forcefully against a ban on glyphosate saying that such a move would be “tooabrupt” (thereby infuriating most of his “MAHA” supporters). But a banning of Roundup’s glyphosate with no proven successor and a swift return from industrial agriculture to basic organic farming techniques would raise food prices enormously and probably cause a lot of political dissent.
Another looming problem comes from PFAS, often referred to as “forever chemicals” because of their inability to break down. In 1946, DuPont introduced nonstick cookware coated with Teflon. Today the family of fluorinated chemicals that sprang from Teflon includes thousands of non-stick, stain-repellent and waterproof compounds called PFAS, short for per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances.
Back in the 1970s I was involved in the creation of several community parks and gardens on vacant lots in New York City. To cover the crushed rubble ground surfaces, we located a large supply of special compost soil from a drug company’s corporate campus in the suburbs---free but for the trucking.Composed of company dining hall food waste, sewage sludge, mycelium from drug manufacturing, and other organic waste. The compost proved to be fertile, humusy soil, an excellent growing medium, a good prototype for rich planting soil (without chemical fertilizers).
Over the decades more and more farm fields have drastically cut back on their use of expensive chemical fertilizers and, at the same time and are providing disposal for municipal sewage and other composted waste. But a few years ago, a New York Times environmental reporter discovered that compost from many sewage treatment plants across the country were contaminated with high levels of PFAS and other dangerous contaminants. Subsequently, this widespread use of sewage sludge fertilizer is being restricted in many instances and will continue to be discouraged until the federal Environmental Protection Agency follows through on its earlier promises to mandate cleaning up public water facilities of PFAS and other contaminants.
In 1935, the Dupont Corporation came up with one of the most famous advertising slogans of the era:“Better Living Through Chemistry”.But the naive optimism of the original slogan now carries a more sardonic tone. Modern science has made great strides in agriculture as in so many fields but our problems feeding ourselves and keeping healthy are not behind us.The Green Revolution that came into being after WW2 doubled world food production but also left us with perhaps insolvable medical problems.
Architect G. Mackenzie Gordon, AIA lives in Lakeville.
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