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NORTH CANAAN — At its June meeting, The Board of Selectmen set a joint public hearing and special town meeting to be held June 23.
The two items to be voted on will be: to approve a two-year resident trooper contract for Trooper Spencer Bronson; to change the roles of town clerk, treasurer and tax collector to be appointed positions instead of elected positions.
The trooper contract would be effective July 1, 2025 through June 30, 2027.
As of the June 2 selectmen’s meeting, no salary figure had been put forth for the new contract. The 2025-26 budget that was approved in May allocated $133,602 toward the resident trooper line.
The full trooper contract is on the town website northcanaan.org and can be accessed by clicking “Read More” about the town meeting at the top of the home page.
The four-year appointments of town clerk, treasurer and tax collector would be made by the selectmen. First Selectman Brian Ohler said many towns across the state have been switching away from electing these roles.
“The tax collectors in Connecticut, over half now are appointed,” said Ohler. “The town clerks in Connecticut, over a third.”
Ohler said the change would give the town “some oversight” of the staff in an effort to maintain continuity of service.
“These offices are truly there for the towns and the residents and the businesses, and ensuring that the town itself has some oversight in their performance and their hours and basically their scope of work, I think it’s a healthy time for us to have that discussion as a town,” Ohler said.
Out-of-state vehicle tax
Noting the prevalence of vehicles in town with out-of-state license plates, Selectman Craig Whiting said North Canaan may begin taxing and fining the vehicle owners in spite of their non-local registration.
He cited a June 1 CT Mirror article titled “Out-of-state license plates are costing CT towns big money.”
It states, “Connecticut law mandates that vehicles “garaged” in a municipality — meaning regularly parked overnight, even on the street — must be taxed there, regardless of where they may be officially registered.Spend your winter in the Sunshine State, but more than 90 days each summer in Connecticut, and you have to pay, even with those Florida plates. The penalty is a $1,000 fine.”
“You could be double charged,” Whiting said.
“We would like for them to do what’s right,” said Ohler, noting some 40 vehicles have been identified. “Or we can just send them the bill.”
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TORRINGTON — On May 29, selectmen in the Northwest Corner were given four options for solid waste contracts by MIRA Dissolution Authority (MIRA-DA) and USA Waste & Recycling.
The presentation was made two weeks after MIRA-DA’s acceptance of a $3.25 million offer from USA to purchase the Torrington Transfer Station.
The options for towns were: sign a five-year contract with USA; sign a 10-year contract with USA; continue with current municipal service agreements until June 30, 2027; or opt out and find an alternative solution.
Following the 2022 closure of the state’s trash-to-energy plant in Hartford, towns were given five years to establish alternative destinations for solid waste. Under the service agreements, tipping fees were set for municipal solid waste at $136 per ton in 2026 and $141 per ton in 2027. There is no fee for recycling tonnage under the existing agreements.
USA’s proposed contracts vary in price.
In USA’s five-year contract, MSW tipping fees start at $120 per ton in 2026 and rise to $141.75 per ton by 2030. For recycling, fees start at up to $45 per ton in 2026 and increase to a maximum of $75 per ton by 2030.
In USA’s 10-year contract, MSW tipping fees start at $118 per ton in 2026 and rise to an unlisted amount in 2035, which will be based on future consumer price index for garbage and trash collection. Recyclables similarly start at up to $45 per ton in 2026 with an unlisted price in 2035.
USA requested towns choose a plan by June 9 and enter into new contracts no later than July 2.
In a follow-up conversation, Falls Village First Selectman Dave Barger said more time is needed. “We’ve got to look at the contract and have our town counsel look at the contract” before a decision is made.
Cornwall First Selectman Gordon Ridgway said there is no rush to decide, but the prices from USA are likely to increase if the “sweetheart deal” is not accepted.
Regarding the fourth option, Ridgway said, “We have heard from some other companies that are interested in some sort of regional project.” He noted the preferred option of many Northwest Corner towns is to develop a regional waste authority. “We just don’t have enough information at this point in my mind to lock into a five- or 10-year contract.”
North Canaan First Selectman Brian Ohler said some have doubted MIRA-DA’s authority to sell the Torrington Transfer Station to a private company without going out to bid. “What we’re hearing is it’s not that simple for MIRA. They essentially hand-picked a hauling company without going out to bid,” said Ohler at a selectmen’s meeting June 2.
Sharon First Selectman Casey Flanagan plans to wait and consider the options. “I’m in the camp of letting the remainder of our contract just run for the next two years and see what our options are.”
Salisbury First Selectman Curtis Rand was on the same page.
The sole Region One town spared from the current solid waste uncertainty is Kent, which is part of the Housatonic Resource Recovery Authority. Kent is the northernmost member of the 14-town regional effort that stretches south to Ridgefield.
Towns in the Northwest Corner expressed interest in joining HRRA last year but were denied. Since then, the Northwest Hills Council of Governments had been working to establish its own regional effort using the Torrington Transfer Station as a central hub.
MIRA-DA, owner of the Torrington Transfer Station, was collaborating with the towns until last month when an agreement to privately sell the facility to USA was accepted. Now the path forward is uncertain.
“The water is muddy and murky,” said Ohler.
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Owner Bill Colgan said the redesign of the former Chinese food restaurant at 343 Main Street was intended to be welcoming for guests of Grassland Dessert Café.
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LAKEVILLE — Grassland Dessert Café has been slammed since a not-so-soft launch on May 31, filling a clearly-needed niche in Lakeville and bringing back the timeless atmosphere of an ice cream parlor.
“The reception from the community has been unbelievable,” said founder and owner Bill Colgan.
Colgan said that while opening an ice cream shop has been a dream since his childhood, what really matters to him is for the confectionery to become a place for people to come together.
“Community is the one word of what we do… it’s about all those connections that are made,” he said.
He recalled one afternoon when an older couple enjoyed some cones in the store, and while on their way out they ran into some old friends they hadn’t seen for a long time and ended up staying another half hour at their table.
“To me, that really is the measure of success right there,” Colgan said. “These people had a conversation they might have never had if we hadn’t been there.”
Since unfurling the open sign, Colgan said that business has been steady, rain or shine, even keeping staff scooping ice cream until 9 p.m. one on occasion while they’ve usually been trying to close by 7 or 8 p.m. Colgan said a grand opening is upcoming and will announce official hours, which he anticipates being seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. with a quick breather on Monday morning, when the shop will open at 3 p.m.
Colgan explained that the redesign of the building at 343 Main Street in downtown Lakeville was intended to promote a welcoming atmosphere. Formerly housing a Chinese food restaurant and several apartments, Colgan said it had been vacant for 15 years and was a “real eyesore in the town.”
Teaming up with Norfolk carpenters and twin brothers Mike and Scott Sinclair – “we like to do the strange and unusual,” Colgan said – the trio transformed the 150 year old building into a friendly and welcoming space for the community, including the reinstallation of a big porch which was part of the building a century ago but had disappeared over the years.
The porch lends a nostalgic familiarity to the space, Colgan said, reminiscent of a kind of homely Americana that says, “Welcome, come on in.”
“It’s a beautiful building now but it was hard to see that three years ago,” said Colgan, explaining that he enlisted the assistance of a Broadway designer, a connection from his days working as a stagehand on Broadway and at Madison Square Garden.
While Colgan is proud of the building and the goods it serves, which includes drip coffee and espresso beverages, gelato, baked goods, smoothies, and other treats besides the obvious hard and soft serve ice cream, he said that the story of the Café does not belong to just him, but to the community. In addition to working closely with local business and tradespeople — “the core of the community,” in his words — the parlor’s staff is almost entirely comprised of local high schoolers from Housatonic Valley Regional High School, The Hotchkiss School, Salisbury School, Berkshire School, Webatuck High School and others.
Despite a warning from a fellow hospitality business owner, Colgan said “We decided to go the youth route instead of more experienced, and it was the 100% absolutely right decision.”
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The Salisbury/Sharon Transfer Station is moving forward on a grant application to the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to improve its municipal waste management systems.
The funding would be used to increase composting services and may involve a transition to a unit-based pricing model, also known as “pay as you throw,” at the Transfer Station in an effort to reduce MSW from the waste stream.
The Sustainable Materials Management grant is in its second round of allocations, with applications due June 27. The towns have opted to work with waste management consulting outfit WasteZero in the development of the application, a choice Sharon First Selectman Casey Flanagan is confident with.
“These people seem to have mastered this,” he said, noting that the firm helped 15 municipalities receive funding in the first-round allocations for the grant.
Both towns’ Boards of Selectmen recently voted to move forward with the plan.
If the application is successful, WasteZero will facilitate discussions among residents as to next steps, as well as assist in the planning and roll-out of new strategies and programs for the town to implement.
In a conversation June 5, Transfer Station Manager Brian Bartram said last year about 450 households participated in the composting program and roughly 40 tons of food scraps were diverted from the waste stream. He said one goal is to expand the program to include businesses.
At present, Salisbury/Sharon pays a driver to haul food scraps to New Milford for composting, which is later brought back as compost. And it’s expensive.
“It costs us more money to compost than it does to throw it out as garbage,” said Bartram.
By expanding to commercial composting and switching to unit-based pricing, which are both intended to divert more food scrap out of the waste stream, the towns would be able to reduce the expense.
“If we can get that food out of there, now we can have a large enough stream of food scraps that we would be able to get it most likely over to McEnroe’s at a much more reasonable cost,” said Bartram.
McEnroe Organic Farm Soils & Compost is located just over the border in Millerton, New York.
One possible use of the grant could be to buy a truck so the towns can stop contracting with a driver and the crew can haul it to Millerton themselves.
Bartram said the details of the grant request are yet to be decided and he will work with WasteZero on the application. He said, “I’ll be happy to tell you more on June 28,” after the application is done.
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