Instead of the traditional spring baseball offered across the Region One School District, the six towns have come together to offer a supplemental regional summer baseball program, focusing more on skill development than competitive edge.
With health and safety precautions in mind, summer programs that are normally offered by the park and recreation departments in the six regional towns have faced changes — if not cancellations. Such is true for the classic staple sport of summer: baseball.
Typically, in spring each town would form a roster of home grown talent and face off in a season that would start in mid-April and end in mid-June. After discussions together, the regional park and recreation directors have decided to delay the season as well as take a regional approach.
With the middle schools divided into cohorts to limit the spread of COVID-19, park and recreation directors wanted the start of the baseball program and the end of school to coincide, choosing to move the start date to after Memorial Day.
“As recreation directors, our first goal was not doing anything to undermine what the elementary schools were doing to stay open,” Salisbury Park and Recreation Director Lisa McAuliffe said.
Along with a later start, the regional baseball program will pool participants instead of creating rosters by town. Throughout the levels of play, participants from around Region One will practice skills and drills before breaking up into random teams to play games.
Summer ball schedule
Starting after Memorial Day, T-Ball for kindergarteners and first graders will be held on Saturdays at Trotta Field on Salmon Kill Road in Salisbury for an hour each week. The Farm team, for second and third graders, will meet on Wednesdays at Trotta Field for an hour and a half.
This year, with the lack of participants, the Major team, which is the more competitive level of play in the league, and the Minor team, which both consist of children ages 9 to 12, will be combined. That team, which currently has 32 registered players according to the Sharon Park and Recreation Director Matt Andrulis-Mette, will meet at Veteran’s Field in Sharon on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The first few meets will focus on skills development before adding games to the schedule.
Along with the regional baseball league hosted by the park and recreation directors, there will also be a team competing in the Region One Babe Ruth Summer Baseball League, a travel team that will compete in the Tri-Town baseball league out of Litchfield.
Similar to the regional league, Andrulis-Mette, who is leading the effort to form a team, said they are combining towns to create an “All-Star” team. While the details, such as the start date for the season, are not fully ironed out between the Tri-Town league and the Region One team, children between the ages of 13 and 15 will be able to have a genuine and competitive baseball season.
Originally set to start Monday, May 17, Andrulis-Mette said the registration for both the regional team and the Babe Ruth league would most likely stay open for the duration of the season.
“Chances are we won’t [close the registration] because it’s summer,” Andrulis-Mette said. “We know kids go away for periods of time, so we probably can’t have enough kids.”
Anyone interested in registering for the regional league can go to www.salisburyct.us and find the registration form under the “recreational” tab. For the Region One Babe Ruth Summer Baseball League, interested parties can contact the Sharon Recreation Department by calling 860-364-1400 or emailing Sharon.rec.ctr@snet.net. There is a $50 fee for the season.
State Sen. Stephen Harding
NEW MILFORD — State Sen. and Minority Leader Stephen Harding announced Jan. 20 the launch of his re-election campaign for the state’s 30th Senate District.
Harding was first elected to the State Senate in November 2022. He previously served in the House beginning in 2015. He is an attorney from New Milford.
In his campaign announcement, he said, “There is still important work to do to make Connecticut more affordable, government more accountable, and create economic opportunity. I’m running for reelection to continue standing up for our communities, listening to residents, and delivering real results.”
As of late January, no publicly listed challenger has filed to run against him.
The 30th District includes Bethlehem, Brookfield, Cornwall, Falls Village, Goshen, Kent, Litchfield, Morris, New Fairfield, New Milford, North Canaan, Salisbury, Sharon, Sherman, Warren, Washington, Winchester and part of Torrington.
MILLERTON — James (Jimmy) Cookingham, 51, a lifelong local resident, passed away on Jan. 19, 2026.
James was born on April 17, 1972 in Sharon, the son of Robert Cookingham and the late Joanne Cookingham.
He attended Webutuck Central School.
Jimmy was an avid farmer since a very young age at Daisey Hill and eventually had joint ownership of Daisey Hill Farm in Millerton with his wife Jessica.
He took great pride in growing pumpkins and sweet corn.
He was very outdoorsy and besides farming, loved to ride four wheelers, fish, and deer hunt. He also loved to make a roaring bonfire.
He was a farmer, friend, husband, father, son and brother. He will be missed by many.
He is survived by his father, Robert Cookingham, wife Jessica (Ball) Cookingham, daughters, Hailey Cookingham-Loiodice (Matt), Taylor Ellis-Tanner (Jimmy) and sister Brenda Valyou, as well as many cousins, nieces and nephews.
He is predeceased by his mother, Joanne (Palmer) Cookingham.
His daughter, Hailey, will always keep his legacy alive by their father-daughter antics, such as their handshake, nicknames and making “quacking noises” at each other.
Services/Memorials will be held at a later date.
The Kenny Funeral Home has care of arrangements.
Telecom Reg’s Best Kept On the Books
When Connecticut land-use commissions update their regulations, it seems like a no-brainer to jettison old telecommunications regulations adopted decades ago during a short-lived period when municipalities had authority to regulate second generation (2G) transmissions prior to the Connecticut Siting Council (CSC) being ordered by a state court in 2000 to regulate all cell tower infrastructure as “functionally equivalent” services.
It is far better to update those regs instead, especially for macro-towers given new technologies like small cells. Even though only ‘advisory’ to the CSC, the preferences of towns by law must be taken into consideration in CSC decision making. Detailed telecom regs – not just a general wish list -- are evidence that a town has put considerable thought into where they prefer such infrastructure be sited without prohibiting service that many – though not all – citizens want and that first responders rely on for public safety.
Such regs come in handy when egregious tower sites are proposed in sensitive areas, typically on private land. The regs are a town’s first line of defense, especially when cross referenced to plans of conservation and development, P&Z regulations, and wetlands setbacks. They identify how/where the town plans to intersect with the CSC process. They are also a roadmap for service providers regarding preferred sites and sometimes less neighborhood contention. In fact, to have no telecom regs can weaken a town’s rights to protect environmental, scenic, and historic assets, and serve up whole neighborhoods to unnecessary overlapping coverage and corporate overreach. Such regs are unique to every town and should not follow anyone else’s boiler plate, especially industry’s.
Connecticut is the only state that has a centralized siting entity for cell towers. The good news is that applicants must prove need for new tower sites in an evidentiary proceeding and any decisions have the weight of the state behind them. The bad news is that the CSC used to be far less industry-friendly and rote in their reviews, which now resemble a check list. There is an operative assumption at CSC that if an applicant wants a tower, they must need it, otherwise why spend significant money to run the approval gauntlet? This reflects a subtle shift over the years at CSC from sincere willingness to protect the environment toward minimal tweaking of bad applications with minor changes. The bottom line is that towns really cannot rely on the CSC to do all the work for them.
What CSC issues telecom providers is a “certificate of environmental compatibility” after an evidentiary proceeding (not unlike a court case) with intervenors, parties, expert witnesses, and the service provider’s technical pro’s sworn in and subject to cross examination. Service providers get to do the same with any opposition from intervenor/party participants – like towns and citizens -- and their experts. It’s an impressive process whose ultimate goal is the fine balancing between allowing adequate/reliable public services and protecting state ecology with minimal damage to scenic, historic, and recreational values. They unfortunately often fall short of their mandate – like approving cell towers with diesel generators over town aquifers -- evidenced by CSC only rejecting about five cell towers in the past 15-20 years.
The CSC was founded in 1972 and clarified its mission in the 1980’s to prevent the state from being carved up willy-nilly by gas pipelines, high tension corridors, and broadcast towers. With the sudden proliferation of cell towers beginning in late 1990’s, it became the most sued agency in Connecticut by both an arrogant upstart industry if applications were denied and by towns/citizens when bad sites were forced on them. CSC gradually formed a defensive posture that drives their decisions toward industry with deeper pockets and attorneys on retainer.
For citizens, nothing can wreck one’s day like the CSC. It behooves towns to protect what little toolkit they have, and understand the legal parameters of the CSC’s playing field. The CSC is not a “normal” government agency where municipal/citizen redress is based on logic and local support. Their process is largely immune to everything but specific kinds of evidence – like town regs with setbacks/fall zones, radio frequency transmission signal strengths, sensitive areas identified, and detailed wildlife inventory, among others.
There is a current cell tower fight involving two intervening towns -- Washington and Warren; both with good cell tower regs – over a tower site within 1200’ of a Montessori School, near Steep Rock’s nature preserves with comprehensive geology/wildlife databases that include endangered, threatened and special concern flora and fauna, on established federal/state migratory bird flyways, within throwing distance to a historic site capable of being listed on the Underground Railroad, and with an access road on a blind curve entering a state highway that will permanently damage wetlands, vernal pools, and core forests. There are well credentialed environmental experts, including Dr. Michael Klemens, former chair of Salisbury’s P&Z, as well as the former director of migratory bird management at the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and an RF engineer testifying to alternative approaches, plus three attorneys representing intervenors. It is the most professional challenge I have seen at CSC since Falls Village successfully mounted one that protected Robbins Swamps several years ago.
The hearing is ongoing, with uncertain results. To see what it takes today to stop an inappropriate tower siting, see Docket #543 under “Pending Matters” at https://portal.ct.gov/csc before removing local cell tower regs – the lowest hanging fruit that any town can possess in case it’s needed.
B, Blake Levitt is the Communications Director at The Berkshire-Litchfield Environmental Council. She writes about how technology affects biology.