CORNWALL — The annual town budget meeting, scheduled for May 20, promises to be about much more than the budget. There are four additional spending proposals that could ultimately add to costs for the town in the coming fiscal year, which begins July 1.A vote on the combined town and school budgets is at the top of the agenda. That number will be somewhere around $4.1 million. Still up for debate is whether or not Town Hall employees will get raises and, if so, how much. The issue has been debated in meetings and around town for weeks. The Board of Finance heard more on the topic at the April 29 budget public hearing. The finance board members planned to consider that additional input at the board’s regular meeting May 19 (after The Lakeville Journal went to press), where they would approve a final budget proposal to send to town meeting.At the meeting, voters can change the proposed bottom line — but from that point on it can only be decreased, not increased. Also on the agenda is a request for approval from voters to transfer an insurance payment of $48,564.80. The money is being paid to the town for a 50-year-old steel equipment shed that was destroyed over the winter when heavy snow and ice caused the roof trusses to twist. The insurance money has arrived, and now the board has recommended it be moved to the capital line account so it can be used to pay for a new shed at the town garage. The plan is to build a similar 40-by-70-foot building with some improvements over the old one. The estimated cost is $60,000.A new Small Town Economic Assistance Program (STEAP) grant has been approved for Cornwall by the state Department of Economic and Community Development. Voters will be asked to approve a $150,000 appropriation from the municipal reserve fund. Expended funds will be reimbursed from the grant. As a similar grant was used recently, most of the funding will go toward facade improvements to businesses. Efforts at slowing traffic through town centers are slated for the remainder. A final appropriation would be $275,000 from municipal reserves for the reimbursable portion of phase two of the Great Hollow and Great Hill roads improvement project. The town will be reimbursed for 80 percent of the project.This is a change to what was originally posted as the meeting agenda. First Selectman Gordon Ridgway said this week the matter will likely be tabled until town officials are sure they have the proper numbers from the state. This is an extension of the same project, which includes repaving and guardrails, that began in 2009 with a $150,000 appropriation. Funding is through the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or stimulus funding. The town was offered additional funds that were unused elsewhere. The second project is officially the Great Hill Road Pavement Preservation Project. The roads qualified because they are feeder roads, in this case, leading from Cornwall to Milton, a section of Litchfield that was once the county seat.Last on the agenda: The Board of Selectmen and town treasurer will offer a report on the Gates Bequest. More than $251,000 was left by Judy Gates, who died in 2009, to be used for the benefit of the town, at its discretion. Her husband, Larry, died in 1996.She was an English teacher at Housatonic Valley Regional High School. He was an actor, best known for his Emmy-winning role on “The Guiding Light.” Their dedication to the town included founding the Park and Recreation Commission. As was discussed a year ago at the town budget meeting, the principal will be invested, and the earnings, last estimated at about $10,000 per year, will be spent annually. Suggestions entertained at that meeting centered on scholarship programs. There was also talk of building a Babe Ruth League ballfield and buying radar signs to slow traffic through town centers.The town meeting is set for 7:30 p.m. in the Cornwall Consolidated School Gathering Room.
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Meg Sher, executive director of the David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village.
“I was a library kid. I walked to the library after school,” she said.
For Sher, the library is as much about the people as it about the books.
“Part of the job I love so much is that running the library is such a community,” she said.
She treasures the relationships she has built, whether recommending books, celebrating accomplishments or helping patrons through difficult times.
“I am thankful that our community is so supportive of the library, unlike what is happening in some other places where librarians are villainized,” Sher said.
Sher takes pride in the Hunt Library’s reputation for being “open and welcoming to everyone. People come in and see things and get pulled into things they weren’t expecting. Our library is seen as a positive force.”
Sher came to Falls Village after being awarded a fellowship at Adamah Farm, then a program of the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. She worked at pickling, in the greenhouse and later in the development office. She also worked as a nanny.
At the same time, “I was in the library all the time,” she recalled. “I’m a voracious reader. The library is where I met a lot of my first friends in Falls Village.”
She became assistant librarian at Hunt and worked in that position for almost a decade before becoming the executive director four years ago.
Meg Sher, executive director of the David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village.L. Tomaino
Sher met her husband, Adam, while working at Adamah. They had their wedding there in 2012. He now emcees many events which she co-organizes with the Falls Village Recreation Commission.
Sher and her family live near the library.
“It’s an easy commute,” she said with a smile. “My kids run back and forth. I can go home to walk the dog if I need to.”
“My kids have grown up here.” Her oldest son, Eli, “loves volunteering. He helps with Augustfest and often helps set up chairs for ArtWall gatherings.” Her younger son, Noah, is often at events and was eager to taste cookies at last year’s holiday cookie swap.
When she is not at the library, Sher likes to hike with her family. Bella, their Portuguese water dog, often accompanies them.
Sher enjoys seeking out people to offer events at the library.
“I do a lot of different community programming. It is one of my favorite parts of the job.”
Augustfest, featuring food, music and an auction, is the library’s biggest fundraiser.
“This summer we had a record 152 attendees, which was pretty incredible.”
Yonah Sadeh, a filmmaker from Falls Village, inaugurated the VideoWall this year, Sher explained.
“I’ve known Yonah since he was two. It’s wonderful to work with him as an adult.”
The VideoWall complements the library’s ArtWall, which showcases a new artist each month. Sher praised the ArtWall committee for its work and highlighted December’s popular “12x12 Show,” featuring works by local artists, each measuring 12 by 12 inches and priced at $150.
Sher added that some of the artists who exhibit at the ArtWall offer workshops to students at Kellogg School, next door to the library. In September, artist Danielle Mailer worked with the children. Vincent Inconiglios taught a class last November.
Being next to the school, said Sher, is a great advantage.
“Kids are coming after school, to see friends, work on projects, find a great book. Kids that love the library end up using the library as grownups.”
This past year, in partnership with Adamah, the library and school created a garden, with excess produce made available at The Center on Main.
This year is Sher’s second year participating in the Troutbeck Symposium in Amenia with James King, director of the library at Salisbury School. The Troutbeck Symposium is “a gathering of a year of student historical inquiry across the region” in which students “uncover stories that have been overlooked, forgotten, or never recorded.”
Last year, Sher and King began a project with a group of students researching Irish immigrants in Falls Village, exploring ancestry and creating small magazines about their findings.
They continued this year, visiting St. Patrick’s Catholic Cemetery on Dublin Road, cleaning seven gravestones and even righting one with the help of stonemason and gravestone restoration expert Karl Munson. Paul Kozeazny, a representative of the Catholic archdiocese, helped secure access to the site.
A film documenting their activities will be shown at the symposium in spring 2027.
A full schedule of programs and events, ranging from tech help to ceramic mug-making, can be found on the library’s website.
Despite spending her days surrounded by books, and a busy schedule of programming, Sher still loves to settle in with a book at home.
For more information on library programs and events, visit huntlibrary.org
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Touré was born in northern Mali in 1981. His father, the renowned guitarist Ali Farka Touré, came from a family of soldiers and wanted his son to join the army. The younger Touré studied drums and the calabash and practiced guitar in secret. He earned his father’s blessing to pursue music shortly before Ali died in 2006, and they played two tracks together on Vieux’s debut album.
Touré is known for his deft, polyrhythmic playing, and his songs grow out of riffs that repeat and layer to hypnotic effect. He draws on rock, blues, Latin music and various African traditions. This distinctive blend builds on his father’s work adapting the sonic traditions of Mali’s arid north to the guitar.
Vieux’s album “Mon Pays” (“My Country,” 2013) honored Mali’s culture after Tuareg separatists and extremist groups seized the north in 2012. “Samba” (2017) was recorded before about 50 listeners in Woodstock, New York. In 2022 came “Les Racines” (“The Roots”), a return to his father’s desert blues, and “Ali,” on which he and the trio Khruangbin reworked eight of the elder Touré’s songs.
Touré leads the Ali Farka Touré Foundation, which focuses on cultural and educational work in Mali. Around the anniversary of Ali’s death, it holds a festival in Bamako, Mali’s capital. Bamako has been under blockade for much of the past year, besieged by JNIM, an al-Qaeda affiliate. Against this backdrop, Touré continues to carry the music of Mali to audiences abroad.
At the Nov. 5 concert, Touré’s desert blues will share the bill with Gnawa, the music LanGus plays, which developed in Morocco among West Africans who were brought north across the desert as enslaved people. Gnawa is religious music traditionally performed at all-night healing ceremonies called lila, intended to carry participants into trance.
Samir LanGusProvided
LanGus was born and raised outside Agadir, Morocco, and began learning Gnawa from its masters at age 8. He plays the sintir, a three-stringed bass lute made of wood and camel skin. The player strikes a low string with the thumb to create a deep, resonant pulse. Iron castanets clatter over the sintir’s bass line, and vocalists trade call-and-response refrains.
LanGus infuses the tradition with jazz and improvisation. In New York, he founded the ensemble Innov Gnawa. His first solo album, “Gnawa Love,” came out in February.
Touré and LanGus’s Nov. 5 concert is one of the last public events at Race Brook Lodge, which is for sale and ended full-service operations at the end of 2025. The lodge’s final scheduled event, on Nov. 6, is an evening of Rumi’s poetry with translator and vocalist Haleh Liza Gafori, cellist Isabel Castellvi and ceremonial bard James Bird.
For tickets, visit rblodge.com.
James FitzGerald is a student at Yale Law School, where he focuses on ecological restoration and international environmental cooperation. He splits his time between Lakeville and New Haven.
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