SALISBURY — The Planning and Zoning Commission unanimously approved the Town Plan of Conservation and Development at a meeting Tuesday, June 26, that followed a public hearing that same night.The new plan is an update of the town plan that was approved in 1999. Town plans are documents required by the state. They must be updated at least once every 10 years or the state can deny funding and grants to the town. The town plan forms the basis of a town’s planning and zoning regulations and is considered a roadmap to how a town will develop over the course of the coming decade. Because the town plan was approved before the end of June, Salisbury will meet its obligations to the grant that the town received from the state’s Office of Policy and Management to prepare the plan. About 25 people were in the audience at the start of the public hearing, which began at 6:30. By the time the public hearing was closed at 7:50, about 10 people were left.Planning consultant Glenn Chalder of the firm Planimetrics in Avon, Conn., worked with the Planning and Zoning commissioners on the update of the plan over the past year. He was introduced at the beginning of the public hearing by P&Z Chairman Michael Klemens. Chalder explained that a town-wide meeting was held last fall and Salisbury residents were asked to vote on what they are most proud of in their town, and what they are least proud of. The top three items on the list of “prouds” were the beauty and character of the town; the community’s facilities; and local assets such as the schools and cultural opportunities. Things that residents are most concerned about are the risk of changes to the fabric of the community; changes to the villages; and responsiveness to community needs. In a PowerPoint presentation, Chalder shared a summary of the proposed town plan, which includes maps, lists of assets to protect and suggestions for implementing the goals in the plan. He said that the town plan is meant to be “a guideline to how the town residents want to approach the future.”Affordable housingAbout a half dozen people came before the commissioners to make comments on the proposed plan. A majority of their comments concerned affordable housing.Kathy Lauretano was the first to speak. “I have a couple of concerns but not such that I’m opposed to passing this tonight,” she said. First she referred to a section of the proposal that said municipal funds could be used to buy land and protect it from development.“Additional taxation expenditures such as that have to be approached very carefully,” she warned.She also warned against a section that suggests using “green” building materials to construct affordable housing, noting that “I’m seeing and hearing a difference of opinion on the durability and worth of some green materials, you need to look at that very carefully.”A section describing plans for creating Incentive Housing Zones as a way to increase affordable housing in town elicited comments from Lauretano and several other people at the meeting. Lauretano’s request was that any regulations and guidelines on affordable housing be written clearly, so that “one person doesn’t get short shrift while another gets carte blanche.”Discussion of Incentive Housing Zones continued as a sort of leitmotif of the evening. Audience members learned that the state has a program that specifies what can and can not be considered Incentive Housing Zones, and that its guidelines are very specific. Commission members also expressed a desire to create “homegrown” versions of affordable housing rules, that can be better suited to Salisbury and its residents.Cindy Smith came before the commissioners and asked what exactly affordable housing is. Chalder explained that, according to state law, affordable housing is housing that doesn’t cost more than 30 percent of a person’s income when that income is 80 percent of the median income for an area or less. Smith pointed out that the state includes Torrington when it sets the annual median income figure. For a person who makes $1,000 a month, she said, it’s become impossible to live in town.Language of the planKlemens also read aloud a letter from Dan McGuinness, executive director of the Northwestern Connecticut Council of Governments (COG), an organization made up of the first selectmen from nine Litchfield County towns, including all six towns in the Region One School District. All town plan proposals are submitted to COG for approval because each town’s plan can impact its neighboring towns. McGuinness advised in his letter that the Salisbury town plan relied too heavily on the word “consider” rather than more forcefully using words that would require action or compliance.Klemens spoke for the commission in saying that they had specifically chosen to advise rather than require out of respect for the many people who work hard as volunteers on town boards and commissions. “These are recommendations, not commandments,” he said. He also noted that the commission was seeking a balance of public interest versus private rights.Discussion of details of the language of the plan continued until 7:50, when the public hearing was closed. Chalder then went through a list of 17 amendments that would be made to the plan based on that evening’s discussion. Many of the changes were cosmetic and had to do with the choice of photographs to be used as illustrations, but other changes included reworking a section on affordable housing and adding Lime Rock in several areas of the plan that discussed village centers. The commission then voted unanimously to pass the plan, which goes into effect on Saturday, June 30. Paper copies of the final, approved Town Plan of Conservation and Development will be available by the end of July, but an electronic version will be online at the town of Salisbury website by June 30, at https://salisburyct.us/offices/planningandzoning.The plan includes a virtual snapshot of Salisbury today, with maps and data. During his presentation, Chalder called out three notable statistics. The population of Salisbury is decreasing, after peaking in 1990 when there were 4,090 town residents. The town is on track to have the same population it had in the 1800s. But the number of housing units in town has increased. More than 25 percent of the housing units are for part-time residents, he said. One consequence of that change is that there are fewer people in town to support village businesses.He also noted that Salisbury has the oldest median age demographic in the state, with a median age of 57 — compared to a median age of 43 in the rest of Connecticut.
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Dick Hermans in the Oblong Bookstore on Millerton\u2019s Main Street in 1985.
Provided
For Hermans, the award has prompted some reflection about why he has spent so much of his life involved in community projects.
“I was thinking about it this morning: Why do I do what I do?” he said. “And I think no matter what I’ve done, whether it’s been school board or rail trail, I’m trying to be useful to the communities I’m associated with.”
Hermans is perhaps best known as the longtime co-founder and steward of Oblong Books in Millerton, a business that began almost by accident. He and his former partner, Holly Nelson, were living in Millerton and looking for something to do during the winter. They had been painting houses, including the Grange Hall in Millerton, a job Hermans got through his aunt, who belonged to the Grange.
At the time, Hermans was also working in insurance for his father, doing collections.
“It was fine except I was doing collections, and it really kind of left me cold,” he said.
He and Nelson began thinking about what they might do together. Nelson was an avid reader, while Hermans had studied journalism and had worked in a record store. They noticed a chain of book and record stores operating elsewhere in the Hudson Valley and decided to follow that model.
And so Oblong was born.
Dick Hermans in the Oblong Bookstore on Millerton’s Main Street in 1985.Provided
“We really learned it by the seat of our pants,” Hermans said.
The business would eventually become a beloved and integral part of Millerton’s commercial life. But although Hermans may have learned the book business as he went, his affinity for retail — and for the connections that happen across a counter — had begun much earlier.
As a child, his second-grade teacher operated a little cardboard pencil shop in the classroom, and Hermans still remembers the satisfaction of selling a pencil for a nickel.
“I really liked selling somebody a pencil for a nickel,” he recalled. “I can remember that experience, and it was so pleasant.”
Later, while living in Arizona, he helped establish a food co-op and worked at the counter.
“I kind of knew that I liked doing that kind of thing,” he said. “It’s a nice way to be pleasant with people, but without making too much commitment to them.”
His relationship with Millerton also predates Oblong. His grandparents lived in the village, and he first came to Millerton as a baby. Over the years, he has watched the town change through several generations.
He remembers a Millerton with a much broader array of businesses, when stores such as Delson’s, the Main Street department store that stood for nearly 40 years in what is now Millerton’s Antiques Center, seemed to carry almost everything a resident might need.
“You could find everything from a set of dishes to a shotgun,” he recalled.
The rise of shopping malls changed that kind of downtown retail, he said, but Millerton has remained a lively commercial village.
“For us, it’s been a great place to have business,” Hermans said. “It’s a busy village.”
For Hermans, running a store was never simply about selling books and records. It was a way of being part of a place.
Music has remained another constant. Hermans continues to sell music at Oblong and hosts the radio program “New Harmony” on WKZE. The business of selling music has changed dramatically over the years, particularly with the rise of streaming, but Hermans has adapted.
He was initially reluctant to bring vinyl records back into the store because of their expense. But about four or five years ago, he began stocking LPs again, and they have become the main form of music the store sells.
He finds that many of the customers buying them are reconnecting with music they loved years ago.
“I do best with classic albums that people may have had when they were young,” he said. “And now that they’re retired, they want to hear it again.”
Hermans still reviews between 700 and 1,200 new music releases each week through the store’s distributor, Alliance Entertainment, carefully deciding what belongs on Oblong’s shelves.
That same commitment to place has led Hermans into a wide range of community projects. His work with the Harlem Valley Rail Trail is among the efforts he mentions when reflecting on his years of civic involvement. He has also served on the school board and has been involved with the Millerton Business Alliance and the Irondale Schoolhouse. He is now involved with The New Pine Plains Herald, which he sees as complementary to the work of The Millerton News and The Lakeville Journal.
“I really think that the important thing about this award is that people understand what a newspaper does to connect them to their community,” he said. “And if that means anything to their lives, they gotta support it.”
Hermans knew Mary Lou and Robert Estabrook and remembers them as people who were deeply conscious of their responsibilities to the community.
“They were really nice folks,” he said. “They were very conscious of what their role in the community was.”
There is, in fact, still plenty on his plate. Hermans admits he needs to scale back because he has taken on more than his current abilities can comfortably accommodate.
“To be given this award is very special,” he added. “But I don’t feel like I’m done.”
This article has been changed to reflect that Hermans and Nelson were partners. A prior version states that they were married.
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Adamah Farm crew members planning out the day’s tasks on a late September day.
Janna Siller
Over my 15 years of growing vegetables in Falls Village, I’ve exerted my will over all kinds of conditions, from drought to humidity to crows with a taste for cantaloupe. That’s what farming is all about. You zip around the field, hopping on and off tractors, moving hoses and chasing weeds, all in an effort to arrange conditions in favor of your crops. It is the crops’ job to gulp up sunlight and move water through their stems, to transform solar energy into your next pesto or ratatouille or butternut squash soup. It is the job of the farmer to irrigate just enough but not too much, to slice dandelion leaves without damaging delicate cabbage roots, to pander and pamper and stay in tune with what plants need to thrive.
The easy part of farming is trusting plants’ resilience. I have seen bright green shoots barrel ahead out of a plant torn to shreds by hail. I’ve watched wilty, heat-stressed seedlings turn rigid overnight and greet the next morning with vigor. The hard part is letting go of what you can’t control. As our crops lapped up Friday’s gentle sunshine and I considered the weekend forecast, I imagined roots holding tight to wet earth and branches supporting each other in sideways, pelting rain. I made sure all of our storage crops were already harvested and tucked away. I battened down the sides of our greenhouses and wished the remaining field crops good luck.
The nor’easter didn’t materialize too dramatically in our corner of New England. A few broken branches and debris blown about, nothing like the July Fourth storm that sent half a tree crashing onto the deer fence and left crates of fresh veggies in coolers without power.
Fall storage crop harvests amid soil building cover crops at Adamah Farm in Falls Village. Janna Siller
Farming is an exercise in acceptance. To do it well and return year after year, you have to balance hubris and humility. The prize can often be a certain equanimity, a training in the art of moving into the next day even when the last one scrambled all your plans.
Epic change is not always about the unexpected. It also comes like clockwork on the seasonal calendar. As I type, the last of summer’s watermelons wait naively on the vine for a few hot days to finish ripening. Broccoli are holding their leaves wide as they did in June and July, only to find that the hours of sunlight decrease with each earlier sunset. Plants can’t pick up and go south or call the manager to order a bonus round of sunshine. Their growth slows and they get a resigned look to the hue of their leaves, so different from the frenzied growth of summer.
The release of fall is not tragic or gloomy. It is not an ending because so many fall tasks are about setting up for the new beginnings in spring.
We turn the vines that yielded thousands of pounds of fruit into the soil, where healthy microbes feast on their rotting stems. Then we plant cover crops — a mix of cereal grains like rye and oats and legumes like peas, vetch and clover. Cover crops hold the soil and its nutrients in place over winter, feeding the soil food web and adding organic matter that next season’s crops will need to grow.
We sort sprinklers and repair hoses. We inventory tarps. We take notes about which plants did well where and how we might try a new approach for this or that. We stack crates of cured garlic and onions and winter squash in a cool, dark room.
We save seeds from tomatoes and beans and lettuce, carefully labeling each variety for next season’s long, sunny days.
Janna Siller is the farm director at Adamah, a community farm in Falls Village offering CSA shares, educational programs and a food access program.
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