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A variety of artwork by children and adults will be on display at Hunt Library beginning April 5.
Patrick L. Sullivan
FALLS VILLAGE — There will be a reception for the new art show at the David M. Hunt Library Saturday, April 5, 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
The show, “Playing with Art,” is a group show with work from adults and children, including quilts and new work from local artists including Danielle Mailer, Ken Musselman, Erika Crofutand Robert Cronin — among others.
Children’s artwork from a tissue paper collage workshop conducted by Breetel Graves will also be part of the show.
Also part of the show is restored vintage 1970s film animation based on a book of Grimm’s Fairy Tales by Eric Carle.One of the films, The Fisherman and His Wife, was an Academy Award finalist for best animated short in 1979.These animated cartoons will be shown on Friday, April 18 at 3 p.m.
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SALISBURY — The Inland Wetlands and Watercourses Commission voted unanimously in favor of adopting a long-awaited update to its regulations at its March 24 regular meeting.
Following approval from the IWWC, the document will now undergo review by Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. “If all goes well,” a public hearing with the town regarding the regulations will follow on May 12, IWWC Chair Vivian Garfein said.
In the draft sent to the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, the lakes are given a 75-foot upland review area, but each of the four major lakes — Wononscopomuc, Wononkapook, Washining, and Washinee — is given its own line, allowing for future discussion of the lakes as separate entities. The upland review area has seen disagreement between the IWWC and lakeshore property owners, with several commission members wishing to broaden upland review areas around the lakes but receiving pushback from residents.
Garfein said that any lake association that would push for changes to the upland review area of a lake will present their testimony at the public hearing, where the Commission may discuss, and potentially vote, on any alterations to the regulations.
The new draft updates the previous regulations, which were established in 2006.
First Selectman Curtis Rand, speaking in the public comment section of the meeting, commended the IWWC’s work in finalizing the regulations. “I really appreciate all the work you’ve put into these regulations,” he said. “It’s been a long time coming and thank you.”
The commission also discussed in detail the “‘Allowed’ Activities Not Requiring a Permit” document, which is intended to be an advisory guide for residents on what types of activities they may conduct in or near waterways that don’t necessitate an application to the IWWC.
After a lengthy discourse on the specific language of the document, the Commission decided to table the issue until the next meeting.
When completed, the document will be publicly available on the IWWC’s webpage.
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Kent reviews capital spending
Apr 02, 2025
KENT — Residents and town officials convened at Town Hall Friday, March 28, to hear a presentation on the five-year capital plan.
The Board of Selectmen presented its proposed capital plan, which is scheduled to go to public hearing on May 2 and a town vote on May 16 in conjunction with a vote on the yearly operational budget.
The capital proposal calls for a total of $10,384,475 to be allocated toward town projects through 2030.
Areas of expenditure detailed in the plan span improvements to Kent Central School’s infrastructure, public works projects such as roads and bridges upkeep, the Volunteer Fire Department, parks and recreation costs, and town building repairs.
The plan also introduces a section for emergency management, new to this year’s update.
The bulk of the budget is allocated toward public works for a total of $5,141,234, which First Selectman Marty Lindenmayer said reflects the town’s dedication to improving its infrastructure in the near future.
Lindenmayer explained the five-year plan, which is updated annually, is a financial protective measure to ensure the town has the capacity to be self-reliant in accomplishing its goals.
“We have to, as a town, be prepared,” Lindenmayer said, reasoning that the town can’t always rely on federal and state funding.
He continued, “We have to be fiscally observant on what’s going on around us, and project out” by incorporating those observations into the plan.
“Let’s start with what we know we can afford, and go from there.”
The draft is available to view on the town’s website.
Park and Rec ordinance
Residents in attendance March 28 voted on an amended draft of Chapter 10 of the town’s ordinances, which pertains to parks and recreation.
Lindenmayer noted that the amended ordinance, approved by the Board of Selectmen on March 13, addresses a former stipulation that obligated a selectman to sit on the board of the Park and Recreation Commission, the only town commission with such a requirement.
The new ordinance language eliminates that component of the chapter, and also codifies that the town-employed parks and recreation director has the ability to make recommendations for the hiring and termination of department staff. Final hiring and firings are conducted by the town.
The new ordinance passed the town vote, with 17 in favor and one against. The ordinance will take effect on April 14.
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Beware an unfettered presidency
When America’s Founders wrote the Constitution in 1787, the world had no democracies. Countries across the meridians were led by all-powerful kings and other dictators. An example was George III, the British monarch, who treated the American colonists as mere vassals who could be wantonly taxed despite their lack of representation, in whose homes British troops could be quartered at whim, and who constantly harassed colonial shipping in international waters — among other arbitrary activities backed by military force. This King, as is characteristic of dictators, eventually overplayed his hand and the thirteen colonies rose up in revolt.
The great genius of James Madison and his colleagues was to create the first true democracy in history, going far beyond the semi-democratic practices of ancient Greek cities and Swiss canons. They insisted on the sharing of power across three “departments” of government: the executive, legislative and judicial.
Their novel Constitutional endeavors had an overriding objective: to guard against the dangers of tyranny. Above all else, the Founders were imbued with anti-power values. No more autocratic leaders like King George.
The core philosophy guiding the Founders was to distribute power across three “branches” of government, as a means for limiting its potential abuse by any one branch. As Lord Acton would state in his famous aphorism a hundred years later, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Long before Action, the colonists understood this principle. By establishing separate institutions — executive, legislative and judicial — “ambition would be made to counteract ambition,” as Madison stated the case in Federalist Paper 51. In this manner, no branch would grow so mighty as to dwarf the others or dictate to the American people.
Justice Louis Brandeis eloquently expressed the spirit of the Founders in a case that came before the Supreme Court in 1926 (Myers v. United States). “The doctrine of the separation of powers was adopted by the [Constitutional] Convention of 1787,” he wrote, “not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power. The purpose was not to avoid friction, but by means of the inevitable friction incident to the distribution of governmental powers among three department, to save the people from autocracy” [emphasis added].
In contrast to this wise approach to governance, a more recent school of thought has embraced the concept of a “unitary” presidency. What becomes all-important in this approach is a powerful engine to move the nation forward — an unfettered president free to shape a nation’s destiny as the White House sees fit, without the interference of “checks-and-balances” from lawmakers on Capitol Hill or members of the Supreme Court. In this model, now in place in the United States, the legislative and judicial branches are largely supine to the will of the Oval Office and the president’s minions spread across the agencies of the executive branch.
The greatest achievement of the Founders — their establishment of safeguards against the use of absolute power by a single individual or branch of government — is currently being erased. It is a troubling time in the nation’s history, with liberty hanging in the balance. A starting place to restore our form of democratic restraints on arbitrary power is to support those members of Congress and the judiciary who understand the Constitution. Our fate depends heavily on America’s representatives and judges as independent guardrails in this struggle to continue our long and admirable history of shielding freedom against the forces of tyranny.
Loch K. Johnson taught political science for forty years at the University of Georgia, while also serving intermittently as a senior staff aide in the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives, and as a Fellow at Oxford and Yale Universities. He retired to Salisbury in 2019. Professor Johnson is the author of The Third Option: Covert Action and American Foreign Policy (Oxford University Press).