Author: kathrynwboughton@gmail.com

Road issues again captured the attention of the Board of Selectmen Wednesday when resident Bart Wenrich questioned the board about progress on building a temporary bridge on Smith Road. 

The bridge would replace one swept away by flash floods in July 2023 while the DOT plans a permanent replacement.

The Department of Energy and Environmental Protection is “in the final stage of approval” for the temporary structure, according to First Selectman Matt Riiska. “I told them this is not a matter of convenience for residents, it’s a safety issue,” he told Wenrich. 

He later said he is “pretty hopeful” that the issue will be resolved soon.

Meanwhile, the DOT is about a third of the way through a multi-year project to replace a large retaining wall on Route 44. Motorists too impatient to sit through the traffic light controlling alternating traffic there have been using Old Colony Road as a bypass.

The town’s Department of Public Works is located on Old Colony, a narrow town road, and “it is very dangerous for the town’s workers when cars are flying by,” Riiska said. “We have thought about making it a dead-end, but we have to talk to the fire department and emergency services.”

He said the situation will worsen as construction activity increases at Haystack Woods, located off Old Colony, where 10 affordable homes are being built. “It’s going to get congested,” he concluded. 

Townspeople will not decide Monday whether to build a new firehouse. 

The item was supposed to be on the call for the Tuesday, May 12, annual budget meeting, but First Selectman Matt Riiska told his board Wednesday that a special town meeting will be needed instead.

Construction of the new building is estimated at $8.3 million, with another million dollars budgeted for soft costs and contingency funds.

Riiska explained that the funding for the firehouse includes $500,000 to be taken from the $1.2 million the town received when it closed out its defined benefit plan. He was advised by bond counsel that the Board of Finance, which does not meet until the day after the town meeting, must pass a resolution to that effect. The Board of Selectmen then has to act on its own resolution.

The special town meeting will be held May 22.

At present, the town has $3,000,000 assured for construction of the firehouse. An additional $3 million is expected from a capital campaign and Riiska is waiting to hear if the state has approved his $500,000 STEAP grant application. 

Federal grants totaling $1.25 million had been approved but were caught up in Congress’ budget reconciliation process. Riiska has been advised to reapply for those funds. 

“We will keep chipping away at that,” Riiska said.

Transfer station stickers will increase by $10 in the coming fiscal year, the selectmen decided Wednesday. Currently $90 for the first vehicle, and $80 for the second, the primary permit will now increase to $100, while the second will remain at $80.

The selectmen noted that it costs the town $290,000 to run the transfer stations and costs are going to rise. Permit fees do not cover the expense. 

“People have to realize they have to stop buying so much junk and throwing it away,” First Selectman Matt Riiska said. “I can only say, ‘Please purchase wisely and recycle as much as you can.’”

A contingent of firefighters attended Wednesday’s Board of Selectmen’s meeting to ask for restoration of $6,600 that was cut from its 2025-26 budget request.

The $9.2 million proposed municipal budget currently includes $125,750 for the fire department.

After discussion, First Selectman Matt Riiska said he would confer with Board of Finance Chairman Michael Sconyers, adding that restoring the money would increase the expected 22.49 mill rate only fractionally.

A proposed budget can be reduced or increased following a budget hearing (Norfolk’s took place April 29), but the figure presented at a town meeting cannot be increased. Norfolk’s town meeting is May 11, and any additions would have to take place this week and be posted quickly.

The firefighters complained that Riiska had not given them notice of the reduction. “That conversation never came down the hill,” said Fire Chief Brian Hutchins. 

The department has six new members, all of whom will need turnout gear and training and fire chief Brian Hutchins said two trucks need extensive repairs. “That amounts to two sets of turnout gear; that’s one truck’s repairs.”

Riiska countered that the budget was presented in public meetings and had been posted online for more than a month. 

During budget preparation Riiska cuts where he believes numbers can be reduced. With only two months left in the fiscal year, 25 percent of the fire department’s budget is unexpended.

NVFD President Paul Padua said that many of the department’s expenses are incurred at the end of the fiscal year. “We spent two hours going through projected cost increases and came up with a responsible budget, which we presented to you,” he said.

Last year, $17,000 worth of fire department bills were not submitted by the end of the fiscal year and the payment was rolled over into the 2024-25 budget. That, combined with the budget cut this year and escalating costs since Covid, is creating “a snowball effect” in the department’s ability to keep up with mandated costs, Hutchins said.

First assistant fire chief Matthew Ludwig said additional cost increases are pending in more mandates from OSHA.

The firefighters noted that the company has received a half-million dollars in grant awards for apparatus over the past couple of years to help control costs. “We’re doing our due diligence,” Hutchins said.

The majority of discussion at last week’s budget hearing centered on dissatisfaction with $40,635 being budgeted for the continued restoration of City Meadow. That concern carried over to the Board of Selectmen’s meeting Wednesday when Ken Ludwig asked if the money is being cut from the budget. 

“A lot of people felt it has been stated many times [over the years] that the taxpayers would have nothing to do with paying for it,” he said. “I would hate to see the entire budget voted down because of that.”

First Selectman Matt Riiska said he has not been instructed by the Board of Finance to cut the funding. He said there is no reason to believe town funds will be needed every year.

Townspeople can make a motion at the town meeting to reduce the budget’s bottom line by the amount of the City Meadow funding. That would not guarantee that the money would be taken from that line item, however.

Since 2011, thousands of dollars in state and private funds have been invested in the site to create a stormwater collection system and to turn it into a natural landscape connecting Station Place and Shephard Road. But over the years, the meadow has become overrun with invasive plants. The Friends of the Meadow Committee is working to reverse this trend and enhance the Meadow’s role in the social life of the community. 

Last year, a $110,000 private donation was dedicated to invasives removal and developing a restoration plan. Many invasives were cleared and 400 woody plants of 21 different species were installed. 

Planting costs are estimated at $304,220, with three years of maintenance estimated at $33,600. The Friends of the Meadow Committee anticipates having to raise $150,000 to $250,000 to complete and maintain the work being done.

“Up to this point, including $500,000 from the state for the initial work, we’re looking at $1.5 million plus, all of it from private funds,” First Selectman Matt Riiska said. “Do the townspeople want to abandon it and let it rot? It’s up to the people.”

A series of workshops will be held from May through September at Great Mountain Forest (GMF). The series features several curriculum modules of GMF’s Woodland Academy and will be held at the Yale Forestry Camp in Great Mountain Forest. 

The first workshop, a full-day session on strategies and funding opportunities, is slated for May 22. GMF will host “Game of Logging I and II” sessions June 12 and 13, during which chainsaw skills will be taught. And on August 8, Star Childs of GMF and Dave Beers of the DEEP will teach land navigation and mapping skills. 

A three-day intensive course is scheduled for August 1, 15 and September 12, beginning with tree and shrub identification and moving on to creation of wildlife habitats. The workshops conclude with an exploration of management resources such as technical assistance programs, cost-share opportunities and tools of the trade. Each workshop combines classroom learning with field experience.

Visit the GMF Woodland Academy website page for more information and to apply for a spot.

—Kathryn Boughton

On April 17, Tarpon Towers and Cellco Partnership (d/b/a Verizon Wireless) officially filed an application with the Connecticut Siting Council to construct a telecommunications facility at 78 Goshen East Street. The siting council has until September 14 to decide the issue.

The tower, which would serve a portion of south Norfolk and Goshen that has no current cell service, would be located on a secluded parcel of land. Two weeks ago, a balloon float was conducted to determine the visibility of the proposed 186-foot-tall tower in the surrounding study area.

The tower, according to the application, will be located in the western portion of the 41-acre parcel and has few residences nearby. The closest house is 680 feet away and the surrounding terrain is hilly and densely forested.

Areas of potential concern included the northern end of Goshen East Street, which abuts the property, and is a locally designated scenic road. Route 272, which runs through the eastern half of the study area, is a state-designated scenic highway. The Amos Baldwin house, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is about a half mile southeast of the proposed site and there are several municipal, state and private open-space parcels located throughout the study area. 

The company used both computer modeling and the balloon test to assess the visual impact of the tower throughout the study area. The data was manipulated to indicate “visible cells” where the tower might be glimpsed at an average eye height (5 feet from the ground). The report cautions, however, that computer analysis cannot predict all variables such as vegetation, structures and the variability of topography. 

The report concluded that visibility will be restricted to a few locations along an approximately half-mile section of Estey Road, to an open field on the northeast and to North Pond on the south. Visibility on Estey Road will be primarily seasonal, and the site will not be visible from any other roads in the study area.

There will be no visual impact on the Amos Baldwin House or on the open space properties or trails. 

The siting council will hold a public hearing where they application will be reviewed and discussed. Residents can formally request party or intervenor status from the Connecticut Siting Council (CSC) and submit evidence, present witnesses and question other participants in the proceeding. Residents can also choose to make a limited appearance at the hearing, which allows them to provide input without becoming a formal party or intervenor.

A request for intervenor status must be made at least five days before a public hearing. For more information and an intervenor form, click here.

While residents can participate in the process and provide input, the CSC ultimately makes the decision on whether to grant the certificate for the tower.

—Kathryn Boughton

An informational meeting about why Norfolk needs a new firehouse and how much it might cost prompted only two questions Thursday night, one about whether the proposed plan will meet future needs, and the second about whether solar panels were included in the plan.

The new structure would provide adequate space for training, storage and parking of the today’s much-larger fire engines, according to First Assistant Fire Chief Matt Ludwig. And the solar panels cut from the plant to save costs.

Ludwig said the current firehouse, which originally housed three fire trucks, was “perfect” 54 years ago but that, with seven trucks measuring up to 33 feet in length, the building is now inadequate.

He painted a picture of quarters so cramped that the doors of trucks parked side by side, cannot be opened simultaneously. Modern building codes require at least three feet of open space around fire trucks. Trucks have to be pulled out of the firehouse when meetings and training sessions are held.

“Firefighting has changed drastically over the last 50 years,” he said. “Because we are held to such high standards, we are continually training, about 20 hours a month.”

The current building has numerous building code violations and does not have a ventilation system to mitigate exposure to toxic fumes such as diesel exhaust. 

Ludwig said the design for the new firehouse addresses the current and future needs of the community even though the building committee “trimmed the unnecessary fluff.”

Barry Roseman, a member of the building committee with extensive experience in developing financing for nonprofit projects, said construction costs have escalated from 6 to 7 percent annually in four-plus years since Covid. “We have had to navigate the tension between cost, design and function,” he said. 

He described efforts to reduce the cost of the proposed firehouse. Preliminary estimates came in at $9.5 million. After deep cutting, the estimate was reduced to $8,263,000. Soft costs and a contingency fund pushed the cost back up to $9,263,000.

Funding will come from a $2.5 million grant from the state; $3,000,000 in private donations; $500,000 in town funds, and bond financing of $3,263,000. A federal grant of $1.25 million was caught up in the Washington budget cuts, but the town will reapply next year. 

Roseman said the town should not delay construction to a later time because it could lose the state grant and costs continue to rise. 

The issue will go to a town vote on May 12. Ludwig urged everyone to support the fire department.

—Newsletter Editor

The Norfolk Historical Society is preparing for its 2025 season with the launch of a new website and announcement of its summer exhibition. 

“We’ve added a few new features like ‘Architecture’ to the website,” said Director Barry Webber. “We’re planning to expand on that, especially about the 18th-century houses, for the 250th anniversary of the country in 2026.”

“I’m starting public access to the portal for the collections database,” Webber said. “The database lists documents that people can come research.”

The new site allows visitors to explore a number of sections, including one focused on the town’s rich Colonial past. A downloadable walking tour includes descriptions of historic buildings and the families that once occupied them. There are other sections on the town’s early history, historic personages, historic maps from 1853 to 1902 and genealogy. “The maps are new, and users can zoom in on them and see where their house was in 1853,” Webber said.

Also included is a section summarizing the deeply researched exhibitions created each summer and displayed at the historical society’s headquarters on the village green. This year’s exhibition, “A New Birth of Freedom: Norfolk in the War of the Rebellion,” looks at Norfolk’s participation in the Civil War and the attitudes toward slavery in the community. The exhibit will be on view weekends, 1:00 to 4:00 p.m., June 7 through October 12. 

—Newsletter Editor

Crews were putting the finishing touches on River Place bridge this week, getting ready to pave the little street on Monday. That will put paid to a project that began in the summer of 2022 and stalled in November of that year when it was discovered that one headwall was not sitting on a firm foundation.

Construction did not begin again until last year after the bridge was redesigned. “They will pave on Monday and then it’s cleanup and landscaping,” said First Selectman Matt Riiska. The foreman on the work site predicted that finishing touches will take a month after the road is again completely open to traffic.

One of the workmen commented on the gracious quality of a neighborhood that has been inconvenienced for three years. “They have been so patient with us when we had our equipment in the way and one lady up the street even brought us cookies,” he said.

A few hundred feet away, on Route 44, crews continue to move forward on the massive project to reconstruct a century-old rubble retaining wall. The multi-year project still has two years to go before it will be complete. 

Riiska said that the DOT plans a public meeting in May at Town Hall to describe the progress of the project. Details about the meeting will be announced soon.

Finally, engineers from Cardinal Engineering are still working with DEEP to get approval of plans for a temporary bridge to replace the one washed out on Smith Road in summer 2023. 

—Newsletter Editor