Don Lowe First Selectman Column 11/17/2025
The Board of Selectmen will beholding its regularly scheduled monthly meeting this Thursday, November 20 in Mallory Town Hall at 7pm. The agenda and link for the TEAMS remote meeting is on the Town website. Primarily, we are reviewing some old business and deciding on which capital projects and equipment we may want to move forward on. The holiday season is approaching, and things slow down a bit prior to kicking back into high gear for budget time.
On Saturday, November 22, we have two Town Meetings. That is somewhat unusual but out of necessity, it’s the way it worked out. The first is at 9:30AM in Charter Hall and it concerns 2 expenditures for public works: a new loader, an Hitachi ZW140, by which we will ask an approval for an expense of $175,00 from the capital non-recurring fund; the other is a request to spend $25,000 for a Rotary Brand lift to be installed in the public works garage to better enable our superb mechanic, Kyle Thomson, to work on the vehicles.
The other Town Meeting is slated for 10AM in Charter Hall, and it’s the necessary Town Meeting that is held prior to a referendum. (The referendum is on the proposed new Senior Center, and it will be held on December 6.) This meeting serves as another opportunity for the Town to ask questions and learn more about the project. At the conclusion, the meeting is adjourned to the referendum.
In our building committee’s efforts for outreach, we have held four public forums, spoke to several groups including the present Senior Center users and the Sherman School SPTO, featured several articles in local publications, and offer a wide range of comprehensive information on the Town website including site plans and FAQS. In addition, there will be a mailing sent out in the coming days. Yet, feel free to reach out to me for anything you’d like to know about this important project. As stated earlier, the referendum is on Saturday, December 6 in Charter Hall from 10AM to 8PM.
This Friday, November 21 is the Senior Thanksgiving Luncheon to be held in Charter Hall. It starts at 1PM and any senior member of the public is welcome to attend.
Last Saturday I attended the Annual Meeting for the Northwest Connecticut Land Conservancy (NCLC) group. This year it was held in New Fairfield and was quite well attended by at least 70 people. NCLC has served our area for 60 years now and has conserved more than 14,000 acres of land that we humans can enjoy and where nature can thrive. Please visit their website and learn more. They are a wonderful organization for gratifying volunteer opportunities if you are looking for a place to help out.
