Monday, October 12, 2009

Council meeting 10/13 - turf on the agenda

Tomorrow's Council meeting includes discussion on the turf. The proposed resolution is a request to redirect the $525,000* for turf at the CHS Athletic Complex to locker rooms at the CHS Athletic Complex.

I support the idea. For me, the locker rooms are definitely a higher priority than turf.

I have doubts though about this garnering five votes. In July 2008 I made a similar request to redirect the funds from the turf to the pool. And while I thought that proposal made a great deal of sense, the Council leadership described it as "preposterous." And the motion failed along party lines.

And so you know, with regard to the $500,000 CHS infrastructure improvements referendum... since the referendum includes no language prohibiting the use of this money on turf... it may be used on turf. Or more precisely, since both the referendum and the supporting explanatory language are "unclear," the use of the $500,000 on turf is not a legal issue. It is a political issue... no different from another hot topic in town.

Elections matter.

Tim White

* funded from Crusher's $12,000,000 slush fund the Speaker's annual $12,000,000 "discretionary fund"

8 comments:

Cheshire Chat Guy said...

Tim, I'm noticing a precipitous decline in reader comments since you required commentator registration over the weekend so I'll leave a comment. Not about the turf field--we can do without a turf practice field. Makes much more sense to fix up the locker rooms. I noticed a few weeks back in the herald someone wants to move the tennis courts over to bartlem park and expand the HS parking lot so students don't have to conjest traffic by crossing the street. Remember? That sounds like another good waste of money but if that comes up to the TC for consideration let's also consider a tunnel--that's right, a tunnel--under RT 10 for foot traffic. Might cost less than constructiong new parking lots and tennis courts. There's a fine example of a walking tunnel under RT 2 out in North Stonington where the HS campus sits on both sides of the street.

--Greg S.

Contoured Views said...

Once again, the turf heads are sending out mass emails to the town to make sure there is a good showing tomorrow night.
They feel that by packing the chambers with 100 or so people, it will show the TC that the majority of the 29,000 residents are in favor of it.

It is a real shame that our majority will try to push this through less than a month before the elections.

I sure hope there is a group of us who will show up to speak against this.

Speaking on the referendum, if it is too late to change the wording then we should vote it down. We all know they will find a way to use that money for the turf.
By the way, anyone who attended the game on Friday night saw how nice the field looked but how bad the electrical system is when half the lights went out delaying the game by 30 minutes---PRIORITIES!!

Tony Perugini said...

Tim,

I will do my best to attend the meeting tomorrow night because I do have a question for the Town Council regarding referendum Question #6. “Shall the $500,000 appropriation and bond authorization for
infrastructure improvements at Cheshire High School, be approved?”


The Board of Education stated that they are not responsible or accountable for the wording of the ballot questions and I should talk to the T.C. to get the following question answered:

What EXACTLY is the $500K to be used for? WHICH CHS Infrastructure upgrades?

The only CHS infrastructure upgrades listed in the 2009/2010 capital budget plan that add up to the $500K is the relocation of the boys lockers, hall locker upgrades and home ec room renovations. However, Question #6 makes no mention of these projects.

Also, can the CHS track resurfacing be considered a CHS Infrastructure upgrade? I ask this because it appears that the BOE did not fully fund the track resurfacing budget and will be short. I certainly don't want athletes hurting themselves on a poorly surfaced track. As such considering the boy's lockers and track are in dire need of repair, I don't want to see Question #6 voted down for the wrong reasons.

Question #6 should be Specific. Otherwise, based on the feedback I'm receiving door to door, there are MANY skeptical voters in town (D,R,U's) that will vote "No" on this question because of it's ambiguity. Let's see some SMART's on this question:

S - Specific
M - Measurable
A - Attainable
R - Realistic
T - Timely

Tony Perugini
(R) Candidate Board of Education

mcjk said...

Chat Guy,

That is a very good idea about the tunnel. One thing that should be considered before doing the parking lot/tennis court switch is to consider that if there is just one walker crossing the street every 2 minutes for the 20 or so minutes school is starting or leaving then it nullifies the effects of moving the parking lot.

So please before the TC starts considering hiring a consultant, get someone out there and figure out the distribution of walkers. The CHS math students probably could do a study on this as well as the traffic patterns and maybe make a descent recommendation.

Anne Giddings said...

The Town Manager mentioned the idea of moving the tennis courts from the Youth Center to Bartlem Park and putting additional student parking where the tennis courts are.

I believe that this was at the same time that he gave the information about the number of times traffic was stopped at CHS during student arrival time.

Anonymous said...

MCJK- hopefully this has been done. Decreasing the amountof students crossing the road won'tnecessarily work. All it takes is one kid at a time to press the walk button. Soundslike we need another consultant?

Robert DeVylder Jr. said...

If a tunnel will not work at West Main at the linear trail, why would it work at the high school. Both locations are at the bottom of a hill and would cost millions to design, engineer, and install. Remember, it is not just digging a ditch and dropping in a pipe. There are water mains, sewer pipes, gas lines as well as needing a road capable of 50+ ton trucks. The state would probably not be in favor of digging up this road.

On the news this morning, Johns Refuse in Northford was using asphault made of millings and old shingles to pave his new parking lot. The town should look into projects like that with Tilcon.

Bill said...

There are engineered precast concrete tunnel sections used by NYC and other cities for construction on underground tunnels including subway water runoff and other applications. In most cases these tunnels actually support the roads above them. In the case of west Main Street this application is very easy to do. The reason the Sta of CT ill not do it is because it makes sense, Las Vegas does all through their city for water drainage and it most importantly it is the cheapest and Best solution.