4/26/2024 A Message from First Selectman Bindelglass

Good afternoon,

On Monday, April 29, we will hold our Annual Town Meeting at Samuel Staples Elementary School cafetorium, at 7:00pm. As a reminder, the town meeting is the legislative body of Easton. The annual town meeting is centered around approving budgets. The Demolition Delay Ordinance will be passed at the meeting by voice vote and the budget and lease agreement will require an adjournment to a referendum for a town vote. The budgets for the town, which include the Easton Board of Education budget can be viewed at https://www.eastonct.gov/home/news/04-29-2024-annual-town-meeting.  I believe both our budgets have reasonable increases and still maintain excellent schools and levels of service in our town and I hope you will vote in favor of them.

We are considering amendments to the Demolition Delay Ordinance which established a committee to review historic buildings before they are demolished with the intent of trying to preserve our history. The amendment expands the membership of this committee so it can take on broader historic preservation responsibilities in conjunction with the state. This will be considered at the meeting by voice vote.

Lastly, we are discussing the negotiated lease with the Blaze family and the New England Prayer Center. You know of my commitment to resolve all of the issues surrounding the South Park property. The Blazes have been living and providing services to town residents and others for years and have been good tenants, caring for the property, but they have been living as holdover tenants, month to month without a lease for several years. The activities of the prayer center would remain the same as specified in the conservation restriction on the land, and they would continue to pay rent which offsets our debt repayment, and be responsible for maintaining the house. Basically, we would be maintaining the status quo but codifying it which protects the town. There will be discussion about this, but the final approval will be at referendum.

For those who would like to learn more about town meetings and their history I found this to be a very interesting article: https://ctmirror.org/2023/08/13/ct-municipal-government-town-meeting-fir...

There remains confusion about the status of the soil around the Easton Village Store. I have excerpted from a statement by the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) the unabridged statement can be found as an attachment to this post on the home page of the website.

“While the majority of impacted soils have been removed from the property between February and June 2022, isolated areas of soils with constituents of concern remain above the State’s regulatory criteria.  Groundwater monitoring wells have been installed and the monitoring wells have been sampled quarterly between October 2022 and October 2023.  The owner and his consultant plan to install additional monitoring wells in April 2024 to continue to investigate the extent and degree of groundwater impacts on the site.

Of the three existing monitoring wells, only one of the monitoring wells had a constituent of concern detected above regulatory criteria during any of the sampling events that have occurred.  That detection was in the monitoring well that is closest to the former tank area during the first of the sampling event.   During the subsequent sampling events all constituents of concern that were detected in the three monitoring wells were below the State’s regulatory criteria”. 

Tomorrow, April 27, from 10:00am to 1:00pm there will be a touch a truck event to raise money for our sister city of Sviatohirsk, Ukraine, at Samuel Staples Elementary School. There will be a food truck, games, raffle and plenty of trucks to view and explore. Come join us.

Does your child or a student you care about have (or want) a smartphone? Trying to keep them safe, and having a hard time keeping up with the multitude of apps? Join Easton’s Here to Help and Officer Rich Marsh for a presentation on “The Secrets of the Apps”. Register today at: bit.ly/ehth-apps and join other parents on April 30th from 7:00pm to 9:00pm at Joel Barlow High School, 100 Black Rock Turnpike in Redding. Learn what could be hiding in plain sight on a kid or teen's smartphone. Officer Marsh will take a deep dive into the world of smartphone apps, and their hidden uses. This presentation was created to give parents, guardians, and anyone else caring for school-aged children (from 3rd grade through high school) the guidance and resources they need to make informed decisions about their child’s cellular phone use.

Bring Me Back Home is a new registry for Connecticut residents which allows law enforcement access to information to assist in the recovery of missing or wandering persons.  This program helps first responders and families reunite with individuals living with cognitive challenges. To sign your loved one up for Bring Me Back Home, visit ct.gov/BMBH.  This information is then part of the statewide Bring Me Back Home registry. When the person wanders or is missing, individuals should call 911 immediately and indicate that they are registered with the Bring Me Back Home program. Law enforcement officers will have access to the confidential and secure information and respond accordingly.

The Electronics Recycling Event will take place on Saturday, May 4th from 10:00am-2:00pm at Samuel Staples Elementary School. Also, on Saturday, May 4th from 11:00am-1:00pm will be the Easton Electric Car Show at SSES. Both events are sponsored by the Easton Energy & Environmental Task Force.

The bathrooms at the Morehouse fields are now open and will remain so from 8:00am to 8:00pm.

Enjoy your weekend,

Dave