Candlelight Committee Meeting (Update)

The Candlelight Committee meeting will be held at the Foxon Firehouse on Route 80 at 7 PM, January 24th. It will not be held in the Foxon Community Center. The meeting lasts about an hour. If you want to hear what is going on with the Candlelight or have your input heard, please attend the meeting.

The meeting was held last night with an audience of 20, or so, residents in attendance. Mayor Capone Almon and Erica from her office gave an update on the demolition and environmental work and some grants that may be available for some of the work on the property. Here is a short video clip of the update:



The latter part of the meeting was a continuation of the exploration of possible uses for the site. The range of uses will be explored in detail starting with the next meeting on February 7th. The Committee Chair hopes to schedule that meeting for the Beach House at 7 PM. The following week the pace will pick up considerably with 2 meetings scheduled in an effort to finalize recommendations to the Mayor by the end of February. As always, the full meeting is shown on Comcast Public Access Cable channel 20. The full meeting has now been uploaded to Google Video and can be watched here:

Candlelight Committee Meeting

The Candlelight Committee met Thursday, January 10th at the Foxon Rec Center. The meetings are scheduled every 2 weeks on Thursday nights. The next meeting is on January 24th at 7 PM at the Foxon Rec Center. Mayor Capone Almon was in attendance to explain the status of the demolition plan and a meeting she had with representatives of the Mohegan tribe. The phase 2 environmental study is underway and should be completed in a couple of weeks. At that point we will know how much hazardous materials have to be removed during the demolition process. The Mayor wants to have demolition completed in February or March. Take a look at the Mayor's report:



I have managed to get the full video of the meeting uploaded to google video. The link is here. Or you can watch it below:

Town Event Calendar

The East Haven Politics blog has added a new feature. On the right side of the page under "LINKS" we have added a Town Event Calendar link. The calendar will contain meeting or event notices for the Town of East Haven meetings (Board of Finance, Town Council..etc.) or other events in town. If you know of some event that you want put on the calendar send an email to easthavenpolitics@gmail.com and I will add it to the calendar. Although there is only one item on the calendar right now I will be adding new meetings and events every day or two. Check back frequently for the latest updates.

Planning and Zoning Commission Meeting (updated with new video)

There were two public hearings and a regular meeting of the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting on Wednesday, January 2nd. The public hearings started at 7:00 PM at the Senior Center and was followed by the regular meeting. The public hearings were on creation of a subdivision at 110 Barberry Road and to change the zoning regulations to allow an "adult" (55+ years) housing condo at 240 Hemingway Ave.

The public hearing on the Barberry Road project stopped abruptly when the town's land use counsel told the counsel for the property owner that approval of the Inland Wetlands Commission was needed before the PZC could take any action. The developer's attorney argued that, since they were only subdividing the property at this time and not developing anything, the approval of the Inland Wetlands Commission was not needed. However, the PZC thought the Town's land use attorney was right and the hearing was terminated so the developer could go get the requisite approvals from Inland Wetlands. Here is the developer's presentation:



The public hearing on the Hemingway Avenue project drew quite a large crowd of residents from the area. All spoke against the project since the plan was to have the entrance to the parking lot on Dwight Street which is a small, dead end street. The residents wanted the entrance to the parking lot to be on Hemingway Avenue but the state Department of Transportation did not like that plan. Any action on this item was tabled to allow the developer to work with the State DOT to move the entrance. Here is the developer's presentation for this project:



One interesting part of the public comment session illustrates everything I dislike about the present PZC. As I have noted on other occasions, the PZC does not seem interested in hearing from the public. They would be much happier if no one ever showed up at their meetings. I have been at meetings where the Chairman, Frank Cappelloni, told the public he was imposing a 10 minute limit for each member of the public at the start of the hearing. Last night he went one better. Not only did he not announce a limit beforehand but when one resident was talking he just announced his time was up. This happened about 6 minutes 30 seconds into the gentleman's comments. What is up with that? Does Cappelloni's new time limit for public comment depend on how much he wants to hear from someone? Here is the video of the gentleman's comments: