First Selectman Weekly Update 11-1-2019
Hello North Stonington. We’ve had another exciting week!
This week we held an affordable housing discussion at the Wheeler Middle High School where approximately 65 neighbors and friends got together to discuss the topic. Special thanks to State Director of Policy, Research and Housing Support Michael Santoro, Margaret Leonard and the Affordable Housing Committee for their quick work pulling this together. We are very excited about the next steps which will be discussed at the next affordable housing meeting. Keep an eye on the town calendar for their next meeting place and time.
We are very proud to announce the Town of North Stonington has received the prestigious Bronze status certifying we are a SustainableCT community! A lot of work from many boards, commissions, volunteers, and staff went into this. Special thanks to Alexis Kahn who spearheaded the initiative as well as Administration and Finance Officer Christine Dias and Planning, Development and Zoning Officer Juliet Hodge. We look forward to receiving the official award at the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities event on December 3rd.
At the time of this written update we had 196 neighbors without power due to the windy conditions last night. Eversource is working hard towards restoration and we thank our emergency responders for staying vigilant all night long to respond to these weather events. Thanks to the highway crew for the continued work keeping our catch basins clean and trees trimmed which has helped to lessen the effects of these weather events.
Speaking of the highway, our salt shed is now full and we are ready with materials for winter storms. We are continuing tree trimming and still some mowing and fall clean up.
On Tuesday I attended a meeting at the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments offices to discuss the state of recycling in our area. There will be a very strong push to update the bottle bill in our state as it is crucial to helping keep the costs of disposal down in towns and also very helpful to reduce recyclables being discarded as general waste. There was also a presentation on the SMART disposal program which will be further discussed with the SCCOG. It is clear that recyclables, which were once a commodity, are now actually turning into an expense for towns so we need to come up with creative solutions to help our planet while reducing cost to towns. The revised bottle bill being discussed would do just that. More to come in the coming months on this.
You may have noticed we have not done a video update in 4 weeks. With the new scheduling at the school and a bit of a lapse between recording and release of the videos we are going to be creative moving forward on the video updates. We hope next week to start a new format with the videos where we focus more specifically on topics, or projects and try to get into a bit more detail on them in the few minutes of recording. If you have topics you are interested hearing more about, please email us at selectman@northtoningtonct.gov. We will continue to issue written updates on the weekly happenings around town.
Finally, Tuesday is Election day! Please be sure to let your voice be heard on November 5th at the polls from 6am-8pm 40 Main Street. Thanks to all the candidates who put their names forward in service to the town. As a reminder Town Hall is closed on Election day.
That’s it for today, we hope everyone has a great weekend!
Mike Urgo
First Selectman