After years of work, town plan approved in mere minutes

CORNWALL — The vote was quick, with no discussion on the motion. Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z) members paused when it was done, perhaps feeling the same sense of anticlimax. Why weren’t balloons and confetti falling from the sky?

Nearly three years after the process began, the new Town Plan of Conservation and Development was approved April 13. It was requested that the meeting minutes reflect all commissioners who had participated in the process.

State law requires a town plan be revised every 10 years. Cornwall planners decided it should be done as comprehensively as possible. The process began with a June 2007 weekend forum to seek public direction. It included a year of work sessions by four committees addressing major development and conservation issues. The committees included dozens of residents.

A draft went to a public hearing last November, which included this explanation from planning consultant Tom McGowan: While it is essentially an advisory document, McGowan said it does have certain statutory functions.

“As P&Z updates zoning regulations, it must refer back to and find a basis for the change in the town plan. The same goes for proposed zone changes,†he said.

“When the town proposes to acquire or sell land, abandon roads or build buildings, state statutes require P&Z give advisory comment relative to the plan. It also has to be generally consistent with the state plan.â€

P&Z has been working since then to make minor changes and correct typos and such in the document. Last week’s approval followed months of final review, accounting for the quick dispatch at the meeting.

Copies of the plan are available at Town Hall, libraries and online at cornwallct.org.

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less