Girls Adventure and Leadership Series

Parent and Teen Night May 13th

"Granting" Windsor Locks Better Streets

Construction on Olive Street

by The Save Windsor Locks Staff
SaveWindsorLocks@gmail.com

As you drive down Suffield and North Main Street you hear the sound of heavy machinery and the "beep, beep, beep", when they are backing up.  What does this "beep" mean for the residents of Windsor Locks?  

Our utilities are being improved, old sewer pipes have been replaced, road beds are resurfaced and new sidewalks installed.  Some of these pipes were so old they were actually made of clay.  This project on Olive and Pleasant Street has a price tag of Five Hundred Thousand Dollars.  If you wondering what the cost to the residents of Windsor Locks is, you will be pleasantly surprised.  ZERO! Last Night the Town had a hearing for another round of funding for Fern Street and the eastern end of Pearl Street for the same amount of funding.

How in this day and age can a small town like Windsor Locks get over a million dollars from the Federal and Connecticut State Governments?  First Selectman Steven N. Wawruck has been aggressively pursuing State and Federal dollars through a program called the Small Cities Grant through the Department of Economic Development.

  

This Grant is part of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development's Small Cities Community Development Grant Program which provides grants to cities and towns for economic development, affordable housing, community facilities and revitalization projects.  "The money is out there, we just keep working hard on our grant applications to make sure that Windsor Locks can get every single dollar that we are eligible to get." Wawruck said. "It's a fantastic program, allowing us to make much needed improvements on our aging infrastructure with out having to raise our mill rate".

The Town Hall renovation project was also funded a couple years ago through the same program for a Six Hundred Thousand Dollar award to allow for handicap access throughout the entire building that included the addition of an elevator and complete renovation of the restroom facilities.

Three paving projects for Pesci Park, Veteran's Park and Town Hall parking lots were funded through a Small Cities Economic Assistance Program (STEAP) grant in the amount of One Hundred and Thirty Six Thousand Dollars and will be completed before the end of summer this year.  

The next time you are driving around Windsor Locks and you hear "beep, beep, beep",  smile because it's the sound of improving our community without a higher property tax bill.

Public Hearing On Windsor Locks Budget Draws Modest Crowd

By KIM VELSEY, kvelsey@courant.comThe Hartford Courant

7:22 p.m. EDT, April 20, 2011

The board of finance presented its 2011-12 budget proposal of $43.1 million to a small crowd at Tuesday night's public hearing.

The budget represents a 0.38 percent increase over last year's $42.9 million budget. If approved, it would require a tax increase of 0.97 mills, or 4.19 percent, bringing the tax rate to 24.12 mills, according to board Chairman Con O'Leary.

Cuts in state funding — particularly in the payment in lieu of taxes for manufacturing machinery and equipment — had the biggest effect on the budget, according to O'Leary. Even with new revenue that would be generated under Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's plan to allow municipalities to tax hotel rooms and car rentals, the net loss for the town would be about $1 million, O'Leary said.

The 2010 grand list of assessed property increased by $9.07 million. But between 1998 and 2010, the percentage of the grand list that businesses accounted for dropped from 54 percent to 34 percent.

"The business owners have received a break and the homeowner has picked up the load," said O'Leary. "That's part of the revenue problem."

Medical, utility and fuel costs are higher in the proposed budget, but capital improvement spending falls from this year's $1 million to $615,700. General government, public safety, health and welfare spending all had small decreases, ranging from 0.02 percent to 1.33 percent.

Much of the discussion at the hearing centered on the $27.3 million education budget. The amount represents a 1.48 percent increase, less than the school board had requested, but enough to be educationally responsible, said Superintendent Wayne Sweeney.

Several residents questioned costs related to keeping class sizes small when test scores have not improved. Sweeney said that current class sizes have been backed by research and are consistent with similar towns.

Paul Fortier, who said his daughter was a junior at the high school, expressed support for the schools.

"Every year, there's a band-aid, every year we look at what can get passed," said Fortier. "The fact of life is, if we want to have these services in town, it comes with a bill."

"I think this was a positive reaction," O'Leary said after the presentation. "I think the reason that people didn't come out is because they're reasonably satisfied."

Board members said that they did not expect to make any significant changes to the budget before the annual town meeting, which is scheduled for May 17 at 7:30 p.m. in the Windsor Locks high school auditorium.

WL Finance Board Oks additional $8,200 for Koistinen investigation

By Harlan Levy
Journal Inquirer

WINDSOR LOCKS — The Finance Board on Tuesday approved an additional $8,200 to finish the outside investigation of police actions in the fatal Oct. 29 crash that killed 15-year-old bicyclist Henry Dang.

Former Hartford Police commander and lawyer Frank Rudewicz, the investigator who began the probe in January, notified Police Commission Chairman Neal Cunnigham on Tuesday that the $30,000 originally appropriated was not enough.

Cunningham told the Finance Board that Rudewicz wanted $7,000 to $14,000 to finish his investigation of the actions of Sgt. Robert Koistinen, other police personnel, and town officials on the night when Koistinen’s son, former officer Michael Koistinen, struck and killed Dang.

“The investigation proved to be more complicated than expected, and he has more people to interview,” Cunningham said. “He has interviewed all the Windsor Locks police officers involved, and he has six or seven officers from the regional accident reconstruction team still to be interviewed. He also has to go back and interview some of the Windsor Locks officers and the chief and then write his report.”

The Board of Selectmen now must call a town meeting to make the funds available. That may happen at next Tuesday’s board meeting.

The report won’t be ready until sometime in May at the earliest, Cunningham said, because of town meeting notice requirements and time to finish the interviews and write the report.

In January state police charged Sgt. Koistinen with hindering prosecution and interfering with the initial investigation of the accident. State police charged Michael Koistinen, 24, with manslaughter, negligent homicide, and attempted evidence tampering. The Police Commission fired him in December.

Sgt. Koistinen, 54, has been on administrative leave with pay at $73,000 a year.

Questions have been raised regarding why Michael Koistinen was not questioned at the scene and no blood, breath, or urine samples were taken to test for alcohol. State police say the younger man had been drinking for several hours before the accident.

Also, while his son was secured in the back seat of his cruiser, Sgt. Koistinen drove from the scene to the nearby police station and back twice before regional investigators arrived. And at Johnson Memorial Hospital with his son, he informed staff that his son refused tests to determine alcohol levels.

Other questions include why police stored Koistinen’s cruiser at the safety complex without securing it, whether Police Chief John Suchocki’s talking to the younger Koistinen that night was appropriate, and whether the appearance at the scene of First Selectman Steven Wawruck and Cunningham was appropriate.

Koistinen’s lawyer, Elliot Spector, said that Koistinen “didn’t prevent any single officer from taking any action at all. Nothing that he did amounts to interfering or hindering. He didn’t prevent a blood test. In the affidavit there’s not a single officer who said, ‘I couldn’t do my job, because I was prevented from doing my job by Robert Koistinen.’”

Spector added, “As soon as he found out his son was there he called up the police department and said, ‘Dispatcher, get in touch with the chief. Get the captain. Get the regional squad down here.’ He knew he couldn’t be involved in the investigation. The only thing he did was direct traffic.”

Spector also said Koistinen put his son in his cruiser for convenience and that the two trips to the station with his son were merely for communicating with a dispatcher and to get traffic equipment.

Robert Koistinen was off duty when his son arrived at the hospital and was “a father merely conveying his son’s wishes,” Spector said. “The only thing that a police officer could possibly say is that he communicated his son’s invocation of his constitutional rights.”

Bullying Awareness Forum

North Street School,

South Elementary School,

and Windsor Locks Youth Services

Invite parents of Pre K-5 students to join us for a

Bullying Awareness Forum

This event will include presentations by:

Lisa Tregoning, Governor’s Prevention Partnership

Kathy Christianson, Governor’s Prevention Partnership

and

a panel discussion of school personnel, parents, and law enforcement

that will be answering your questions!

Date:          Tuesday, April 26^th, 2011

Time:          Registration begins at 6 p.m.  Program begins at 6:15 p.m. and

                    will end at 8 p.m.

Location:          North Street School, located at 325 North Street

Light refreshments will be served.

Please register for this event by contacting

Kate Barnard, Youth Services Director at 860-627-1482 or kbarnard@wlocks.com

Portion of Windsor Locks Canal Trail closed to protect nesting eagles

By Journal Inquirer Staff

Published: Thursday, March 31, 2011 12:06 PM EDT

http://journalinquirer.com/articles/2011/04/03/towns/windsor_locks/doc4d94a13800469988434788.txt

WINDSOR LOCKS — The Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection and Ahlstrom Nonwovens LLC have announced that the southern end of the popular Windsor Locks Canal State Park Trail will remain closed until July 1 to protect a pair of nesting bald eagles.

“Although bald eagle numbers are increasing in the state, the birds are still a state threatened species,” said DEP Commissioner Dan Esty. “Disturbance can cause the adult eagles to abandon their nest, causing the eggs or chicks to die.”

Once in decline due to the effects of pesticides, nesting bald eagles returned to Connecticut in 1993, after an absence of almost 50 years. Twenty-two bald eagle pairs were documented in the state in 2010, and 18 of those pairs made nests. Six of the 18 nests failed, and the 12 successful bald eagle pairs fledged 23 chicks.

The DEP Windsor Locks Canal State Park Trail is formed from a historic towpath built to bypass the Enfield rapids in the Connecticut River. The rapids provide a shallow area that is perfect for bald eagles to find their preferred food of fish.

The DEP and Ahlstrom will keep the trail closed only until the young eagles have reached flying stage, which is expected to be July 1. If the nest fails or the young can fly before July 1, the trail will be opened earlier.

Windsor Locks Train Station Effort Stopped In Its Tracks

The back of the WL Train Station

www.courant.com

Tom Condon

To borrow Tolstoy's thought about families, successful historic preservation projects follow a similar pattern; unsuccessful efforts fail in their own ways.

In a successful project, when a historic property is threatened, someone sounds the alarm, people organize, public officials get on board, the media cover it, and pretty soon the owner is reconsidering.

In an unsuccessful project, things go uniquely awry. This week I've been trying to figure out what in the name of heaven has — at least thus far — blocked the preservation of the handsome-but-decaying 1875 railroad station in Windsor Locks. If this important piece of local history — it is where native daughter Ella T. Grasso boarded the train to go to her inauguration in Hartford in 1975 — isn't preserved quickly, it will be lost. Bricks are beginning to fall out of the facade. It needs immediate attention.

The brick station has an elegant pragmatism; it was built with a pronounced overhang roof to allow passengers to wait for trains outside in the shade. But it has been closed since the late 1970s; the current Windsor Locks station is essentially a bus shelter on a concrete block in a parking lot by I-91, with no nearby development potential.

In 2004, a group of citizens organized the Windsor Locks Preservation Association to save the historic Main Street station, one of the few buildings in the area to survive an ill-advised urban renewal project (were there any that were well-advised?) in the 1970s. The association gathered a couple of hundred members and, with town support, raised nearly $300,000 in grants, the largest of which was $225,000 from the state's Small Town Economic Assistance Program, known by its acronym STEAP.

With the money in hand, the volunteer group began negotiating with Amtrak, the owner of the station. Buying real estate from Amtrak is a lengthy and labyrynthine process that, according to preservatilon association co-founder Barbara Schley, involves 11 separate approvals.

By 2009 the group had collected eight of the necessary approvals and now had a letter from Amtrak saying it would sell the station as long as the town supported the project and agreed not to use the site as a train station. You may think it odd, as I did, that a railroad would demand that a train station not be used as a train station, but there you have it. Amtrak spokesman Cliff Cole ducked the question, curiously, saying only that Amtrak wasn't planning to reuse the station but is "working with the State to further rail options at this site."

In any event, this might have worked out, but for one more wrinkle. A new adminstration at town hall had initiated a study that concluded that the catalyst for economic development would be bringing the train station back downtown. The site they picked was just north of the historic station. It turned out that the site for the new station slightly overlapped with the footprint of the old station. Since Amtrak said the "site" could not be used as a train station, officials believed the overlap would threaten both the transfer of the old building and the building of a new station.

You'd think this could have been worked out with Amtrak, but thus far it hasn't been. Town officials told the preservationists to just take the station, not the land around it. But, said Schley, that would have violated the terms of the STEAP grant, which demands public access. So after a year and a half of impasse — Mickey Danyluk of the preservation association actually wrote to President Obama asking him to intervene — the Windsor Locks Preservation Association took the extraordinary step of dissolving itself, its leaders extremely unhappy with town officials and the lack of progress.

Now, without the help of the preservationists, the town has to save the old station and build a new one, and First Selectman Steve Wawruck says he is committed to both goals. There really is a remarkable opportunity to create transit-orietned development in the center of town; Windsor Locks is on the New Haven-Hartford-Springfield line and likely to get both commuter and high-speed rail stops in the next several years because of Bradley International Airport. There's a massive empty factory building, the Montgomery mill, near the tracks awaiting development. (The building has changed hands a number of times in recent years, one of the owners was Joshua Guttman, the New York developer who owns the blighted Capitol West building in Hartford).

I hope Wawruck and his staff can pull this off; but I can't help but think that the old train station ought to be in hand and under renovation by now. There's doubtless some mix of local politics and personality at play here, as in most towns, but there still should be something to show for seven years of preservation effort. Late 19th-century rail stations were well-built and much beloved, and are centerpieces in the towns that had the foresight to save them. The jury is still out in Windsor Locks.