Community Corner

Week In Review: New Zoning Regulations, WPCA and The Devastator

The week's top stories on the Ledyard Patch.

 

The Cyber Colonels brought their robot, “The Devastator” to a regional competition in Hartford this weekend. The crew built and programmed a robot weighing more than 100 lbs to play nerf basketball. The relatively young team is comprised of a couple of high school juniors but mostly sophomores and freshmen.

Christopher Hughes is the eighth-grader on the team and was a member of the middle school robotics club but joined the Cyber Colonels this year so he can work with bigger robots. Hughes said it’s “really fun and cool to see how all these things come together” and that wiring the robot was probably his biggest contribution this time around.

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Scott Horler is one of the team’s advisors and said the robot’s performance is important but teams are also awarded “co-opetition” points, which advance the team’s standing. He said on the sidelines, teams are encouraged to lend parts, tools, knowledge, etc to other teams.

“Gracious professionalism is what we’re trying to teach these kids,” he said. “You want to prove yourself on the field."

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A new restaurant and bar is opening up where exists now. will open for business April 14th and, aside from location and staff, you can expect a lot of changes. will offer typical New England bar food with a little bit of sass. The new owners, Diane Chester and Dave Ferreira, plan to add more outdoor seating, and activities like horseshoes, Wii bowling and electronic darts.

Town committees and commissions have been busy this week. The they have been working on for the past couple weeks to see if they can find additional savings.

“We’re looking at and evaluating the impact to the town,” said Mike France, the committee’s chairman. “We’re looking to see if it’s feasible to get to a zero mill increase or not.”

But, getting to a zero increase budget will require $305,000 in additional cuts. Members of the finance committee said they think they saved that much this year in heating, snow removal and any other budgeted costs that went unused due to the warm winter.

Town counselors voted to relieve themselves of the duties of managing the Water Pollution and Control Authority this week. They but will remain the WPCA until enough volunteers step up and fill the new WPCA.

They also mentioned that the WPCA is operating at a deficit and the expenses are 16 percent more than revenues, which may result in a rate increase for their 1,200 customers. They also decided to not offer a discount to people filling their pool with town water.  WPCA chairman Bill Saums said the discount was hard to justify while they’re operating at a deficit.

And, the Zoning Commission approved some that will allow a new sort of development in Ledyard. The open space subdivision will be applicable to tracts of land 40 acres or more and require that 60 percent of that land remain undeveloped. However, the developer is allowed to carve up the land and assign lots in any manner he or she can as long it meets public health codes and minimum zoning requirements.

The purpose being that it allows the developer to determine the best way to arrange and size the lots. In theory, the lots will be clustered together and smaller, which will lead to shorter roads and shared driveways.

That arrangement will be less expensive to construct and will lead to smaller, affordable houses for people looking to downsize or buy a starter home. It will also preserve the rural character of Ledyard, according to Michael Cherry, chairman of the Planning Commission and one of the authors of the regulations.

"It preserves the character of Ledyard and meets the environmental and preservation directives of Ledyard Plan of Conservation and Development,” he said. “It’s an actionable reg(ulation) instead of ‘wouldn’t it be nice.’


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