16 September—Litchfield Selectman Jonathan Torrant says he has mooted the idea of a gazebo on the town-borough Green to several residents whose reaction has been positive. He doesn’t say how many residents have reacted negatively. I’ve mooted the idea of a gazebo on the town-borough Green to many residents whose reaction has been negative. Three actually liked the concept of a gazebo, but not on the Green. Many would also like the silly little tourist shack to be removed.

Some history. Back in the mid-nineties, the recently arrived resident of a South Street manse offered to pay for the construction of a gazebo on the Green. He’d probably have sprung for maintenance, too, through the Friends of the Green (FOG) nonprofit corporation he formed in 1996. He also wanted to get on the Greater Litchfield Preservation Trust, but that’s a whole nother story. Certainly related, but whole nother. (FOG last filed in 1998 and was administratively dissolved by the Secretary of the State in 2019.)

Long story short, the lovely, delightful couple—and Michel and Ellie really were good people and good neighbors—not long thereafter moved out of a town that obviously didn’t appreciate them. That’s putting it too mildly. I can’t say they were run out of town, but that’s what it amounted to.

You’d have thought the Preservation Trust, among others, would have got along famously with Michel. But that’s not how Litchfield works.

Back to the gazebo. Bad idea. I don’t agree with the Litchfield Board of Warden and Burgesses (BOLBOWAB) about much, but I certainly support the opposition it’s shown to the or a gazebo on the Green since Jon Torrant first brought up the subject several years ago. For the record, I had been opposed to Michel’s gazebo 26 years ago. And I’ve been opposed to the borough for almost 50 years.

The Green is fine the way it is. It doesn’t need new trees or structures. What it could use is decent drainage. That’s what the federal ARPA largess should be spent on. And, while I’m on it, the excessive Borough cash reserve, which is bigger than the annual budget, should be used to pay off the Chabad shysters and repair sidewalks rather than plant decorative trees. But of course the BOLBOWAB can’t be trusted to do the right thing. And the mere residents and taxpayers are powerless. That’s why the borough needs a vastly amended charter—perhaps rather than consolidation.

Jon Torrant, who chairs the town-borough consolidation study committee, doesn’t want the yellow-ribbon issue on the Green to come into the consolidation study. By the same token, now that the gazebo issue has hit the fan, the whole town is going to think—rightly or wrongly—that Jon is pushing consolidation just to get it done.

So it’s pretty safe to say that consolidation has been aborted. The study committee is now wasting its members’ time and should therefore be dissolved. Next in order, on the other hand, are a title search (now in the works) to confirm town, borough, or other ownership of the Green; and a survey of town and borough residents about the desirability of a gazebo on the Green. It might be better for PR purposes to call it a bandstand. But in all events it’s as likely as consolidation . . .