16 February—Meanwhile, back in Litchfield, the Board of Selectmen, having succumbed to the knee-jerk rush to pander to a few local businesses, tourists, and other undesirables by providing EV charging stations (which travesty, however, has yet to pass two mandatory tests) now wants to add a third resident state trooper to its nonexistent police force with the hope that the addition of one more cop will work miracles.

But first. The selectmen are talking about a budget increase of about two percent. With a likely increase in the grand list, that probably won’t result in a rise in the mill rate this year for real property owners whose revaluations have gone up the town-wide average of about 46 percent. The lucky ones have seen a lower increase. God help the rest of us.

Of course, with this year’s rejiggered mill rate resulting from the state-mandated revaluation, municipal spenders can get away with more than in non-reval years. Not that Litchfield’s august penny-pinchers would ever resort to that, to be sure. First Selectman Denise Raap has with some justificaion taken pride in the town tax rate having gone down, however slightly, during her reign. Federal and state handouts have helped the bottom line, of course. But starting next year let’s count on an increase in Litchfield’s mill rate.

The selectmen discussed increasing the town’s contribution to the Oliver Wolcott Library by just under five percent. No problem with that. The town currently funds OWL to the tune of just over 40 percent, about $400,000. Evidently it had once been 52 percent. OWL is a fine institution, respected, loved, and needed.

Selectman Jeff Zullo (of Sustainable Litchfield EV charging station notoriety) would like to “step up and provide more support by coming up with a plan to get back to the 50 percent level.” Jeff must be aware that as soon as municipal funding of the private library reaches a teensy-weensy fraction over 50 percent, the town can essentially and effectively control the private library’s policies and practices.

Litchfield has hitherto been a good supporter and silent partner of OWL. But you never know. So just to stay on the safe side and keep the library out of politics, the town’s contribution to OWL’s annual budget should be kept under 50 percent.

Back to a third resident trooper, then, it won’t do a bloody thing to reduce crime or speeding. One cop, as the saying doesn’t go, will not a difference make. Nor will more than one extra cop. And for any number of reasons, the primary one being that cops can’t be everywhere all the time. Three police officers certainly won’t deter crime in an area the size of Litchfield, with tempting targets conveniently (for the criminals) scattered all over town—especially when the police would be obliged to leave the town precincts when needed elsewhere.

As for traffic enforcement, absent police stationed everywhere, forget it. The only way to slow down speeders—Litchfield’s main traffic problem—is to actually catch them in the act; and the way to do that is with roadside speed cameras. Violators of pedestrian crossings also need to be caught in the act by cops or cameras. Because state cops have shown they can’t be bothered with seriously following up on civilian complaints. The specter of cameras all over the place invading our privacy isn’t at all attractive, to say the least. But ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

And, no, all the speeders are not from out of town and all the criminals are not from Waterbury . . .