27 January—Wolfgang Mozart’s 268^th birthday mustn’t go unnoticed today, but serious town affairs must take precedence. So apologies to Wolf.

Litchfield voters and taxpayers will have the opportunity at the 30 January annual town meeting to defeat the absolutely ludicrous proposal for the town to go into the business of providing charging stations for battery-powered cars.

The feel-good folly to benefit the few at the expense of the many is only the latest travesty Litchfield First Selectman Denise Raap and Selectman Jeff Zullo and their comrades in Sustainable Litchfield want to impose on taxpayers and residents so that their organization—the local cell of a state and national busybody group that presumes to know what are “best practices” for everyone—can earn bronze, silver, and ultimately gold achievement plaques to be displayed in Town Hall.

The preposterous proposal this time is to install EV charging stations in town parking lots in order “to support what is going on in the center of Litchfield,” according to Selectman Zullo, as quoted in the Republican-American recently. Jeff specifically cites benefit to a 15-room superfluous boutique hotel currently being sacrilegiously morphed from the former county courthouse and what could very well be the world’s largest B&B with some 31 guest rooms being installed in the late Rose Haven nursing home. (There must be a business reason for making it a B&B rather than a hotel, but that’s irrelevant here.)

“Charging stations would help draw people to both venues,” Jeff Zullo promises. And “restaurants and shops in the center of town would also benefit.” Absolutely, positively; perhaps, possibly. In all events, Jeff and his Sustainable comrades evidently don’t care that Litchfield residents who don’t own tourist-oriented businesses in the center of town—the Borough—would rather not have people from out of town clogging and littering our streets, speeding, and taking up parking spaces.

So wouldn’t it be fairer to all the folks who derive no benefit from the Sustainable snow job if the few businesses that could possibly reap the EV charger benefit were to pay for the charging stations themselves and directly? After all, why should the town’s taxpayers be the involuntary middlemen, so to speak—as well as victims?

Sure, there are conditional grants, reimbursements, and vague promises (but not guarantees, of course) of future profit to the town being touted by the know-what’s-best EV charger proponents. But the profit accruing to the town from selling electricity is extremely iffy and meager at best. And just because the town is offered a grant doesn’t mean it has to take it.

In all events, the EV charging stations are unlikely to be used by Litchfield residents, since those few who have or will have EVs (despite DEEP Commissioner Katie Dykes’ best efforts to force them on all of us) will almost certainly prefer to charge their cars at their own homes. Just like Jeff Zullo.

If you’re not working at a town facility or attending a meeting, do you really want to wait around for however long while your battery gets charged? And if you’re patronizing a local hostelry or restaurant, those businesses should provide the charging facilities. Not the taxpayers of Litchfield.

Getting back to fairness, then, if the town—any town—provides fuel for vehicles powered by electricity, shouldn’t it also provide fuel for vehicles powered by petroleum and other means? That’s fair. But it’s just plain unfair—and it should be unlawful—for municipalities to play favorites.

Municipalities shouldn’t be in the business of selling fuel anyway. No matter what Sustainable Litchfield and its fellow travelers say.

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The other pressing matter on the 30 January agenda concerns $150,000 some die-hard Marcel Breuer idolators want to throw into a foolhardy effort to justify—make that rationalize—spending millions more to make the Bantam School worth keeping. Well, it’s not worth it for the town to keep the Bantam School—now called the Bantam Annex to make it sound worth keeping.

On the other hand, Litchfield clearly needs more office and meeting space than Town Hall currently provides, largely because of excessive, unreasonable, and (of course) unfunded state mandates. But the proper way to do that is by building a new town hall.

The problem with that, however, is that Litchfield taxpayers have shown themselves through at least six decades to be penny wise and pound foolish—and, frankly, just plain stupid—on building matters. They’ve funked the opportunity for a decent town office building on a number of occasions and it’s going to end up costing us dearly.

So, what the hell. Go for $150,000—as a down payment on the $10 million-plus-plus-plus a half-way decent Bantam School renovation and repurposing will cost. And when the time comes, count on that being voted down—by voters including many of you, dear readers . . .