Wallingford Farmland Leases
Last Tuesday, one of the items discussed in our Town Council meeting was that of leasing town-owned property to various agricultural enterprises. It's a program that has gone on for some time now, where firms in the farming business lease property from the town and grow crops on the land, subject to increasingly strict regulations. It's a win-win situation: the Town receives a few bucks for leasing the property and that property is maintained in the agricultural state that enhances the bucolic atmosphere that most residents find pleasing, and the farmers find extra property on which to raise crops.

It's also a program that few people are aware of, so I thought a discussion on this site might be interesting.

The discussion centered around eleven of the thirty-six properties in the program which are being leased out for one year. Most of the leases are five-year leases, and the purpose of the one-year leases is to bring the lease periods of these eleven properties in line with the others. It's an intelligent administrative decision, and necessary because of the complex nature of leasing thirty-six different properties. When the leases come up, bids are solicited from the agricultural community and the properties are leased to the highest qualified bidder.

Thanks to the excellent work from our Environmental Planner Erin O'Hare, these properties now have much more visibility. They range in size from 1.60 acres to 93.70 acres, are presently leased by five people. Most but not all are on the east side of Wallingford. The median size is around six acres, with the average around 11 acres. They are subject to 14 "covenants" written into each lease, and most have additional restrictions as to what can be grown on them developed through USDA regulations.

You would think that this would have been pretty much a non-controversial item, wouldn't you? Well, due to the efforts of one Councilor, there was an attempt to suggest that the Mayor was usurping authority from the Council. The Town Charter states that: "The council shall have the power to take, purchase, hold, condemn, lease, sell and convey such real and personal property as the purposes of the town may require.. ." It was being suggested that we were being cut out of the decision-making process to which the Charter gives us authority.

The argument didn't go very far, because there was nothing to argue about. Year after year, the Council votes - unanimously, I might add - to continue this program, and the administration assumes the administration of the program as a result of that vote. Chairman Parisi jokingly begged us not to deviate from that practice, his point being that nine part-time legislators had neither the time nor the staff to adequately deal with the complexities of almost any property management issue, and we routinely transfer (not abdicate) our Charter responsibilities in such matters to the full time personnel that perform under the supervision of the administration.

So if you viewed the Town Council meeting of March 14th, you learned quite a bit about a very interesting and creative program that the Town of Wallngford has. You also learned that not everything dramatized as a tug-of-war between branches of local government really is so because, of all things, common sense prevails.
- posted by Steve Knight @ Saturday, March 18, 2006 0 comments  

 
Electrifying CT and the Unintended Consequences
The Law of Unintended Consequences haunts us all, but most especially in politics. Because we hold elections for our public officials every two to four years, their vision of the future often does not go beyond the term of office in which they are governing. So when they propose and enact legislation, rarely do they contemplate the long term consequences of their actions.

Nowhere is this lack of concern for long term consequences becoming more evident than in the management and provision of the State of Connecticut’s electric power. No matter what scheme is proposed to ensure that the state will have an adequate supply of electric power, it is becoming painfully obvious that we are going to buy our way out of this mess.

Now hundreds of politicians in Hartford and Washington just love to make the evil power companies the scapegoat for all that has gone wrong. Chris Powell of the Journal-Inquirer has written eloquently about that subject, so I will not go into that. They’ve made their share of mistakes, to be sure, but, frankly, they’ve only been operating in the environment that government has structured for them.

And now we say that we want more power plants to be built, but, over the past forty years, state government has sent this industry nothing but signals to the contrary. We here in Connecticut, through the people that we have sent to Hartford, have painted ourselves into a corner with layers and layers of rules and environmental regulations built up over years and years of political posturing. We are about to reap this harvest, and the unintended consequences of all that posturing are coming to light.

Forty years ago, it was possible to build a power plant in this state that would have been fueled by coal, the nation’s cheapest and most abundant fossil fuel. Now it would take so long to obtain the permitting and the scaremongers would be in such full throat that the companies in the business of building such plants find this alternative out of the question. So scratch coal-fired power plants to provide electricity to us.

And nuclear plants? Have you ever talked to anyone involved in this industry? In the name of “safety” these builders and operators have to document the purchase, installation and maintenance of every nut, bolt and can of paint used in the entire plant, whether or not it has anything to do with the actual nuclear reactor. And all this is not for safety. It is the product of successful lobbying by environmental activists who figured that if they couldn’t kill the industry outright, at least they could hobble it with regulations to the point where it would be uneconomical to construct the plants. And they have succeeded. What a victory. So that economical power source is out.

Next the oil-fired plants came under fire. Remember all the howling two years ago about the “Sooty Six” and how proud our leaders in Hartford were to have successfully demonized these power sources? And how proud they all were that the owners of these plants would be required to spend umpteenine millions of dollars refitting these plants with new gear, not one dollar of which will be used to produce so much as one electron of power? And how they preened before the cameras at how they had all saved us from environmental Armageddon? It was nauseating. But they did succeed in taking another power source off the table. Good work.

And now we are down to this: the only fuel found to be “acceptable” is natural gas; the most expensive fuel alternative of all those available. And….and….we don’t want to allow LNG docks to be built in Long Island Sound to make sure an adequate supply (and thus lower prices) exists!!! I guess we expect this fuel to just magically appear at the plant site from who knows where.

So grab your wallet and hang on tight, because we are in for a rough ride. No one in government will look farther down the road than the next sound bite, and the unintended consequence of this lack of foresight is going to cost us all a pile of money.
- posted by Steve Knight @ Saturday, March 11, 2006 1 comments links to this post  

 
Intro and Ground Rules
Welcome to KnightWriter.

If you happened upon this place through the Wallingford GOP website, you probably know that I serve as one of your Town Councilors, and my work as one of your representatives has driven me to start this blog.

The purpose of most blogs is to have a running conversation about certain subjects. At least that is the point of this one. It is my intention to discuss various subjects of the day, primarily but not exclusively centered on local Wallingford issues and State of Connecticut issues.

Having said that, however, there will be some self-imposed guidelines under which this page will operate:

1. This is a forum for exchanging ideas. As much as I appreciate people contacting me for help with various problems for which town government may provide a solution, I don’t want to deal with such matters here. Call me (269-3565) or e-mail me (steve@trcost.com) with these.
2. Please feel free to offer your opinions on any issue presently being brought forth to the Council. However, I very well may not respond with my opinion on the matter unless the subject has been brought to a conclusion. My intention is to take in advice and opinions from all quarters, but to resist rendering a premature opinion on any matter until it is discussed and acted upon in the proper forum, that being a Town Council meeting. After that is done, a lively discussion of the subject and how a particular course of action was decided upon is one of the primary goals of this blog.
3. This will not be a forum loaded with the first person pronouns and adjectives such as I, me, my and our, other than this introduction. Is there anything more insufferable than the “newsletters” produced by certain officeholders that spend your tax dollars to tell you what a fantastic job that officeholder is doing and how, without their help, life as we know it would be a true hardship? If you catch me swerving into self-aggrandizing I-speak, call me on it immediately.
4. Please use your real name. The point of this forum is to develop running conversations, and I can handle a healthy rant as long as it’s backed up with some substance, but if the author needs to hide behind an assumed name, the words no longer have any relevance and it is a waste of time to read them.
5. The opinions expressed in this blog are mine and mine alone unless others have given me permission to add their names. It is important to understand that. I speak for no one else. I do not purport to represent the Republican party or my Council colleagues in any way, shape or form, and they will be the first to tell you this. While our conclusions on any given issue may be the same, please understand that I may arrive at my conclusions on what is often a very different path than others.
   
   I will make every effort to stay current, but unlike some of my colleagues of whom I am truly envious, I must still work to earn a living. It is my hope to add to this blog at least every other week, but understand that there is no schedule. Puleeze suggest topics. That would be the most interesting was to begin a dialog.
   
   The blogoshere is here to stay, and it is taking many forms. This one will evolve into what we both want it to be. Thanks for being here. I hope to stimulate responses from you.
   

- posted by Steve Knight @ Saturday, March 04, 2006 1 comments links to this post