Eye on Town Government

By Ruth Melville

First Selectman Matt Riiska started the Sept. 7 meeting of the Board of Selectmen with his customary update on the status of repairs to bridges in town. Work on the Mountain Road bridge is on track for completion close to the scheduled date of Sept. 31. Once that repair is finished, a binder course will be laid down on the road for the winter, and a finishing coat will be applied later. Aquarion will pay for fixing the road.

The expected date for finishing the River Place bridge has been delayed to June 1, 2023. Throughout the project, one lane of the bridge will always remain open, except for a day or two in October. For the short time that the bridge will be impassable, a fire department truck will be stationed on the other side, to ensure residents’ safety.

On the Haystack Woods housing project, Riiska said that a Community Development Block Grant of $1.3 million has been received. The Foundation for Norfolk Living will be closing on the land soon, and all the site development work has gone out to bid.

Riiska also provided an update on the status of the Infinity Hall building. Infinity’s owners, Tyler Grill and Dave Rosenfeld of GoodWorks Entertainment Group, have offered to give the building to the town, but after talks with the town attorney and insurer, it was decided instead to turn the building over to a new non-profit organization.

It is still to be determined exactly how this nonprofit will be structured. A board of directors has not yet been appointed, and talks with Grill and Rosenfeld are ongoing. Among the possibilities: the restaurant could be leased separately, GoodWorks might stay on as a booking agent and the Yale music program might use the building for concerts.

In trying to decide what role the town should play in the new enterprise, Riiska and others have been looking at towns with similar venues, such as the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington and The Kate cultural arts center in Old Saybook.

The main goals for the town of Norfolk, Riiska said, are to preserve the building, to make it available for town functions, and to get some payment in lieu of taxes. GoodWorks was paying the town approximately $26,000 in taxes ($21,000 in property tax plus $5-6,000 in personal property tax) and still owes the payment for July. 

One issue that needs to be settled sooner rather than later is who will pay for the building’s heat and electricity as the weather gets colder. Since Infinity Hall has historical status, some state money might be available to help pay for this.

In closing the meeting, Riiska and Selectman Sandy Evans reported on the open forum that had was held the previous evening, Sept. 6, after the Board of Education meeting. Parents were on hand to express their concerns about the school, especially about the declining enrollment, the number of teachers who have left recently and the students’ level of preparedness for going on to Regional 7.

Riiska is consulting with Ann DeCerbo, chair of the Board of Education, and also with Colebrook’s first selectman on the issue of consolidation. He stressed that the problem of declining enrollment is not a Board of Education problem or a Botelle problem, but a problem for the whole community, and one that it shares with other small towns in the Northwest Corner.