Links to Town's Web Site and important minutes

On the right side of this page you will find many useful links to sites for our town and some of its organizations.

We have included direct links to Planning board, Budget Committee, Select board and Historic District Commission's minutes
Please take a moment and read these.

A big Thank you to all who put on the Pickle Festival

Once again another Winchester's Pickle Festival has come and gone. This is a great event that brings good times to our community and draws people in from other towns. It gives friends and neighbors and chance to get out and mingle on our main st. and by the looks of all the smiles on the children's faces looks like they enjoy it also.
This may be one of the only times when we get some positive publicity in the local papers and people all work together to make it happen.

It would be great to see more events like this in our town, Most people feel that is the benefit of living in a small community. Does anyone have any ideas of events we could do?

And again, Thank you to all who work hard to make this event happen for us, Your work is greatly appreciated and you all deserve a big applause.

Wildlife point of View: Practical advice for co-existing with wildlife

September 21, 2012

My name is Irene Ruth. I’ve just retired after 25 years of being a Wildlife Rehabilitator, working with injured and orphaned wild animals to get them healthy and back to the wild. To do my job well, I worked hard to understand the different wild animal species, know their needs, and be aware of their reasons for doing what they do in the different seasons.

Now that I have time, I can help others understand, too. The more we understand, the easier it is to be more tolerant and supportive of the wild animals we encounter here in Winchester.
So, here goes……

Fall starts tomorrow, although it has felt like fall all day today. This is a season of intense activity for wildlife. For some animals, the cooler weather means heading south to avoid winter problems. Others start to gather and store food, find warm spots to set up winter dens, and try to fatten up, grow thicker coats and do all the other things that make it possible for them to survive the colder seasons.
For the ones looking for new winter quarters, YOUR house looks like a definite possibility. No, they don’t look for a “vacancy” or “All Creatures Welcomed” sign, but they DO look for any possible way to get into your attic, basement, shed, barn or crawl space. They just want a nice warm place to spend cold days, but are so often regarded as intruders, or even invaders.

This is the time to do some preventive maintenance on your home to guard against wild intruder/invaders. As a bonus, animal proofing doubles as cold weather proofing, since any entry points could also let in cold air, and possibly rain or snow.
Take a walk around your house and try to spot any entry points under eaves, cornices and louvers, spaces under corrugated roofing, under doors and around windows. Any small openings larger than ¼ inch should be blocked or screened. (Heavy gauge hardware cloth works very well).
Cover vents and any openings where electrical outlet boxes or water pipes enter the house.
Remove debris and weeds from around the foundation of your house so that you can detect openings and also discourage rodents from hiding there or setting up housekeeping.

Now walk around the house again. Think any intruders can get in?
Now that they’re all blocked out of your house, my next post will have suggestions about how you can help them make it thru the winter where they should be…in the wild.

Irene

More Sentinel reporting on our planning board members.

WINCHESTER — A planning board member’s call for three other members to resign went unheeded and mostly undiscussed Monday night.

Board member Larry Hill delivered a three-page letter to the board calling for fellow board members Brian D. Moser, Kim G. Gordon and alternate Jennifer Bellan to resign from the Winchester Planning Board and any other town boards or committees.

Calling their actions “vandalistic” and “slanderous,” Hill alleges in his letter that the three “are determined to disrupt the board and attack the integrity of the remaining board members for reasons unknown.

“Unless the disruptions, attacks and unfounded allegations stop immediately, I am very tempted to bring forth a petitioned Warrant Article to dissolve and eliminate the Planning Board.”

Hill’s letter, meant to act as a motion, was not seconded by any of the other six board members at the table, including Moser and Gordon. Only Moser responded.

“The fact that we don’t agree all the time is not (a) reason to say that people should not be on the board. A board that agrees all the time is a joke,” Moser said.

Although Hill writes he had “decided to put everything on the table,” the only actions he attributes to a specific person are to Moser and his Aug. 25 letter to the editor, which Hill calls “slanderous.”

In his letter to The Sentinel, Moser accused another member of the board, whom he didn’t name, of being “a rubber stamp for certain interests.” He also repeated comments he had overheard in a restaurant from an unnamed businessman that “those people in Winchester can be bought off with a bag of groceries.”

Hill called out Gordon for failing to recuse herself from recent deliberations over a proposed Dunkin’ Donuts, because she is a friend and walking partner of Stanley S. Plifka Jr.’s wife. Plifka, owner of Kulick’s Inc., opposed the project. The board rejected the plan and the applicant is now appealing the decision.

Gordon said this morning she and Plifka’s wife do not discuss town business, including the Dunkin’ Donuts proposal, and said there had been no reason to recuse herself during the deliberations on the proposal.

Hill accuses “an alternate” of disruptive behavior and contributing to attacks against the town land use assistant and former planning board member Margaret Sharra.

The incident he refers to occurred during the board’s July 16 meeting, when Bellan objected to being denied the right to speak while she was sitting as an audience member. She was eventually allowed to voice her concerns about the Dunkin’ Donuts project, which Hill believes was the wrong decision. Hill writes that Bellan unfairly blamed Sharra for blocking her from speaking.

Reached after the meeting, Bellan said she believes she was correct in addressing the board with her concerns.

Some of Hill’s other unattributed allegations include wearing hats in a public forum and frequently voting in the negative “even on such matters as approving the meeting minutes.”

After the meeting, Moser, still wearing the black hat he donned in the meeting, said he had voted against approving the meeting minutes since he began serving on the board, because they were not accurate. Similarly, Gordon said she had voted against approving the minutes for three years because her suggestions for changes or corrections are ignored.

Gordon, Bellan and Moser all said they would not resign. Their terms finish in 2013, 2014 and 2015, respectively.

Moser also serves on the budget committee, and Gordon is the planning board representative on the Historic District Commission.

Garrett Brnger can be reached at 352-1234, extension 1436, or gbrnger@keenesentinel.com.

Is it time for Winchester and Ashuelot news to change?

Maybe its time for us to change this format and open it up for more discussions and sharing of information.

Some ideas of Topics we would like to open up and get into:

First and foremost, we must urge everyone to understand what is going on in our town.
We understand that most people can not attend every board meeting but if you have a computer and Internet access there is no excuse for not knowing what is happening and what our board members are doing and planning for "US". All this information is posted on the town website and available to all. By spending just a few minutes each month reading these minutes you will have a entire new outlook on whats is happening in our town and who is working for us or against us.
The town website is
http://winchesternh.virtualtownhall.net/Pages/index

If you vote and you care about our town you have the responsibility to have the correct information when you vote or even discuss these issues with friends and neighbors.


Our current planning board and its members! Are you aware of whats been happening and what some of these elected officials are using their positions for? Do you understand the opportunities our town is missing out on because of biased members looking out for themselves and friends and not the town over all?

Do you know why the question about removing last years budget committee was on the ballot? We do. The town almost lost this committee and it is a very important one, Its the only thing that stands between the taxpayer and unlimited spending by our town's departments and government.

Can a town as poor as Winchester afford having a Historic District Commission and the 'historic' districts that cover entire neighborhoods? When this topic opens up you will understand the question.

Have you or your organization or board been attacked, slandered, lied about and you have not been allowed to reply or defend yourself, explain your side?. Do your comments or accurate information never get posted? Here is your chance to fight back and get your story out there.

Please send us a E-mail so that we have your E-mail address in our mailing list.
winchesternews@gmail.com

Thank you.

What do you think? Time for some new board members!

WINCHESTER — Developers for a proposed combination Dunkin’ Donuts and gas station rejected by a town board are taking their case to court. Project applicant S.S. Baker Realty Co. LLC filed an appeal of the Winchester Planning Board’s decision in Cheshire County Superior Court. The company alleges the board’s decision was based on perceptions, rather than facts, about traffic concerns, and that some planning board members had conflicts of interest and were biased against the proposal. S.S. Baker Realty proposed building the combination convenience store, gas station and Dunkin’ Donuts on its property at the northeast corner of the Routes 10 and 78 intersection. The planning board denied the company’s application 4-2 at its July 16 meeting, citing a concern the proposal “overwhelms the lot” and three safety issues: the left turn onto Route 10, cars possibly parking on the highway shoulder, and the potential overflow from a drive-through onto Route 78. Board member Larry Hill abstained, saying he did not understand parts of the motion. Teofilo Salema — the manager of S.S. Baker Realty and the owner of five other Dunkin’ Donuts, in Keene, Swanzey and Hinsdale — says he has done everything the board has asked of him. The application’s traffic study was approved by the N.H. Department of Transportation, but was disregarded by the board because of anecdotal concerns, he said. “They had nobody. They’re assuming they know better than the (Department of Transportation) and the people on the traffic study,” Salema said. “Why did I spend so much money on traffic studies when they already knew what was going on?” The appeal also alleges during the public hearings, “it became clear certain members of the Planning Board were acting improperly, had conflicts of interest or were otherwise biased against the Application, and these members should have been disqualified from hearing the Application.” The petition does not directly accuse any board member or outside influence but asserts the board’s failure to remove biased members or those acting improperly resulted in unlawful hearings, deliberations and votes. The appeal makes only an oblique reference to specific incidents through a quote from the board’s July 16 meeting minutes: “(Gus) Ruth reminds the board of certain happenings of this board during the public hearing process such as (Kim) Gordon passing papers to Kulick’s attorney and other members passing ‘personal’ papers from one member to another then another. He does not believe this will look good in court.” During the May 21 meeting, Gordon handed attorney Kelly E. Dowd a folder of site plan review regulations, according to the meeting minutes. “She (Gordon) was sharing information with the other attorney in front of everybody,” Salema said in an interview. “That’s unacceptable.” Kulick’s opposed the project through its attorneys during the public hearings. The store, located on Route 78 less than a half-mile from the intersection, runs gas pumps. Owner Stanley S. Plifka Jr. told The Sentinel in July that if the proposal were to go through, “you’re going to have three gas stations you could physically throw a baseball to, and that makes no sense to me.” Salema and his land use agent, James P. Phippard of Brickstone Land Use Consultants, implied a connection between Plifka and Gordon on at least two occasions during the public hearing and deliberations process. Minutes of the the board’s May 21 meeting show when Gordon asked Phippard if the applicant would consider removing the gas pumps from the proposal, Phippard “replied no he would not do that for Mr. Plifka.” And when Gordon introduced the motion to deny the application at the board’s July 16 meeting, and a fellow board member advised her to include her reasoning, Salema, who was in the audience, supplied one for her. “Kulick’s,” he said. Reached Sunday by telephone, Gordon and Plifka said it was the first they had heard of the appeal. Plifka declined to comment, and Gordon denied the implied bias. “There’s no bias for me ... there was no reason to recuse myself,” she said. No hearings or conferences on the case have been scheduled yet.