Last night at the Board of Selectmen meeting, the First Selectman announced that he received interest from two developers who want to buy the land on RT 4. One would be for a housing development, and the other for an indoor and outdoor sports arena. He went on to state that “I want to say a special thanks to social media, because, I have two contractors in town that want to buy the land on RT 4”…,”so how do you like that?” If we don’t build the building over there, I’m gonna make a motion that we put it up for sale…”… “If we’re not gonna use it, better to sell the piece of property and put our money back in the bank”, “these are the options we have because of social media, that people are puttin’ out there.”
The First Selectman has sadly ignored the requests of the community to protect this land as open space, and has provided only two choices that he believes are our only options, (suggesting that somehow social media is to blame for only providing two choices): Either put the town building on it, or sell it to developers.
Please write a letter to the Selectmen in the Town of Goshen, copying the land use commissions, Water Pollution Control Authority, Torrington Area Health District and Goshen Land Trust, telling them you would like the land preserved as open space with either a fee simple transfer to the land trust, to be protected as non-trade land, or with a permanent easement. Private individuals are also willing to purchase the land in order to protect it. Please support our go fund me here:
Later in the meeting Scott Olson mentioned land that was previously offered to the town for free, in exchange for partial and limited use of a portion of the building for the American Legion. He believes this may be a viable alternative for public works storage.
Later, it was determined that the fire house and public works footprints should be examined to see if in fact building space can be added to those sites.
Please attend! The proposed date and time of this meeting is 2 December 2023 at 9am, starting at the firehouse in Goshen. Public comment will be allowed and ideas for each location will be considered. We will have a hard copy of our petition there that day to sign. If you signed this online awareness petition, please also sign the hard copy version. Thank you for your continued support!
Below is the zoom meeting link from yesterday.