Wilton residents reminded

What: Wilton household hazardous waste collection

When: 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 6

Where: Wilton Transfer Station

Wilton
New development group seeks proactive role

WILTON – The Wilton Development Corporation II will take a proactive approach to meeting its mission of promoting and assisting economic development, Corporation President Gil Riley told the Board of Selectmen Tuesday.

While the corporation has kept a low profile in recent years, it’s still alive and well, and being reintroduced as corporation number two with board members who live or own businesses in Wilton, he said.

A few members attended the meeting to seek the board’s support for their renewed goal to bring more jobs to the community. While no specific project is being undertaken at the moment, the group does want to be proactive for the future, Riley said.

Anticipation of a possible increase in businesses surrounding the new Comfort Inn on Routes 2 and 4 and potential for the Nichol’s Weld Road property have prompted the corporation’s board members to visit local employers, he said. Members will be calling on major businesses in town to reintroduce themselves and relay their ability to help with any upcoming issues, he explained.

The volunteer board does not have the capacity to actively recruit businesses, but to lend its expertise to help businesses develop in town, he said.

Selectmen voted unanimously to support their work.

In other business, the board agreed to share in the expense of replacing a culvert across the parking lot of the United Methodist Church on Main Street.

After the church repaved the lot last year, a large sinkhole developed this summer making a mess of the paving project, Town Manager Peter Nielsen explained to the board. Church members were seeking help in correcting the situation because they felt there was some shared responsibility for the problem.

The members’ research shows that surface water drains into land formerly used as a skating rink and down over the bank in back of the church and into the culvert that crosses the parking lot, ending up in the catch basin on Main Street, a church representative explained.

While Nielsen said at first he was hesitant about the town fixing this problem, he does see the role the church plays in the community as a “basis for exemption to the rule.”

The church is the site of the Wilton Area Food Pantry with approximately 120 families parking in the lot each month while visiting the pantry. The parking lot is used by some as a place to park and share rides as well as the meeting place for Boy Scout troops. A pumping station for Wilton is also located in one corner of the parking lot.

Upon the recommendation of Clayton Putnam of the town’s Water Department, the church offered to purchase the culvert materials and asked the town to supply the time and equipment to dig, insert and cover an approximate 100-foot ditch across the parking lot from the catch basin on Main Street, and replace the old, 12-inch culvert.

On a motion to provide the town’s highway department machinery and time to fix the problem, four selectmen voted yes, and one member abstained because it was his church.