by Kieron Kramer
Perhaps it was the bitter cold (2 degrees) or perhaps it was that nobody in Grafton is planning anything, but the hall was empty when the Grafton Planning Board met for its regular meeting on Monday, February 23. The meeting lasted two minutes. [private]The minutes of the previous meeting were approved quickly. There was no old business. There was no new business. During the informal discussion period Planning Board Secretary Allison Kirchner proposed a list of Planning Board meeting dates for the rest of the year for the Board’s approval. All but two were scheduled for the usual time – the third Monday of the month. However, the March meeting and the July meeting will be on the fourth Monday, March 23 and July 27, due to Kirchner’s scheduling conflicts. The Board approved the schedule.
As is often the case when a meeting is so short, the Board members who braved the cold – Linda Laveway, Owen Grandjean, Planning Board Chairman Tom Withcuskey and Jim Goyer – engaged in some chit chat after the two minute meeting. Monday’s themes were reminiscences of Planning Boards past and comments about smart phones and Facebook.
Kirchner recalled the time in the early 90s when Joe Bruno and family were engaged in the development of the First Grafton Corporation when someone brought a straw man to the meetings about the development. Why a straw man? Some Board members speculated that it related in some strange way to concern about the bird population in the planned, very large development. They “blazed” a road into the development, Withcuskey said. “It was like the Al-Can highway,” he said, “very wide.” Past members of the Board – Stanley Bunce, Les Radford and Ron Hasbrouck, among others, were remembered. Grandjean, the longest serving member of the current Board, said in admiration that Hasbrouck was familiar with every single piece of property in Town.
When the chit chat turned to smart phones and Facebook, the three gray-haired guys said they were into voice calls only and use their phones, by and large, only for talking. The two women brandished their smart phones and promoted the notion of sharing pictures and information with others through email and on Facebook. Kirchner showed some pictures of a big, beautiful eagle that she had taken in Pittstown earlier in the day. The eagle looked great on her smart phone. And then everyone went back out into the cold.[/private]