December 16, 2010
Health District Future to be Decided
For almost a year, the Health District Task Force has been meeting diligently to review Colchester’s options for delivering health related services. Their charge was to recommend if Colchester should join a health district and if so, which one.
After many meetings and a very thorough review, the task force is recommending that Colchester should join the Chatham Health District. The Chatham Health District is a regional health department that covers Marlborough, East Haddam, East Hampton, Portland, Hebron, and Haddam. These six towns have pooled their resources to have a combined staff in order to best serve their communities.
The services they provide are very similar to our own health department. They inspect establishments dealing with food, review certain development plans, and deliver other health related services. The Chatham Health District is also able to receive certain funding from the state as a regional organization.
Now that the task force has made their recommendation, the Board of Selectmen will be reviewing and analyzing their report. If the board wishes to accept their recommendation and move towards joining the Chatham Health District for the next fiscal year, we will have to call a town meeting to approve the action. Additionally, the Chatham Health District must vote to accept us as well.
No matter what the outcome, the task force has done a tremendous job in researching the options, drafting a report, and making a recommendation. They should all be proud of the work they have done and we have some tough decision to make over the next few weeks.
Thanks to Judge Thomas
During this week’s Board of Selectmen meeting, the board is recognizing Judge Thomas for her service to the community as our Judge of Probate. During her four years as judge, Jodi has been someone to turn to when families are in their most troubling times. She has done a fantastic job and has been an asset to both Colchester and Lebanon as our probate judge.
Soon, our probate court in town hall will become a part time satellite court as the seat of the court moves to Windham. If not for the efforts of Judge Thomas and others, we may not have even had any court in town at all. Judge Thomas should be very proud her work and the community owes her our thanks for a job well done.
Annual Budget
Work has already begun on the budget for the next fiscal year. We are already preparing to conduct a budget survey and public forums to hear what your budget priorities are. As we work to put together our recommended budget, we are anxiously waiting to see what the state budget will be. A good portion of our money comes from state aid and any reduction could be devastating.
Until we know how much aid we will receive, we will take the information provided by you in the budget survey and the forums to build a sensible budget. I sincerely hope that everyone will get involved during the budget process. We need to hear from you if we are to build a budget that represents your wishes.
- Gregg Schuster
First Selectman
Previous Selectman Notes can be viewed at
| 