Stonington Community Rowing, Inc. 2022 Report – Hear The Boat Sing

https://heartheboatsing.com/2022/12/29/stonington-community-rowing-inc-2022-report/

Stonington Community Rowing, Inc. 2022 Report

Dec 29, 2022

May 20, 2022

A rendering of the front (view from the east) of the Hart Perry Boathouse at the Mystic River Boathouse Park. Courtesy of SCRI.

29 December 2022

By Göran R Buckhorn

John Thornell, Girls Head Coach for the Stonington Crew and Director of Rowing, Stonington Community Rowing, Inc. (SCRI), contacted HTBS to give an end-of-the-year report about the Hart Perry Boathouse, the Jim Dietz Rowing Center and Mystic River Boathouse Park on the Stonington side of Mystic.

Thornell gave the following bullet points of what have been done during 2022:

• Early in the year, the Town of Stonington hired environmental engineering firm AECOM to oversee the environmental remediation of the property.
• In May, we announced the naming of the Jim Dietz Rowing Center. Jim is an icon in the rowing world and passionate about making the sport available to everyone. His involvement has injected a fair bit of excitement about the project!
• The Town extended its contract with Kent + Frost landscape architects who has updated the park master plan, including the living shoreline, and has been facilitating the permitting required from the state.
• After retaining Phase Zero Design architects, we unveiled new renderings of the boathouse and rowing center in a public meeting in August. The new designs were received well.
• You can view the latest on the boathouse page of our website. 
• In September, Stonington residents voted 279 to 8 in favor of a 25-year renewable lease between the Town of Stonington and Stonington Community Rowing, Inc. After we raise funds and build the $2.5 million rowing center, we will donate the facility to and lease it back from the Town.
• In November, the Town selected First Water Engineering to oversee the coastal engineering and permitting of the park, including the living shoreline. 
• Also in November, we accepted a proposal from Custom Float Services to design and install the 134-foot long, low-profile AccuDock rowing docks.
• This month [December], we will hire South County Post & Beam, who will be responsible for the timber-frame construction of the boathouse.

Thornell also writes that SCRI has raised more than half of the $2.5 million needed to build the rowing center and boathouse. Of course, anyone is welcome to help by donating funds to the rowing center and boathouse. (There is still time to squeeze in a tax-deductible donation before the end of the year!)

If you are interested in donating, please contact John Thornell, by calling him at 860-389-2770.

Please also visit the website of SCRI to watch a short video titled Exciting Plans for the North End of the Mystic Seaport. In addition to what the Museum's plans will offer the community, it will complement the boathouse park and rowing center to create a wonderful entrance to downtown Mystic.

Updates on next year's progress will be published on the SCRI web site and on their Facebook page. 

~A.

We'll see if the Day Newspaper is proper enough for a blind (no subscriber/no access) Blogger post…

https://www.theday.com/local-columns/20230112/opinion-will-crazy-house-republicans-hurt-connecticut-gop-more-than-trump/

OPINION: Will crazy House Republicans hurt Connecticut GOP more than Trump?

By David Collins

Moderate Connecticut Republicans have been hiding from Donald Trump for years, afraid the lying, egomaniacal former President would scare away the reasonable, middle-of-the-road voters they need to get elected in this blue state.

After all, Republican state Sen. Heather Somers of Groton refused to participate in a debate in last year's election, saying she didn't want to discuss "national" issues. Think Trump.

But as the Republican crazies _ including election deniers and insurrectionist apologists _ flex their newly-leveraged political muscle in the House majority in Washington, I don't think Connecticut Republicans like Somers are going to be able to run fast enough from the national chaos caused by their party.

It is almost certainly going to make it much harder to successfully run in Connecticut as a Republican.

Already, the House has put forward a bill meant to gut the new enforcement money allocated to the Internal Revenue Service, a measure that would make rich tax dodgers happy and add uncollected tax revenue to the budget deficit.

More alarming is the new GOP-created committee meant to attack agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency, the folks who keep us safe.

I remember when Republicans were the ones who wanted to safeguard law enforcement and national intelligence, not put those defenders of our freedom on trial.

It's certainly not going to play well in Connecticut, except in the darkest, Trumpiest reaches of the state.

Then the empowered Republicans in Washington want to cut Social Security and Medicare. I'm not sure that will very popular in mainstream Connecticut, where people who collect Social Security and Medicare are reliable voters.

And don't forget Republican plans to attack the defense budget. That won't be very popular in Connecticut, either, where submarines and jet engines are mainstays of the manufacturing economy.

Pretty soon Sen. Somers won't be the only Connecticut Republican trying to run fast from the "national" issues raised by their party, the same folks who brought you the end of abortion protections in Roe vs. Wade.

Let's not forget that the House Republicans are promising showdowns over raising the national debt ceiling, refusing to honor the nation's commitments and plunging us all into economic freefall.

That kind of chaos, which is what the extreme wing of the party seems to crave, will make the next two years a brutal time to identify as a Republican in Connecticut. The Trump era will seem quaint.

Even the endless Hunter Biden investigations are going to be tiresome and reflect badly on Republicans here.

We all know that Hunter Biden was a drug addict who tried his best, through the fog of intoxication, to profit from his father's political station. Instead of getting rich, like the Trump children did from their father's connections, Hunter Biden ended up owing almost $1 million to the IRS, which he was unable to pay.

Most of us here in Connecticut know that. We don't need the people sent to Washington to dwell endlessly on it. A Trump-appointed prosecutor is already working on transgressions by the president's son.

Rather we want lawmakers to work on the nation's pressing problems and business, the risk of terrorism, a terrible war in Europe.

I don't take any solace in the Washington chaos that Republicans are about to birth. And I don't relish the crushing blow it will deliver to Connecticut Republicans, a second party the state desperately needs to remain viable.

I'd like to fast forward through the next two years.

This is the opinion of David Collins

d.collins@theday.com

~A.

Electricity help

https://energizect.com/sites/default/files/documents/HES%20IE%20Application.pdf