Oxford town meeting rescheduled to Sept. 3

By MARJORIE NEEDHAM

The Oxford town meeting to vote on three issues related to building the CPV Towantic power plant had to be adjourned to a new date, time and location – Thursday, Sept. 3, at 7 p.m. at Oxford High School – when Oxford fire marshal Scott Pelletier declared the Aug. 27 meeting unsafe because the crowd was larger than the room’s legal capacity. Pelletier said continuing the meeting also would have been unfair to participants who might not be able to hear because the over-capacity crowd forced them to stand in the hallways on either side of the town hall meeting room.

Residents were to vote yes or no on three items the Board of Selectmen had passed at their Aug. 19 meeting. Item 1 was approval of a proposed tax stabilization agreement between the town and CPV Towantic. Item 2 was an amended and restated development agreement between the town and CPV Towantic, and Item 3 was an amended and restated community support agreement between the town of Oxford and CPV Towantic. The agreements are available on the town’s website, www.oxford-ct.gov. Click “Read more” at the bottom of the reconvened town meeting notice, and then scroll down to get to the links to each item.

Throngs of people showed up for Thursday night’s meeting. One attendee told this reporter half the residents of Oxford Greens were there. More than 600 people live in Oxford Greens, a Del Webb over-55 community. Construction on these homes began in 2003, some four years after the original power plant proposal was approved, but homeowners say they were not told their subdivision was close to the power plant site.

Oxford Greens resident Rosalie Tilmin said, “We live about a mile-and-a-half from the power plant site. We all are opposed to it. It will lower the value of our homes.” She said Oxford Greens residents are going to fight the power plant project all the way.

Wayne McCormack, a resident of Oxford Greens since 2010, said the town never disclosed the power plant in its plan of conservation and development. He said, “They have been deceiving the people here.”

Mark Hinnau of Oxford was among the residents talking about the college and high school students who were either telephoning residents or handing out leaflets to them promoting the issues to be voted on at the town meeting as “lower taxes for a generation” and saying “First Selectman George Temple just convinced the power plant to pay us $123 million over 20 years.” Who paid to print the leaflets and who paid the students for their time are unknown. Hinnau gave the newspaper his leaflet and a scan of one side appears below. The other side says “Lower Taxes for a Generation.”

Towantic power plant side 1