The Board of Selectmen (BOS) will hold its regularly scheduled monthly meeting this Thursday, March 28 at 7pm in Mallory Town Hall. Among the agenda items is a capital request from the SVFD for eleven automated external defibrillators (AEDS). I am so grateful for all that the SVFD does in its concern for the safety and well-being of our Sherman citizens. These devices, along with the present stock of AEDS, will increase the chance that one is available should someone have some variety of heart attack. We will be discussing the Fourth of July fireworks show that the Park and Recreation Commission has been good enough to put together. Much thanks to them! This isn’t a sure thing yet as there is some permitting required from the State Fire Marshal’s office. Also, the availability of the fireworks display company has not been made formal yet. But if we can square these two issues up, Sherman is going to celebrate the Fourth of July holiday with a spectacular fireworks show up at Volunteer Park. Our Sherman Senior Center building committee met last week with our chosen architect, Maura Newell, of 72 Architects firm out of Danbury. She went over the committee’s program (wish list) for the building with us and she also met, the next day, with Suzette Berger (Senior Center director) and Lynn Gomez (Social Services director) at our present Senior Center. All of this is an effort to bring to the Town a set of design plans that we can use for presentations in preparation for a future referendum. It’s premature to talk firmly about a timeline for this project, but if I had to take an educated guess I would say that we are looking at a referendum in about a year from now, the spring of 2025. Naturally, the referendum results will determine if we go further with this project. Meanwhile, tonight we are holding another joint meeting between the BOS, the Board of Education (BOE) and the Sherman School building committee. In my opinion, there has been a lot of encouraging progress being made and I think we will begin to see some of that in subsequent meetings. One of the encouraging signs is a strong willingness by all parties to work together and get something done, something that is acceptable to Sherman voters so that we can provide a school building with a properly working infrastructure to better serve our students. By the way, I was honored to be able to read books to the Sherman students in grades pre-K thru 5 last week. I was so impressed with the comments and observations that came from students in each of these grade levels. I should have written them all down. One, however, profoundly sticks in my mind. I read a book titled, Last Stop on Market Street, in which the theme is basically about learning to appreciate what you have. Many key observations were made by these fourth graders about this book, nearly everyone recognizing the sad truth that the main character, a young boy, was envious of the other children whom he felt had “had it better.” And then one of the students towards the end of our discussion raised a hand and said, “Well, Mr. Lowe, the book is really about perspective.” Indeed it is! And so much of life is about perspective. To quote Webster’s: “…our attitude toward something or our way of regarding something; our point-of-view.” This is what that glass half-full or half-empty stuff is all about. In any case, that’s a terrific group of students at the Sherman School and kudos to the wonderful teachers who guide them.
