Last week, the Connecticut Siting Council held hearings in Woodbridge about a request by AT&T to erect a cellphone tower at 1900 Litchfield Turnpike in Woodbridge. This evening will be the first operating budget presentation for the 2011 budget. I tend to write about many such events as news events somewhat disconnected from regular people’s real lives. I worry that this style of writing might end up dominating the Woodbridge Citizen. Discussions about budgets might easily get reduced to amounts spent or percentages changed in the budget. Yet decisions about where to place cellphone towers and about town budgets have real effects on real people’s lives.

On Saturday, my daughter Fiona and I went for a short hike on one of the Bishop West Trails. We started at the parking lot of the Thomas Darling House. Even before we got onto the trail, Fiona and I were talking about the town of Woodbridge. Fiona is a student in the multi-age group at Beecher Road School. This year, they’ve been studying blue birds. They’ve learned about how the habitat has changed over the past few centuries. The idea of seeing a house that was built around 1772 and learning more about her town over two hundred years ago was exciting to her and she said she would talk with her teachers to see if her class could come visit the Darling House some time.

We crossed the State Highway and through the Boy Scout’s Camp Whiting. The smell of campfires wafted across the trail and Fiona reminisced about eating marshmallows on camping trips. A little further along the trail, we found some large rock outcroppings that Fiona will ask her teachers about. We crossed a small stream and headed up the ridge. Through the trees, we could see the powerlines that had been run through town before we moved here. Somewhere nearby is where AT&T wants to place the cellphone tower.

As we approached the quarry, we met hikers on their way back. They passed on information about climbing through the tunnel to get into the quarry; a little bit of information we would have missed. It made the hike an even greater adventure and we passed the information on to other hikers we met on the return leg of our trip. I hope that the people of Woodbridge will find the Woodbridge Citizen a useful tool for passing on little tips like this.

How much money should the town spend on maintaining roads, on supporting conservation, both of natural beauty and of our history? How much money should be spent on human services and on education? Over the coming weeks, we will discuss these issues in great detail at various town meetings. Yet as I sit in cramped meeting rooms, I will keep the images of the hike in my memory.

What visions of Woodbridge will you bring to town meetings discussing our budget?

(Cross-posted at the Woodbridge Citizen.)