Mansfield Mayor Ben Shaiken dismissed concerns the town installed Flock Safety devices and heard residents on an invasive species impacting Mansfield Hollow State Park at a town council meeting Monday.
The dismissal came after Republican council member William “Bill” Tomecko asked Shaiken to address a Oct. 28 message to the council from Storrs resident Deborah Dancy. Dancy asked about the number of Flock or Axion cameras in town and said she was concerned because “they are everywhere.”
“The devices that she was concerned [about] are some of the new devices that the state Department of Transportation has installed around traffic signals. They look a little funky, they’re like bell shaped, but they’re not cameras. They’re just a new technology for figuring out when to turn the lights red and green,” Shaiken said, adding that he already talked to Dancy about it.
Dancy wasn’t the only resident Shaiken said reached out about the Flock cameras. He said the council received many inquiries from residents and advocacy groups alike concerned about privacy and technology like Flock being installed around town.
“We do not have any mounted license plate readers in town, [we have] our own police force. There’s no system set up or anything like that,” Shaiken said.
While Shaiken said the town wasn’t installing Flock cameras, he was uncertain about the types of surveillance equipment used by the University of Connecticut in Storrs.
“UConn has a camera system, and I don’t know the details of it, and so there are certainly whole mounted cameras throughout the University of Connecticut campus. I don’t know which brand they are, whether they’re license plate readers or anything like that,” Shaiken said.
Environmental issues were also a focus at the meeting with public comment concerning an invasive plant species and updates from the committees for sustainability and park and natural resources.
Resident Sterling Bobbitt was one of two people to speak to the council about the water chestnut, an invasive weed found in the waters of Mansfield Hollow Lake. Bobbitt said the weed is so invasive he calls it by a different name.
“I prefer the name water caltrop which does a better job of describing the devilish seeds it produces. Like the caltrop that police use to shred the tires of escaping felons, the water caltrop has sharp thorns protruding from multiple sides, capable of piercing skin,” Bobbitt said.
Bobbitt tried to get rid of the water chestnut at Mansfield Hollow Lake with volunteers on kayaks, who scooped the weed into a net. He argued the threat water chestnut poses to the lake warrants collaboration between the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, Windham Water Works and local governments like Mansfield’s.
Interim Town Manager Amanda Backhaus said she would consult the town’s environmental planner, Michael Stankhov, on a collaborative grant application between the town of Mansfield and Windham Water Works about addressing the water chestnut.
Lynn Stoddard, chair for the Mansfield Sustainability Committee, continued the focus on environmental issues by requesting that the council’s new leadership designs all new construction and renovations for town buildings around net zero carbon dioxide emissions.
Stoddard reminded the council of its approval for multiple statements of intent, such as the 2021 Mansfield Climate Emergency Resolution, which aimed to have government operations go net zero by 2030.
Shaiken said the council would wait on a decision about net zero construction requirements amid anxiety surrounding the cost of things like heat pumps for smaller projects, which would make completing Stoddard’s request challenging.
Stoddard said one other important commitment was the deconstruction resolution the council signed in January, which would recycle materials when a building is being renovated or demolished.
During the town manager’s report, Backhaus said the town is following the resolution with the replacement of Mansfield Fire Station 107 by surveying the area and getting an estimate to deconstruct the old building.
“We are looking to deconstruct, we are not looking to just demolish and put it into a dumpster,” Backhaus said about the old building.