To the Cheshire Community:
On September 9, the Cheshire Human Services Committee held its monthly meeting. A vote was taken and there was unanimous agreement to pursue community support in the relocation and "adoption" of a displaced family or families from Louisiana. Cheshire is a community that has been blessed with wonderful caring citizens and a wealth of resources. Many people in the community have already expressed the desire to help out through generous donations of time, money, and goods. Our local police department has adopted one of their own from the affected area. New Haven is generously offering to relocate 100 needy families. We here in Cheshire and Connecticut have much to be proud of in our response to this tragedy. The Human Services Committee is hoping to ask just a bit more from our citizens.
Let me tell you a little about a particular community in Louisiana. If you were watching ABC News earlier in the week, you may recall seeing a story about this community. Livingston, LA is north of New Orleans and its mayor describes it as "the jumping off point for folks south" since the hurricane hit. They are the first community that people come to in their journey out of the affected areas that is relatively normalized. They have clean water, electricity and an intact infrastructure. They are also a town of 1080 in population with a small police force of 6 - 4 full time - and a small elementary school. They are experiencing this disaster as the place where people are arriving where they can start to receive help. Many federal and state agencies have set up there to start to process people through the bureaucratic nightmare that has now become their reality.
Livingston is also a generous town and it has opened its arms to folks who need help. They are overwhelmed. The mayor has spent 2 hours in his office since the hurricane struck - the rest of the time he is helping hurricane victims. Their local library has lines down the block of folks waiting to use their computers to try and get help. Their small elementary school already has accepted in excess of 30 new students and they anticipate that number will rise exponentially. People have waited on line in this small town for 12 to 15 hours just to get food stamps. Because of the situation there, we asked the mayor if he would be interested in Cheshire helping them. He expressed deep gratitude and stated that, "Americans are the best people on the planet and Livingston is overwhelmed and humbled by your offer of help." We have asked him to keep an eye out for a family unit that needs relocation and is willing to move to Connecticut. Because the purview of Human Services is the most vulnerable folks - disabled and elderly in particular - and because we have a phenomenal school system, we asked that he choose a family with a child with special needs. His response was that he had feared for those families the most as they would be the most difficult to find refuge for and he was indeed grateful.
So, Cheshire, we are asking for your support in this endeavor. An e-mail address has been set up to accept offers of housing and/or other resources that you may care to donate. The address is cheshirecares@sbcglobal.net. Please feel free to e-mail with any ideas or offers of support as well as concerns you may have. Include your name and phone number so that we might reach you to discuss any resources you might have available.
Town Manager Michael Milone informed me that acting Police Chief Chris Louden and Fire Chief Jack Casner have been talking with the state Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security (DEMHS), along with most other towns in the state, by teleconference almost daily to discuss issues related to Hurricane Katrina including the placement of relocated families in Cheshire.In order to ensure that all medical precautions are met, that FEMA funding is used whenever possible and other resources are coordinated, all relocated families that we are willing to house will have to register with town officials who will work through DEMHS for final placement.
So citizens of Cheshire, let's show the south what New Englanders can do when crisis strikes. Cheshire has a history of generosity that dates back to the '70's when several families from Vietnam and Cambodia were invited to live in our community. In the present circumstance we should offer no less to our southern neighbors. Working together we can make a big difference and positively impact the lives of just a few of the hundreds of thousands impacted by Katrina.
Deb Kelleher
Chairwoman
Cheshire Human Service Committee
Town seeks families to take in hurricane evacuees
CHESHIRE — After receiving lots of email messages from residents willing to take in evacuees from Hurricane Katrina, the town has a system in place to handle the need and the desire to help systematically.
Town Manager Michael Milone said that the town has been "inundated" with email messages, and the fire and police departments are working together to coordinate the town's response. Deborah Kelleher, a volunteer member of the Human Services Committee, has set up a new email account by which residents can email her if they want to take in a family, or donate goods to help them.
When the Human Services Committee met Sept. 8, it resolved to take in two families, one of which has a child with special needs, from Livingston, La., a parish that Kelleher heard about on the television news. The town has fewer than 5,000 people, and evacuees started arriving there soon after the hurricane because its infrastructure was intact. Before the meeting, Kelleher called Mayor Derral Jones and the town librarian and found that people were in line a block long waiting to use the computer in the library. Jones had been to his office for only two hours since the hurricane up until Sept. 8, because he was spending so much time talking to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and talking to evacuees. The parish took 30 new children into Doyle Elementary School as a result of the hurricane.
"We felt that based on the fact that Cheshire is a very blessed community, we should engage in looking for a family to help out," Kelleher said.
Milone wanted the taking in of evacuees to be centralized because of health concerns.
"People are relocating who have tuberculosis," he said. "And by going through the state, we'll be eligible for FEMA reimbursements."
In addition to looking for people to host evacuees, Kelleher has been looking for services to offer them. The First Congregational Church nursery school, she said, has offered to hold a spot for a 3- or 4-year-old child if one comes as a result of the hurricane.
In the 1970s, Cheshire took in refugees from Cambodia and Vietnam.
"If New Haven could accept 100 families, Cheshire could certainly accept one family," Kelleher said. "The committee said it shouldn't be just a family. It should be a family and a neighbor or a family and a relative."
