Around Town

New Canaan Community Foundation Awards $650,000 in Grants

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The New Canaan Community Foundation celebrated its annual Grant Awards Ceremony Thursday morning, where the agency divided $650,000 among 80 local nonprofit organizations. NCCF Board Chair Sharon Stevenson said the ceremony provided a chance to “come together to celebrate and look forward to our shared work going forward.”

“This patchwork of investments is touching a broad range of needs in our community,” Stevenson said during the hourlong event, attended by more than 150 people and held in the Lamb Room at New Canaan Library. With its other grant programs, NCCF will invest more than $1 million dollars in grant aid this year. John Knight, the organization’s Distributions Committee chair, said the grant investments “depend primarily on the generosity of local donors.”

The 2017 Fundraising Appeal Committee, co-chaired by Sara and Spencer Schubert and Linda and Jay Twombly, led efforts to raise the donated funds. This year’s 92 grant requests totaled nearly $1.3 million.

Animal 411

‘They Are Very Fancy Donkeys’: Nature Center Plans New Barn for Donated Animals

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Town officials on Tuesday unanimously approved two items related to a proposed new barn at New Canaan Nature Center whose occupants will include four donkeys. The Board of Selectmen voted 3-0 on a pair of proposals, for the construction of the barn itself in Bliss Park as well as the merger of two parcels there into a single lot—a technical land use concern since the new structure will straddle them. Bill Flynn, the Nature Center’s executive director, said the Oenoke Ridge Road organization has been offered four donkeys by a local woman, “but we do not have the facilities currently to house them.”

Asked by the selectmen whether the animals currently live in a similar structure, Flynn said yes. “They are very fancy donkeys,” he said at the meeting, held in Town Hall. “They have a barn.