NewCanaanite.com (https://newcanaanite.com/author/michael-dinan)
New Canaan Police are investigating the theft of a wallet from a vehicle at Mead Park, reported at 12:04 p.m. on Oct. 2. ***
New member classes at the Congregational Church of New Canaan start Oct. 23. ***
The salary for the town government’s new full-time grant writer will be $82,000, municipal officials said in response to a public information request.
This week on 0684-Radi0, our free podcast (subscribe here in the iTunes Store), we talk to Suzanne Adam, executive director of the Domestic Violence Crisis Center, about domestic violence in New Canaan and the wider region that the nonprofit organization serves. The DVCC’s “Harvest Fest” will take place Oct. 21 at Shorehaven Golf Club in Norwalk.
Here are recent episodes of 0684-Radi0:
First Selectman Kevin Moynihan said this week that state officials have led the town to believe it will receive four years of relief from a widely discussed affordable housing law. After saying in June that New Canaan did not qualify for a moratorium, Moynihan said in late July that the town had, in fact, filed its application for four years of relief from state statute 8-30g, kickstarting a 90-day statutory review period.
Under the statute, in towns where less than 10% of all housing stock qualifies as “affordable,” by the state’s definition, developers can skirt local planning decisions in projects that set aside a certain percentage of units at below-market rates. The town had qualified for one such moratorium in 2017, with the denser redevelopment of New Canaan Housing Authority-owned apartments Millport Avenue, and hoped to qualify for another through the redevelopment of the Canaan Parish complex at Lakeview Avenue and Route 123, which was partially completed last October.
During Tuesday’s Board of Selectmen meeting, Moynihan said, “We expect to get our moratorium on November first. I think that that is the end of the 90-day period.”
“We’ve been told by—led to believe, I would say, by the Housing Department that we are going to get our moratorium,” Moynihan added at the meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. “If that does not occur then that will be ‘all bets off’ in terms of where we are.”
The comments came during a portion of the meeting set aside for general matters before the town.
Police before dawn Wednesday arrested a 19-year-old Thayer Pond Road man by warrant and charged him with third-degree criminal trespass, third-degree burglary—a felony offense—and criminal attempt. On Aug. 8, officers had been dispatched to a Pheasant Drive home regarding a suspicious person seen on video surveillance on the property, according to a police report. Police reviewed the surveillance video and identified the teen as the suspicious person, and after a further review obtained an arrest warrant on the charges. He turned himself in to police at about 3:54 a.m. on Oct.
Town officials on Tuesday approved an approximately $46,000 contract with a Stratford-based company to replace parts of a sidewalk on Maple Street across from New Canaan Library. The Board of Selectmen voted unanimously in favor of the $45,908 contract with Dalling Construction.
Some of the sidewalks on Maple Street between Main Street and South Avenue “are not part of the library construction project but should be done,” according to Public Works Director Tiger Mann. “They have not been done since the Center School parking lot was installed,” Mann told the selectmen during their regular meeting, held in Town Hall and via videoconference. “It’s a concrete sidewalk with an asphalt overlay. So the library has to take care of the north side of Maple Street and a portion of the south side of Maple Street around the Center parking lot entranceway.