Claire Drexler

Parks & Rec Approves Oct. 18 ‘Caffeine & Carburetors’ Show at Waveny

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Town officials last week approved the use of New Canaan’s most popular park for a car show in the fall. 

“Caffeine & Carburetors,” a locally founded auto show featuring antique and specialty cars, is on track to be held Sunday, Oct. 18 at Waveny, following a unanimous vote by the Parks & Recreation Commission. “This is a great program for New Canaan,” Commissioner Hank Green said during the appointed body’s Jan. 14 meeting, held at the Lapham Center and via videoconference. C&C Director of Business Development Claire Drexler noted that the 2025 Waveny event raised $27,000 for the Waveny Park Conservancy after netting $24,000 for the nonprofit organization the prior year.

Around Town

Former NCPS Employee Claims Age and Race Discrimination in Lawsuit

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A former employee of New Canaan Public Schools on Tuesday sued the Board of Education, saying age and race played a role in her demotion and dismissal about two years ago. Employed by NCPS since 2004, the plaintiff, Giovanna Cicirello, is white and was 57 at the time of her dismissal in January 2024, according to a complaint filed in state Superior Court by attorney John T. Bochanis of Bridgeport-based Daly, Weihing & Bochanis LLC. She worked as kitchen manager at South School, and her supervisor was younger and Hispanic, the complaint said. 

“During Plaintiff’s employment with the Defendant, Plaintiff supervised two employees which two employees were younger than the Plaintiff and Hispanic,” the complaint said. It continued: “The two employees raised complaints about Plaintiff’s supervision of them. Such complaints were unfounded.

News

Police: Breach of Peace Charge for Former Downtown Worker

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Police last week arrested a 26-year-old Fairfield man for the second time this month. At about 8:48 a.m. on Jan. 15, officers were dispatched to a Main Street business on a report of a worker approached by a former employee, according to police. The former employee had been charged Jan. 7 with criminal trespass and, as a result, was ordered to stay away from the establishment, according to a police report.

Around Town

‘One Silence at a Time’: Community Marks MLK Day with Stirring Ceremony at United Methodist Church

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When he first heard this quote from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter” — Yanfer Martinez, a senior at New Canaan High School and ABC scholar, thought only of historically significant moments of great injustice. Yet Martinez soon realized that “it was also about the small moments, the quiet ones, the moments where speaking feels uncomfortable,” he recalled Monday morning from the podium at United Methodist Church of New Canaan, addressing more than 150 people gathered for an annual service honoring King’s life and legacy. “I grew up in a Dominican household in Bridgeport where racism was not an abstract idea—it was something you learned early, sometimes before you had the words to explain it,” he continued. “I saw that prejudice reaches children first, how it shapes the way they see themselves long before they understand why they’re being seen differently.”

When he came to New Canaan, Martinez said, he “arrived with hope.”

“I told myself that a new place might mean a new beginning, that maybe here I could finally breathe without being watched,” he said. Yet he soon learned that the weight he had felt before “was still there.”

“It just rested on my shoulders more gently,” Martinez said.

News

Police: Disorderly Charge for New Canaan Parents

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Police last week arrested two New Canaan parents after an issue developed between their juvenile children. 

At about 3:12 p.m., officers were dispatched to a River Street home on a report of the dispute, police said. There, officers discovered that a dispute arose between two grownups—a 38-year-old Rosebrook Road woman and 53-year-old River Street man—regarding their kids, according to a police report. It wasn’t clear what the “issue” between the kids was or how it led to an argument between the parents—police withheld details. Police charged each with disorderly conduct and also charged the man with third-degree assault. Under state law, a person is guilty of third-degree assault when he or she “with intent … recklessly causes serious physical injury to another person; or with criminal negligence … causes physical injury to another person by means of a deadly weapon, a dangerous instrument or an electronic defense weapon.”

The residents were released after promising to appear next week in state Superior Court.