NewCanaanite.com (https://newcanaanite.com/author/patrick-barnard/page/12)
A 48-year-old Norwalk man was arrested and charged with breach of peace following a domestic dispute on Elm Street at about 5:30 p.m., Thursday, Aug. 4. The man was issued a misdemeanor summons and is scheduled to appear in court at at a later date, police said. Because the incident was categorized as a domestic dispute, no further information was available.
Having reached the “break-even point” in terms of renting out the town-owned facility, the Park & Recreation Commission on Wednesday appointed a subcommittee to come up with a new fee structure for the Waveny House.
Just weeks after the town slashed the New Canaan Board of Education’s health insurance reserve account by $1.1 million for the fiscal 2015-2016 year, members of the board are now discussing how they would deal with a potential worst case scenario in which claims exceed the amount budgeted and eat into the reserves. During Monday’s Board of Education meeting at New Canaan High School, Dionna Carlson, who heads up the board’s educational resources sub-committee, said, “Through our work on the health insurance account we have identified a problem with our health insurance reserve as it relates to the health insurance reserve policy that was put into place in April 2014.”
That policy, crafted in cooperation with the Board of Selectmen, calls for the board to maintain 60% of the approximately $3 million health insurance reserve, known as the stop loss health corridor, as part of its budget, while the town maintains the other 40% in a special reserve on the town’s books. (To save money, the Town of New Canaan self insures as opposed to using full insurance.)
On top of this, the town maintains a special “incurred but not reported” (IBNR) reserve account, of about $1 million, that is used to cover claims that occurred in the fiscal year but which are not processed until after the fiscal year has ended. Members of the Board of Education and the school administration feel that the recent deep cut to the board’s reserve account puts the board at risk of defaulting on claims in the rare event that a high volume of claims draw down the health insurance budget and eat into the reserves. The town’s rationale for making the cut was basically that the board’s health insurance reserve fund is routinely overfunded at the end of each fiscal year.
New Canaan High School’s senior internship program has grown sixfold since its inception four years ago—from 12 students in 2011 to 72 students this year—and additional staff will be needed to manage it when it reaches the “tipping point” of about 125 students, Susan Carroll, coordinator for the high school’s college and career center, told the Board of Education Monday night. “As we celebrate this program’s growth and success … it’s also time to identify its future challenges,” Carroll said, adding that while the program is quite small by comparison to those of other area high schools—Greenwich, for example has more than 400 students in its internship program—it is growing very quickly, thanks to the district’s marketing efforts. Currently New Canaan High School’s internship program is supported by a committee of about 50 people—including school staff, community members and the New Canaan Chamber of Commerce—who provide hands-on, personalized coaching and training to the interns, Carroll explained. Students participate in the program for four weeks in May-June and work about 25-30 hours per week. All the internships are non-paid and all participating businesses must be within a 15-mile radius of the high school.