The all-volunteer Youth Sports Committee—a Board of Selectmen-appointed group formed to help with the important work of overseeing the private organizations that run youth sports in New Canaan—is getting better at filing meeting minutes. A look at records at the Town Clerk’s office shows that minutes from the Sept. 15 meeting were received on Oct. 3—though that’s not within the legally required seven days, it’s a significant improvement for the committee, which filed its Feb. 6 meeting minutes on Aug. 13.
Murphy Pennoyer. Credit: Maggie Pennoyer
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Much has been made, and rightly, of the lovely wildflower meadow that DPW Highway Superintendent Mose Saccary and his team planted at 123 and Parade Hill Road. The roadside meadow that bloomed this summer was so nice that it literally stopped motor vehicle traffic, and also inspired the New Canaan Garden Club to put in a similar garden at Irwin Park.
For New Canaan’s Pennoyer family, for many years residents in multiple homes along Parade and Heritage Hill Roads directly opposite the meadow, two special members of the family—bulldogs Lily and, later, Murphy (pictured)—are at least partly responsible for the rich soil there. The bulldogs were leash-walked to that patch of land on a regular basis, the Pennoyers say, selflessly if unknowingly fertilizing the area for present-day beautification.
Behold the fruits of the Pennoyers’ and Saccary’s work (article continues below):
[acx_slideshow name=”Wildflower Field at 123 and Parade Hill Road”]
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Though video surveillance at 2:24 p.m. on Sept. 22 from a school bus in New Canaan, stopped and with its stop sign extended, shows a car passing right by that sign, the violation was reported too late (on Oct. 3, more than 10 days later) for police to action against the offending motorist, officials say.
These are plastic bollards that will “give” so they won’t destroy a car that drives into them—hopefully they’ll solve the problem of motorists parking in this non-space, an Elm Street epidemic. Credit: Michael Dinan
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Bollards (here, we’ve done it for you) have been installed at the front of the non-parking-space just below the Dunkin Donuts’ side of the pedestrian crosswalk at the Playhouse on Elm Street—hopefully a solution to the chronic problem of motorists (many of them with handicapped stickers) parking there.
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Town Council member Joe Paladino led a discussion during the group’s regular meeting on Oct. 15 about how the very hard-working New Canaan Building Department may be getting somewhat overworked. In praising the diligent people there at Irwin, Paladino said he sensed there could be a backlog in terms of getting inspections done, which creates a lag in issuing permits—say, for home improvement projects such as creating a new bathroom in a master bedroom suite. Town Councilman Sven Englund asked during the meeting, “What is the cost of waiting?”—to which Paladino responded, whatever the frustration would be of a wife or husband walking past an unfinished master bathroom for six days or so, because a builder will go get work done elsewhere if there’s a delay in getting a permit here in town. At that point, Town Council Chair Bill Walbert put in: “I’ll on the record: For me, that’s priceless.”
The Kekedjians of 309 Lukes Wood Road are set to purchase from the town some of the property in front of their house in order to extend a stone wall that is designed to keep kids safely away from the road. Credit: Michael Dinan
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New Canaan-based attorney David Rucci clarified during the same Town Council meeting—during which the group approved the sale for $45,000 of a very small and (for the town’s purposes, useless) parcel of land to a Lukes Wood Road family seeking to build a wall on their property for safety reasons concerning children—that there was no back-and-forth negotiation in setting the cost of the parcel. Rather, the residents there immediately and with no discussion agreed to the very first figure set by the town.
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Preparing for a worst-case scenario no matter how unlikely, emergency management officials in New Canaan are developing a protocol for first responders in case someone here comes into contact with Ebola, a disease making headlines.
The New Canaan Police Department on South Avenue. Credit: Michael Dinan
At the Oct. 15 Police Commission meeting, NCPD Capt. Vincent DeMaio said New Canaan’s public health emergency team met that day and would convene again on Oct. 29 to develop protocols and training for emergency responders. Though it’s still extremely unlikely that Ebola will visit the town, New Canaan may face a higher-than-normal susceptibility, given that many residents travel overseas, do missionary work in Africa and regularly travel to and from the international hub of Manhattan.
“I know everybody wants to go to the extreme and get us all suited up in containment gear, which really isn’t necessary,” DeMaio said. He noted that the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidance sys Ebola is only transmitted through bodily fluids and blood. Tuberculosis and other diseases such as meningitis “pose a far greater exposure risk to our responder at this point,” DeMaio said.