Board of Finance Member: New Canaan Should Consider Charging Nonresidents Using Waveny Park

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A Board of Finance member said this week that if a substantial number of Waveny Park visitors are from out-of-town, as has been suggested, then New Canaan should consider charging them for entry. The town should consider granting each New Canaan household two or three car passes to Waveny “and then, I don’t know, maybe at some point we charge for parking or something,” Amy Murphy Carroll said during a meeting of the Board’s Parks & Recreation Budget Subcommittee, held Monday via videoconference. “Because it’s expensive to maintain and we have the Waveny Conservancy doing incredible things, we have the paths for doing all that stuff,” she said. “And I just think, you know, we do a lot of stuff in New Canaan that benefits people in a broader way and our taxpayers pay for it all. And I’m not trying to be exclusive, and to the extent that if we did something like this, I think it could go toward the Conservancy or toward [the Recreation Department] budget or something.”

The comments came while Murphy Carroll and two other finance board members, Michael Chen and Tom Schulte, reviewed Recreation Director Steve Benko’s proposed spending plan for fiscal year 2022 in advance of a full Board of Finance meeting.

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Town ID’s $695,000 in Planned Capital Spending This Fiscal Year That Could Be Delayed

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Saying New Canaan should consider putting off some capital spending in the near term until a clearer picture of the economy emerges, town officials last week identified nearly $700,000 earmarked for the current fiscal year that could be delayed. Prepared with input from public works and district officials as well as the first selectman, the draft list of more than 75 items total $695,000 and range from small expenditures such $29 for signage and striping up to about $63,000 for a solar project at a town building, documents show. Board of Finance Chair Todd Lavieri said the main question now facing the town is whether the spending could be delayed or deferred “until we have a little more clarity.”

“You guys control this,” Lavieri told First Selectman Kevin Moynihan, Public Works Director Tiger Mann and town CFO Lunda Asmani during the finance board’s April 7 meeting, held via videoconference. “We can’t tell you what to do and how to do this. But I guess it would be our recommendation, or at least our consideration, to hold onto the spending at least for another month until we got more clarity.”

The comments came during a discussion within the finance board and no formal action has been taken on the recommendation. They also came as New Canaan and the nation grapple with a hard stop to the economy that’s seen businesses forced to slow down or shutter altogether for health reasons as unemployment claims soar.

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Editorial: P&Z Commissioner Dick Ward Should Recuse Himself from Glass House-Related Matters

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Planning & Zoning Commissioner Dick Ward’s continued participation in hearings regarding the Philip Johnson Glass House is unseemly, unhelpful and poses a legal risk to the town. He should recuse himself from related votes and discussions in the future. A neighbor of the Glass House who has faced criticism in the past for refusing to recuse himself when the organization has applied to amend its zoning permit, Ward during P&Z’s July 30 meeting once again spoke out against an application made on behalf of the National Trust for Historic Preservation site. 

He did so unreasonably, unnecessarily and inconsistently with his own past practice as a commissioner. Ward’s Winfield Lane house sits a five-minute walk or two-minute drive from the Glass House property on Ponus Ridge, according to Google Maps. In the past, he has pushed back on the recommendation to recuse himself from Glass House hearings by saying that he doesn’t discuss the organization’s application with others who live in the neighborhood, and that he lives beyond the legally required 100-foot “notification area” for land use applicants.

Amy Murphy Carroll

First Selectman: Work To ‘Begin Shortly’ on Former Outback Teen Center

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Work soon will start on long-vacant public building located behind Town Hall that is to be be made ready for a paying tenant, New Canaan’s highest elected official said last week. The former Outback Teen Center “will begin shortly so that the building will be available for July 1,” First Selectman Kevin Moynihan said during the April 9 Board of Finance meeting. The main floor of the building is to be rented to a local dance studio, while the New Canaan Department of Human Services is to move into the ground floor of the building. 

The town has been approved for a state Capital Improvement Program grant covering more than $400,000 for the project, officials said. Finance board member Amy Murphy Carroll noted that although the town had approved funds for engineering and other studies needed ahead of a renovation of the Outback, funding the physical work was to wait until New Canaan knew better just what it would do with Vine Cottage (where Human Services currently is located). Yet given the news about the state grant, Murphy Carroll said, “it’s different now.”

Building officials in the past had pegged the cost of renovating the Outback at about $300,000.

Amy Murphy Carroll

Board of Finance Approves Bonding for Estimated $2 Million Roof Replacement at South School

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The Board of Finance on Tuesday voted unanimously in support of nearly $2.2 in bonding for the replacement of the roof at South School—a project that’s expected to take place this summer and to be completed by the start of next academic year. As Superintendent of Schools Dr. Bryan Luizzi had outlined during the budget season just passed, the 20-year-old roof has reached the end of its useful life and has started to fail, with water coming in through the ceiling in places following heavy rain. The project, which is expected to come in at about $2 million, went out to bid in January and will be completed by North Haven-based Greenwood Industries Inc., New Canaan Public Schools Director of Finance and Operations Dr. Jo-Ann Keating said. The overall $2,046,000 figure is less than the nearly $2.2 million that town funding bodies approved in the capital budget for fiscal year 2020—it represents $1.6 million with a 20% contingency and $100,000 in soft costs, according to Keating. The town will only bond what is spent, officials said.