NewCanaanite.com (https://newcanaanite.com/tag/beth-jones)
This week on 0684-Radi0, our free podcast (subscribe here in the iTunes Store), we launch a new series with the 0684-Radi0 podcast. “New Canaan Lifers” will profile lifelong residents of the town, and we start with a personal favorite among New Canaanites: Beth Jones. Here are recent episodes of 0684-Radi0:
Saying it’s a matter of public safety, members of the municipal body that oversees the New Canaan Fire Department are calling for the town to re-add funding for an assistant chief position in the agency. The Board of Selectmen following a back-and-forth with Fire Chief Albe Bassett removed a request for $121,000 in salary for the full-time assistant chief position in January, during the first major phase of the fiscal year 2025 budget process. (The job would also come with a benefits package that town Human Resources officials put at about 40% of the salary.)
After Bassett submitted a memo to the Board of Selectmen saying he could try to make do with $71,000 in overtime that would go to line officers in lieu of the full-time assistant chief, the selectmen did add a $50,000 overtime line item to the Fire Department’s budget (which still must be approved by the Board of Finance and Town Council). In the memo, obtained by NewCanaanite.com through a public records request, Bassett listed five duties that cannot be filled by line officers “on a 24/7 basis.” They include representing the chief as needed, supervising the other line officers, HR functions such as negotiations, budget-related work and fire marshal duties. Members of the Fire Commission during a special meeting held Feb.
Please join us for the second New Canaan Talks Housing conversation to learn about the “Three E’s of Housing: Equity, Economy, Environment.” On Thursday, April 15th at 7pm, a fact-based panel discussion will feature experts from each of the three E’s to talk about housing’s impact on New Canaan. Proposed zoning changes were submitted for consideration in Hartford this session. They have now been significantly revised and are out of committee pending a vote. Why are they important? Home is complex and interconnected.
Editor, New Canaanite,
Last week was a difficult one.
We passed the 100,000 mark of deaths from COVID-19. We were traumatized by the horrific murder of George Floyd by four Minneapolis police officers. We watched our president move to militarize our streets.
Locally, we saw the chair of our Police Commission tear down heartfelt signs, calling them “litter” with a shameful insensitivity to the historic moment. We saw our first selectman force the resignation of Mike Handler, our guiding light through all kinds of emergencies over the past two decades. But on Thursday, hope was renewed—a warm light at the end of a very dark tunnel.
The New Canaan Fire Department launched a new policy with respect to wearing masks after two municipal employees—neither of them firefighters—tested positive for COVID-19, officials said Tuesday. All personnel in the fire house will wear a surgical mask when there are two or more people in the same room, and if firefighters are unable to social-distance in the trucks, they will wear masks there, too, according to Fire Chief Jack Hennessey. “Community spread is out there, so we assume everybody we run into could be potentially infected, so we are protecting each other and ourselves from everybody,” Hennessey said during the Fire Commission’s regular meeting, held via videoconference.
He added, “We are trying to get better testing for our personnel but that is not available yet because they are still only testing symptomatic people and there is no antibody test available to the general public yet. So we are kind of in a holding pattern. No firefighters that I am aware of have tested positive or have COVID, but we do have a number of family members that are sick so we do have three or four people that have been missing work because of sickness in their families and we want to make sure that it does not come into the firehouse.”
Town Hall has been closed to the public since March 23.