Animal 411

Police K-9 Dog ‘Apollo’ To Undergo Specialized Boarding While Handler Is Out on Medical Leave

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Town officials on Tuesday approved a contract allowing the New Canaan Police Department to board its K-9 Apollo with a New Milford-based company while the officer trained to handle the German shepherd dog undergoes extended medical leave. The Board of Selectmen during a special meeting voted 3-0 in favor of the $45-per-day contract (to be paid for through a privately supported fund, see below) with Superior K9 Services LLC—a company founded by a recently retired Norwalk police sergeant who had worked as a K-9 officer in that city. It isn’t clear just how long Apollo will remain boarded with the company, according to Police Capt. Andrew Walsh, though it’s the best place for the dog for a number of reasons. For example, Superior K9 “is the company that helped us acquire the dog in the first place,” Walsh said at the meeting, held in Town Hall. “They work with multiple law enforcement [agencies] in the area, including federal, state and local agencies.

Government

Selectmen Appoint Committee To Study Uses and Capital Needs of New Canaan’s Public Buildings

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Town officials on Tuesday dissolved a volunteer committee tasked one year ago with studying New Canaan’s use of Waveny House and appointed what amounts to a successor group that will carry out the same work but more broadly, evaluating and making recommendations on a number of public buildings. The Board of Selectmen during a regular meeting voted 3-0 to form the Town Building Evaluation and Use Committee “to evaluate over a six-month period the uses, physical condition and future capital needs” of structures such as the former Teen Center, Vine Cottage and Irwin Park main house. The newly appointed group will “not have to start from scratch” because enough studies are “in the book to lay the groundwork,” First Selectman Rob Mallozzi said at the meeting, held in Town Hall. “It’s important that we look at it holistically and everything is on the table. If there is a use that isn’t fitting for a certain building, we will take input from them.

Government

Town: New Canaan Lacrosse Association Must Pay Mandatory ‘Fields Usage Fee’ As Other Youth Sports Groups Do

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Town officials on Tuesday pushed back on a proposal from the private group that oversees youth lacrosse in New Canaan to cease paying a mandatory “fields usage fee.”

Addressing a letter sent last month by the New Canaan Lacrosse Association, members of the Board of Selectmen at their regular meeting said that the $20 per-player, per-season fee for maintenance and upgrades at playing fields around town applies across-the-board. “I don’t see how, if we are charging all the sports groups a $20 fee, how one of them can just say, ‘Oh we changed our mind,’ ” Selectman Beth Jones said during the meeting, held at Town Hall. Though they did not name the New Canaan Lacrosse Association specifically, the selectmen referred to a letter that the NCLA president sent last month to the Youth Sports Committee, a volunteer group that had spent years finalizing plans to impose the fee. (The selectmen backed the new fee unanimously in October 2015.)

According to the Dec. 8 letter, the NCLA after contributing $100,000 toward a new turf field at Dunning Stadium last summer found its resources “drained.”

Contributed willingly to benefit athletics in town and to ensure the safety of New Canaan players, the donation also “put additional pressure on our already thin budget,” according to the letter from Kimberly Connors, NCLA president.

Government

First Selectman: New Canaan Will Add No Staff to Town Government Next Fiscal Year

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The town government in the next fiscal year will launch no new services and add no headcount to the municipal payroll, New Canaan’s highest elected official said last week. Department heads now creating spending requests for the 2017-18 fiscal year have been instructed “to keep budgets as flat as possible,” according to First Selectman Rob Mallozzi. “I think the staff is requisite with the job we are doing in all departments, so there will be no adds to staff,” he said during a regular meeting of the Board of Selectmen, held Dec. 20 in Town Hall. His comments come as New Canaan faces an approximately $400,000 shortfall in projected revenue from building permits in the current fiscal year, while the school district outlines what it has described as pressing capital needs.

Government

‘They Put Us in a Tough Position’: Town Officials Put Off $18,000 Payment to Architectural Firm on Assessment of Former Teen Center

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Town officials last week decided to put off payment to a Westchester-based architectural firm for services related to assessing the structural integrity and safety of the former Outback Teen Center building. Members of the Board of Selectmen said at their most recent meeting that they would contact White Plains, N.Y.-based KSQ Design about $18,000-plus that the firm billed New Canaan after a different company concluded—incorrectly, it turns out, though also based on insufficient materials provided by the town itself—that Outback was structurally unsound and unsafe. Selectman Nick Williams noted that an original report from Danbury-based Di Salvo Engineering Group did raise some confirmed problems with the Outback, “it also strikes me they made some mistakes the first time around.”

“Maybe we just call attention to it and say, ‘Hey, don’t do this again f you want to work in the town of New Canaan,’ ” Williams said at the sellectmen’s regular meeting, held Dec. 20 at Town Hall. “They put us in a tough position.”

Ultimately, First Selectman Rob Mallozzi said he would contact KSQ directly and find out “whether some kind of a discount is warranted.”

“I think we are pretty well-intentioned folks and I believe that we got ahead of ourselves because of the impact that that report had on a visceral level,” he said.