Government

Faced with Prospect of Natural Gas Coming to Town, Officials Change Re-Paving Plan

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Facing the prospect that the utility company at some point may tear up asphalt to install natural gas lines, officials on Tuesday chose a new set of town roads to be paved as part New Canaan’s annual maintenance program. Because natural gas would come into town from Stamford by way of Davenport Ridge and Jelliff Mill Roads, the streets along the lines’ route—including Spring Water Lane, Adams Lane and Hillcrest Road—will not be paved just now, as decided by the Board of Selectmen in approving a $661,000 contract last month. Instead, a new project that covers approximately the same square footage—a combination of White Birch Road and three stretches of Ponus Ridge—will be substituted in, following a unanimous vote by the selectmen at their regular meeting. “I guess if I am a resident of Spring Water or Adams or Hillcrest, the natural question is—and I think this would be more directed at the first selectman than anyone else—is: What do we think about timing?” Selectman Nick Williams said at the meeting, held in Town Hall. “Because these folks have waited once before and now they are going to be asked to wait again.”

First Selectman Rob Mallozzi said Williams had voiced “one of our big concerns.”

“It’s a tough pill to swallow for those folks,” Mallozzi said.

Business

LED Bulbs, More Uniform Timers Going into All Decorative Lampposts Downtown

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Town officials have approved a contract with a Brookfield-based company for work that’s expected to make the decorative lampposts that illuminate downtown New Canaan more environmentally friendly and cost-effective. The Board of Selectmen at a recent meeting approved a $4,038.75 contract with Efficient Lighting & Maintenance Inc. that will see new light-emitting diode or ‘LED’ lights and “astronomical timers” installed on the lampposts. The new timers will be programmed to turn the lights on and off at pre-programmed times, rather than having them go and off now based on sensors that often “go bad over time,” according to Bill Oestmann, buildings superintendent with the New Canaan Department of Public Works. “We are constantly chasing [the photosensors]” Oestmann told the Board of Selectmen at its March 21 meeting, held at Town Hall. “It gets costly.”

The existing photosensors could be tripped by passing headlights that make them “believe” it’s daytime, meaning the lampposts would switch off at night for a period of time, officials said.

Around Town

Did You Hear … ?

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The gallery for this week’s “Did You Hear … ?” features interior photos from rental units at the newly built mixed-use building at 16 Cross St. in New Canaan, “The Crossing.”

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The Town Council on Wednesday night voted 12-0 in favor of an operating budget of $148,136,106 for fiscal year 2018. The overall figure and amount allocated to the Board of Education ($87,618,405) are the same as had been approved by the Board of Finance. The schools are seeing an approximately 1.6 percent year-over-year increase, while the overall operating budget is going up 2.6 percent.

Government

‘A Lot of Horse Poop’: Officials Seek To Discredit Treasurer’s Claims of Financial Problems at Town Hall

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The town treasurer’s recent assertions that he lacks full access to all municipal bank accounts while some former public workers have retained login access—even after their employment with New Canaan had ended—are flat-out false, officials said Tuesday morning. Additionally, Treasurer Andrew Brooks himself does not have the ability to “scrub” the names of former municipal workers from New Canaan’s bank accounts as indicated during a public meeting last month, according to officials with the bank that the town uses. In fact, according to Barbara Hart, senior vice president of government and institutional banking at Webster Bank, it’s an industry best practice to preserve a record of the names of those who previously had access to municipal bank accounts for seven years. “We give people online access according to the specifications set forth during the implementation period, so when setting up a new customer like the town of New Canaan, we figure out who has what access,” Hart told members of the Board of Selectmen at their regular meeting, held in Town Hall. “And we grant passwords and user IDs based on the level of access at the account level, user level –we give very, very finite limits to each user and those limits are captured in our system.

Government

League’s Voter Info Brochure To Go Out Soon; Seats up for Election on Selectmen, Town Council, Board of Ed

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Officials with a nonprofit organization dedicated to voter education say they’re preparing to mail important information to New Canaan electors. This year’s “Know Your Representatives” brochure from the New Canaan League of Women Voters—listing all of New Canaan’s elected representatives, as well as local board and commission meeting times—has been underwritten by Bankwell, according to a media bulletin from the organization. It will go out April 17, according to the league. Seats are up for election this year on municipal bodies including the Board of Selectmen (three seats) and Town Council (six seats) and Board of Education (five seats). First Selectman Rob Mallozzi and Selectman Nick Williams, both Republicans, announced last month that they intend to seek a fourth term on the board.