Andrew Brooks

Board of Finance Chair: Budget Planning Amid Economic Headwinds

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The purpose of this letter is to update you on the plan for the 2023/24 budget, and our overall financial picture. In summary, our town is in great financial shape, but there are economic uncertainties and challenges that we will need to work through this year. Let me share some highlights. On February 7th, the New Canaan Board of Finance will begin analyzing the Town’s budget for the fiscal year 2023/2024 that begins on July 1st. The town departments have been working on their needs and requests over the past few months.

Board of Finance

‘This Is a Big Project’: Water Main Installation Work To Start This Year

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The town’s highest elected official said Tuesday night that the water company’s plans to run a 36-inch main through New Canaan will start this year. The pipe is “designed to take water from the Bridgeport system all the way to Stamford and Greenwich, and we, New Canaan, get no benefit,” according to First Selectman Kevin Moyinhan. 

“It was supposed to be a 2023 project,” Moynihan told members of the Board of Finance at their regular meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. “So that is something we didn’t anticipate,” he said. “This is a big project.”

Moynihan spoke during a general update for the finance board on capital projects. Plans for the water main installation first surfaced at public meetings in 2019.

Board of Finance

‘That’s In Motion’: Moynihan Lays Out Approvals Schedule for West School Cell Tower

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Though residents and town officials this summer called for more community input regarding the plan, First Selectman Kevin Moynihan on Tuesday laid out a schedule for municipal bodies to take up a proposed cell tower behind West School. Verizon “has come forward wanting to put a tower on the west side of town,” Moynihan told members of the Board of Finance at their regular meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. 

“Specifically, in the town property of the 47 acres on Ponus Ridge,” Moynihan continued, referring to 769 Ponus Ridge. “We are going to come back with two proposals and this will go to P&Z at the end of the month. One would be 1,000 feet behind West School. The other would be at the other end of the property at Llewelyn [Drive], which is a cul-de-sac, in the woods.

Board of Finance

Lawsuit: Town’s Denial of Sewer Application ‘Illegal’

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A lawyer representing the owner of a property at Weed and Elm Streets, site of a planned 102-unit multifamily redevelopment, is appealing a municipal body’s decision last month to deny a proposed relocated sewer connection. The Board of Finance, in its role as New Canaan’s Water Pollution Control Authority, violated state law in its “illegal” denial, which was “an abuse of discretion and/or not supported by substantial evidence in the records” for several reasons, according to a complaint filed in state Superior Court by attorney Tim Hollister of Hartford-based Hinckley Allen. The property at 751 Weed St. is already connected to the town’s sewer system, “ample sewer capacity exists for the proposed use” and “no system extension is proposed,” Hollister said in the complaint, received Monday by the Town Clerk’s office. “[T]here are no engineering impediments to connecting,” the complaint said, the sewer extension will be privately funded and “the applicants have a right to approval and the WPCA has a non-discretionary / ministerial obligation to grant the application.” 

“In denying the application, the WPCA illegally used sewer system access to control or regulate land use, which is beyond its statutory authority,” Hollister said in the complaint, and the denial was also “pre-textual in the sense that the record shows that its stated denial reasons were not the actual factors that resulted in the decision.”

“The record contains no factual or legal basis for detail of the application,” the complaint said.

Board of Finance

VFW Puts Out Call for Volunteers on Saturday; Town Poised To Deny $15,000 Request

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Members of the local VFW are calling on volunteers to help with an effort in Lakeview Cemetery this weekend. At 8 a.m. Saturday, the Veterans of Foreign Wars Howard M. Bossa and Peter C. Langenus Post 653 will pick up the 1,300 flags placed beside veterans’ gravestones at the cemetery in advance of Memorial Day, according to VFW Commander Francis “Mike” McGlinn, an artillery officer during the Vietnam War. “We checked with Arlington National and with the State of Connecticut VFW, and the protocol is to remove the flags before they become worn and disrespected,” McGlinn said. “Arlington does it the week after Memorial Day. An additional reason for us to pick them up now is so we can use them again next year and save $1,500.”

Those willing to help with the effort are asked to meet at 8 a.m. on July 16 near the “veterans area” of the cemetery, located off of the Main Street entrance, over the bridge and on the right-hand side of the main road through Lakeview Cemetery. 

The collection comes as town officials are poised to deny the VFW’s request for $15,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funds. 

During a public hearing before the Town Council last fall, VFW member John McLane, a U.S. Army captain in Vietnam, said the organization had spent a great deal of money in recent years on the veterans’ plaques that hang inside the northern entrance to Town Hall.