Around Town

Town Increases Youth Sports ‘Player Use Fee’ to $25

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The Board of Selectmen voted unanimously Tuesday to increase the per-son fee assessed to youth sports participants from $20 to $25. 

Formerly overseen by a selectmen-appointed committee, the “player use fee” now is collected by the New Canaan Athletic Foundation and allocated to an artificial turf replacement fund rather than a budget for additional playing fields, according to First Selectman Kevin Moynihan. Player use fees came to about $54,000 total last year, Moynihan said. “We don’t always collect it all,” he said at the selectmen meeting, held in Town Hall. Moynihan added, “There is some debate as to whether we ought to extend this to the Rec Department programs, which we will consider next year.”

Moynihan and Selectmen Kit Devereaux and Nick Williams voted 3-0 to up the fee. Williams said it’s been flat at $20 for a number of years.

Government

Town Approves $7,500 Contract in Pursuit of Improved, Expanded Parking at Waveny Water Towers

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The Board of Selectmen at its most recent meeting approved a contract with a New Canaan company to survey an area of Waveny where a newly paved access road and expanded parking area are planned. First Selectman Kevin Moynihan and Selectman Kit Devereaux at the Board’s Sept. 17 meeting voted 2-0 in favor of a $7,540 contract with RKW Land Surveying. 

The company will flag wetlands for a proposed paving of the milled access road between the main road through Waveny and a parking lot that abuts the water towers and overlooks the new artificial turf fields there. “RKW has done work all four corners of this property, so it stands to reason that we would ask them to come forward and finish this interior piece to do,” Public Works Director Tiger Mann said at the selectmen’s meeting, held at Town Hall. Selectman Nick Williams was absent.

Board of Selectmen

Work To Create Plaza at Former ‘Mead Park Brick Barn’ Site Underway

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Town officials last week approved a $19,000 contract with a Norwalk company to install a new plaza at Mead Park on the former site of the “Brick Barn.”

Nature’s Way Landscape Associates has done “very nice work” for New Canaan in the recent past, including widely praised stone work at the colonnade, according to Public Works Director Tiger Mann. The company had originally come in with its low bid on the Richmond Hill Road project at nearly $22,000, but came down to $19,000—the town’s available funds—with no diminishment of the plaza, Mann said. “They feel they want to continue to make rest of the park ‘their own,’ so to speak, so that is why they were able to drop their price,” Mann told the Board of Selectmen at its Sept. 17 meeting, held in Town Hall. First Selectman Kevin Moynihan and Selectman Kit Devereaux voted 2-0 to approve the contract.

Government

Town Officials Bemoan Anonymous Nature of Traffic Complaint to State

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While he or she has a right to flag the issue, the anonymous nature of a complaint lodged with the state that will likely result in downtown New Canaan losing some parking as well as pedestrian crosswalks is troublesome, Selectman Kit Devereaux said Tuesday. Town officials have said representatives of the Connecticut Department of Transportation, as a result of the complaint, are seeking “immediate compliance” with a 1949 state law that requires a 25-foot no-parking zone on either side of pedestrian crosswalks on Main Street. Reached by NewCanaanite.com, DOT officials said the complaint came in via phone and there’s no record of the complainant’s name. The “anonymous aspect of one of our residents requiring this work” is bothersome, Devereaux said during the Board of Selectmen’s regular meeting. “I just wish they would come forward and justify what they are doing so we can all understand rather than feel it’s some kind of anonymous assault,” she said at the meeting, held in Town Hall.

Government

First Selectman: Funding for Security Cameras at Waveny Could Come Sooner Than Budget Season

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After saying earlier this month that there’s no pressing need to install security cameras at Waveny’s entrances and that the work could wait until next summer after the fiscal year 2021 budget is set, New Canaan’s highest elected official on Tuesday conceded that funding for the project could come through as a special appropriation before then. First Selectman Kevin Moynihan said he is to meet with the Police Commission on Wednesday night and that the Board of Selectmen could take up a definitive plan as early as the elected body’s next meeting (Oct. 8). “I’m not sure we will have a definite plan,” Moynihan said during the selectmen’s regular meeting, held in Town Hall. “We are working with a security consultant and we will hopefully have further discussion.”

He added, “We will definitely have further discussion at our next meeting, whether or not we adopt something at that meeting.