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‘The Change in Our Community’: Facing Criticism of Sewer Fee Proposal, Finance Board Postpones Vote

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Russ Barksdale, president and CEO of Waveny LifeCare Network, received notification this week about $8,5000 in annual sewer usage fees that the nonprofit organization would be expected to pay for the fiscal year starting July 1. A proposal from Town Hall that’s designed to more fairly distribute sewer-related costs among residential and commercial property owners, the fee ultimately would see both for-profit and nonprofit businesses—including churches, charitable organizations and municipal buildings—taxed for water usage for the first time. 

Barksdale in addressing the Board of Finance on Tuesday night during a public hearing on the proposal said he found that his organization, which includes both the Waveny Care Center on Farm Road and The Inn on Oenoke Ridge, would be “hit more than any other nonprofit in our area, sizably more than any other nonprofit.”

“I went to then think of the pebble effect, the pebble effect that it would have for that usage fee to be placed on us as a nonprofit, to be placed upon the other churches and other nonprofits that enrich the culture of this great community that we have in New Canaan,” Barksdale said during the well-attended hearing, held at Town Hall. 

Noting that Waveny has provided some $10 million in charity care in the past two years in ways that saves government spending, Barksdale added, “We have a very fragile, very large group of seniors that come to us who cannot afford or find themselves at the end of being able to afford the highest level of care that we provide. And so I applaud our charity care to provide that. Who do we bill that usage fee to?”

Medicare and Medicaid are not options, he said, and there’s “really no place to pass that fee on to others to be able to incorporate, so we have to as a nonprofit be able to absorb that expense.”

“We would just ask that, similarly to the $15 minimum wage, that you give us an opportunity and all the nonprofits that are here the opportunity to build it within our budget. Right?

Board of Finance

Finance Board: Wait Until Summer To Fund Town-Wide Survey

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Town finance officials said this week that since there’s no money in the current budget for a proposed survey of residents regarding spending priorities in the town—a survey estimated to cost $16,000 to $19,000—that it must wait for the fiscal year starting July 1 to get underway. Though there is “wide support to do the survey,” Board of Finance Chairman Todd Lavieri said during the group’s regular meeting Tuesday night, funding it would require a special appropriation. “We just do not have money in this budget, so it has got to be the next one,” Lavieri said during the meeting, held at Town Hall. Lavieri added that there are also open questions such as what firm to use and how the survey would be conducted. Ultimately, no one on the Board proposed a special appropriation to fund the survey now.

Around Town

Did You Hear … ?

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The town on Feb. 27 received an application to build Merritt Village, the 110-unit complex on the Maple and Park Streets block at the edge of downtown New Canaan, approved in November 2016 by the Planning & Zoning Commission. The application calls for four multi-family residential buildings with 167,746 gross square feet and a combination of underground and surface parking. ***

And now, a photo of Parking Enforcement Officer Mike McCargo with New Canaan’s Lummi Roscoe, a Pomeranian. ***

The Board of Finance on Thursday night voted unanimously to approve a town-wide budget for next fiscal year of $150.9 million—an overall increase of 1.89 percent—including a Board of Education operating budget of $89.7 million.

Government

‘It Will Not Be Easy and It Will Not Be Pleasant’: Board of Finance Hears Passionate Calls for Fiscal Prudence, Full District Funding as Vote Nears

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New Canaan must be careful as a community to have frank, detailed conversations about its financial situation and not “succumb to the tyranny of the parent,” a homeowner and mother of four children in public elementary and middle schools here told members of the Board of Finance on Tuesday. Everyone loves their kids and wants a good school district, yet this idea floating around New Canaan now that spending on the public schools somehow fuels property values is false, according to Rita Nagle. “That is simply not the economic relationship that exists,” Nagle said during a budget hearing held at Town Hall. “Property values fund taxes, which fund school spending. That is the way the relationship works.

Government

Board of Finance to Keep 2 Percent Budget Increase as ‘Strong Guideline’ for Town Departments

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Members of the Board of Finance on Tuesday night discussed the effectiveness of an October memo instructing all departments to present their budget proposals for next fiscal year with no more than a 2 percent budget increase, especially in light of Superintendent of Schools Dr. Bryan Luizzi last week opened Board of Education budget talks with a request for a 3.5 percent increase. Finance board member Colleen Baldwin said during the group’s regular meeting that while there were discussions before the memo was sent about making the 2 percent a “hard number,” the idea was eventually scrapped “for this very reason.”

Instead, she said that the number was “put out as a starting discussion” with a strong suggestion that the budgets should be presented with “no more than 2 percent.”

But member Thomas Schulte questioned whether the departments are taking the memo seriously enough, considering the financials challenges that the both the town and the state are facing in the coming years and urged the board to bring up these concerns at department meetings. “We tried to do our best to share with them the concerns that we had,” he said at the meeting, held at Town Hall. “I think that the world is very different. It is a more expensive one for people to pay their state and local taxes [in]…and we can’t ignore that, and I think [in terms of] real world budgeting, all of the departments need to be aware of that—whether they’re halfway or all the way through creating their budgets.