Around Town

‘I Would Never Think of Doing That’: New Canaan Baseball Wrangles with Local Families Picnicking on Turf Fields at Mead

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Town officials say they’re installing even larger signs prohibiting people from bringing food, bicycles, strollers and dogs onto the newly turfed baseball fields at Mead Park after several incidents involving local families already this spring. If the signs and warnings don’t work, the next step will be to lock up the little league fields so no one can enter and provide New Canaan Baseball coaches with keys so they’re used only by the organization, according to Recreation Director Steve Benko. “The problem is these mothers come to the playground and they come with the kids and bring a stroller and then they want to be out in the sun and the kids come onto the field and run the bases, which is fine, but then the kids lay down and they set up there and have snacks,” Benko said when asked about the problem. Also recently, Benko said he had two dog trainers working with service dogs on Mellick and Gamble Fields. “It’s been an issue and we’ve asked people not to bring food on the field—I’ve already put signs up at both gates,” Benko said.

Around Town

New Canaan Baseball Proposes Long-Term Use of ‘Mead Park Brick Barn’

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After the idea first surfaced at last month’s Forum on Public Buildings, the nonprofit organization that runs youth baseball in New Canaan on Thursday formally proposed using a disused town-owned brick structure on Richmond Hill Road for storage and meetings. New Canaan Baseball officials in a May 10 letter to the selectmen and Town Council said the building known as the “Brick Barn” or “Richmond Hill Garage” would be more suitable for storage than a town-owned shed at Waveny and could offer more uses. “New Canaan Baseball would like to formally express our interest in the above property,” NCBB Co-Presidents Rob Moore and Brian Rogers said in the letter, obtained by NewCanaanite.com. “We need to fully understand the financial impact and commitment of inhabiting the space but we are willing to explore the next steps.”

“We recognize that the Barn needs repairs and upgrading, and have seen preliminary estimates,” the letter said. “The main room on the ground floor provides us some raw space we could use with some modifications.

News

New Canaan Baseball Unveils Dramatic Plan To Upgrade Little League Fields at Mead Park

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Officials with the nonprofit organization that oversees youth baseball in New Canaan on Wednesday unveiled a dramatic plan to improve the little league baseball fields at Mead Park with larger dimensions and new fences, light poles, bleacher areas and scoreboard. New Canaan Baseball also is seeking to reorient Gamble Field so that home plate is located where left field currently sits and the diamond fans out in the same general direction as Mellick, according to the organization’s president, Jim Higgins. “Our overall guiding principle in terms of what it is we wanted to accomplish was we wanted to stay generally within the footprint of what is there,” Higgins told members of the Park & Recreation Commission at their regular monthly meeting, held at Lapham Community Center. “We are sensitive to reorganizing anything or disrupting any other part of the park, so the plan that we have come up with is substantially within the existing boundaries of the two fields. A couple of the key goals were drainage, trying to get state-of-the-art drainage and the right materials underneath the grass, because we lose a lot of game days due to rain—and not just on the days it rains, but the drainage is not as good as it could be.

Business

Resident Expert: New Canaan’s Brian Rogers on ACA Confusion

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New Canaanites turning their calendars from February to March may be dreaming of many things: parking on snowless streets, walking along iceless sidewalks, cycling in slush-less bike paths. Yet the realities of March in New Canaan likely will include more snow days and Metro-North Railroad breakdowns before we see the 5,000 daffodils at Irwin Park. And before the end of the month, many of us will seek clarity on President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act. That’s because, as the now-stabilized healthcare.gov website reports on its homepage, open enrollment for this year ends March 31. With more than 20 years of insurance experience, town resident and New Canaan Chamber of Commerce member Brian Rogers understands the widely debated healthcare law more than most.