News

Podcast: The ‘Cam Hutchins Pollinator Garden’

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This week on “0684-Radi0,” our free podcast (subscribe here in iTunes), we talk to Robin Bates Mason, president of Planet New Canaan, about efforts to install a pollinator garden dedicated to the memory and legacy of former Conservation Commission Chair Cam Hutchins in Bristow Park. Those efforts include a matching grant from Sustainable CT for which advocates for the Cam Hutchins Pollinator Garden currently are fundraising (details for donating here). Here are recent episodes of 0684-Radi0:

Board of Selectmen

Town Approves Resolution in Support of ‘Cam Hutchins Pollinator Pathway’

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Town officials last week endorsed a resolution designed to support the creation of a “pathway” of native flowers, shrubs and trees that form the basis of the food pyramid. The Board of Selectmen voted 3-0 to approve a resolution already adopted by the New Canaan Conservation Commission in favor of pollinator plantings as a way to improve biodiversity here. “I think that our town should be capable of being a brighter light when it comes to environmental management and open space management,” Commission Chair Chris Schipper told the selectmen at their regular meeting held April 5. 

“I would also note that this effort was originally initiated when Cam Hutchins was chair of the Conservation Commission and we have followed through on those desires,” Schipper said at the meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. 

He referred to Hutchins, a lifelong New Canaanite and 1977 New Canaan High School graduate who was deeply involved in the community and was beloved by many here. Hutchins died last summer following a courageous battle with cancer. He was 62.

Around Town

‘He Was Like a Beacon’: New Canaanites Remember the Late Cam Hutchins

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Among the many words that Whitney Williams uses to describe her friend, the late Cam Hutchins—humble, gifted, creative, solid, thoughtful, unpretentious, honest and diplomatic—is “mischievous.”

Once on a cold day during a boys soccer game, Hutchins snapped a picture of Williams as she sat bundled up in the stands in “one of those sleeping bag coats,” she recalled, with “a terrible hat on” and “screaming” with other parents while cheering on their sons, “just looking awful.”

“He took a picture of me, in particular, looking horrible,” Williams recalled with a laugh. “And every now and then, out of nowhere, this photo would just appear on my phone. He would just send it for no reason whatsoever. And I would just be like, ‘Oh my god.’ It was just his way of saying, ‘Hey, I’m just thinking about you.’ But he’s not going to send a nice picture. He’s going to send a horrible picture.”

Earlier this month, as Williams went with friends and family to visit Hutchins in hospice and say goodbye, she recalled through tears, “I said to him, ‘Cam, still the absolute worst picture I’ve ever seen of me.’ ”

”And he said, ‘I had to take a thousand pictures of you before I got a bad one.’ And I thought: That’s just so Cam.

Government

‘I Will Not Be Harassed Nor Bullied’: Despite Acrimony, Town Council Votes To Create ‘Land Acquisition Fund’

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Saying they felt bullied after fellow members of New Canaan’s legislative body took an unusual step to force a specific item onto their meeting agenda, two officers of the elected Town Council on Wednesday night abstained from voting on it. Ultimately, the Town Council voted 7-0 in favor of establishing a “land acquisition fund”—a state law-sanctioned vehicle that’s designed to allow New Canaan to purchase property and use it for open space, recreation or housing. Yet the Town Council’s secretary, Penny Young, and chairman, Bill Walbert, abstained from voting. Originally discussed in January after councilmen John Engel, Kevin Moynihan and Cristina A. Ross argued in favor of its immediate creation, the land acquisition fund item was to be taken up again in March, according to Young, under an agenda set by herself, together with Walbert and the Town Council’s vice chairman, Steve Karl. Under the Town Council’s own rules, if five members of the body sought to add it to the agenda for this month, they could have done so, according to Young.

Government

Selectmen Signal Support for New Canaan Land Trust’s Purchase of Fowler Property

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Town officials on Tuesday morning voiced support for a special appropriation to help a local organization dedicated to land conservation acquire a wooded 6-acre parcel now available for purchase. Though the three-person Board of Selectmen stopped short of an official vote—the discussion of the Silvermine Road property came before the trio as a non-voting, informational item—the group spoke in favor of helping the New Canaan Land Trust buy it. At the time of the selectmen’s regular meeting, the Land Trust was seeking $320,000 from the town to close the $1,070,000 purchase (overall, $1.3 million is needed). Selectman Nick Williams said that he was “generally supportive” of the Land Trust’s efforts to acquire what’s called the “Fowler property,” named for its owner, award-winning zoologist and longtime New Canaanite Jim Fowler. “These opportunities do not come along that often,” Williams said at the meeting, held in Town Hall.