Around Town

Did You Hear … ?

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A 12-year-old Labradoodle on Wednesday finished its legally required 2-week home confinement after biting a young boy on the leg on Jan. 11, officials said. The Saxe Middle School student stepped onto a private property on Canoe Hill Road after getting off the bus and the dog, a resident there, bit him in the calf, according to a police report. The incident wasn’t reported until the following day, when the boy’s leg began to ache and swell at school, according to the Animal Control section of the New Canaan Police Department. ***

Here’s a big ‘Congratulations’ to 2015 New Canaan High School graduate and All-State First Team baseball player Zack Smith on a rare honor achieved as a sophomore at Newport, R.I.-based Salve Regina University: captain of the school’s baseball team.

Business

‘This Is Ridiculous’: Town Officials Urge Auto Shop Owner To Be Reasonable in Parking Vehicles Along Main Street

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Members of the volunteer group that oversees on-street parking in New Canaan are urging the owner of a downtown business to work with them or risk exacerbating an emotionally charged dispute and potentially dangerous situation. The Police Commission already has spent more time on traffic and safety concerns near AC Auto Body than it has on hiring issues, according to commissioner Paul Foley. “This is ridiculous and it is still not solved,” Foley said at the start of the commission’s regular meeting, held Wednesday in the training room at the New Canaan Police Department. “It would be resolved if this individual would perform in a neighborhood way.”

Turning to members of NCPD that are working with both AC Auto Body owner Anthony Ceraso and neighbors who say the way he parks customers and shop vehicles blocks sight lines, Foley added: “You want to convey that to [Ceraso]? That we are concerned again about this action that he continues to do and if there isn’t any cleanup, especially now that snow coming and all the other stuff, that we will go to [Planning & Zoning].

Government

With an Eye on Safety, Town To Re-Stripe and Otherwise Improve East Maple-Main Intersection

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Seeking to reduce motorists’ speeds and improve sight lines near an intersection that’s at the center of a longstanding dispute between neighbors, officials plan to re-stripe and otherwise improve parts of East Maple and Main Streets. Plans call for the removal of two parking spaces—one up to the northwestern corner of East Maple, the other around the corner on Main (in front of Coldwell Banker)—as well as the westward shifting of the centerline on Main Street as northbound traffic approaches the intersection and shifting forward both the stop bar and crosswalk at the top of East Maple, traffic officials said. Tiger Mann, ascending assistant director of the Department of Public Works, told members of the Police Commission at their most recent meeting that he has “a request for Safety Markings to come out and take care of that work.”

“Once we put that striping in, we will move over the centerline,” he said at the meeting, held Nov. 16 in the training room at the New Canaan Police Department. “That’s all we have left—to come and lay it out as to what’s going to happen, and then give the go-ahead and do the work.”

The improvements represent an initial attempt to create a safer intersection for motorists seeking to exit Maple and East Maple onto Main and for pedestrians seeking to cross those streets.

Government

‘That Is My Property’: Business Owner Pushes Back On East Maple Street Traffic Study’s Recommendations

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The business owner involved in an ongoing dispute with residential neighbors on East Maple Street on Wednesday night pushed back on a traffic consultant’s suggestion to change the way he uses his own parking lot in order to improve traffic and safety. Instead of asking him to alter a stone wall (if not remove it) at AC Auto Body and no longer park cars in the northwest corner of the lot, the sight line problem at the corner of Main Street would go away if traffic on East Maple Street is made one-way toward Hoyt Street, according to the business’s owner, Anthony Ceraso. The wall “is on my property that we did have the approval to have erected when we did renovation, as well as the fence,” Ceraso told members of the Police Commission at their regular meeting, held in the training room in the New Canaan Police Department. “So my concern is and my original observation was the easiest way to rectify this was a one-way street. We don’t have to put up any stop signs, any traffic lights, we don’t have to worry about monitoring traffic going in or out of there with the police department giving tickets or warnings, because now it [would be] changed to a one-way street.

Government

‘A Pattern of Abuse’: Police Commission To Remove Auto Shop’s Designated Parking Space on East Maple Street

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The volunteers who oversee on-street parking in New Canaan voted last week to spend $1,700 for a field analysis and sight line study of East Maple Street, an increasingly busy commercial area downtown whose residents say they’re concerned about traffic and safety. At its regular meeting Wednesday, the Police Commission also decided to discontinue a practice whereby an auto body shop on the corner at Main Street is allowed to park on East Maple. Instead, the commissioners said, AC Auto Body will use two designated spaces in the nearby Center School parking lot for its flatbed trucks and could park a smaller wrecker in its own lot. East Maple Street resident David Shea, who has become a spokesperson for the concerned neighbors, told the commission at its July 20 meeting that “what we are looking at is two kinds of streets when you come up East Maple from Hoyt it is a wide street.”

“As you turn in the curb toward Main it becomes a bottleneck, it narrows down,” Shea said at the meeting, held in the New Canaan Police Department’s training room. “What we are proposing is that parking only be on the right-hand side of the street, the usual two hours, and then on the right-hand side going east, that would be no-parking, no-standing [zone] that will allow traffic to pass on a two-way basis and give the residents the parking that they need.