Animal 411

Local Woman To Place ‘Shame on You’ Flags on Deserted Dog Feces in Irwin Park

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Parks officials on Wednesday night heard from a New Canaan woman who has a new idea for shaming those who walk dogs in Irwin Park and leave the animals’ feces behind, a continual problem that’s reared up recently. Jean Scheidl said she would plant 4-by-6-inch vinyl ‘Shame On You’ flags on each individual pile of excrement left at the popular park in order to send a message to the irresponsible dog owners who leave them. At last count, Scheidl said she spotted and a photographed 31 such messes on and around the Flexi-pave walk around the park’s perimeter. “I think something has to be done because it is not pleasant, it really isn’t,” Scheidl told members of the Parks & Recreation Commission at their regular meeting, held at Lapham Community Center. “I think when people come back and see that it is not right then they maybe will stop doing it,” she said.

Government

Parks Officials Propose 2018 Waveny Pool Rates

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Saying that Waveny Pool’s reserve fund is in good shape, parks officials are recommending only modest increases to certain fees to use the popular facility, while significantly reducing the costs for an individual pass. The Parks & Recreation Commission voted 6-0 at its Jan. 10 meeting to hold the resident family pass rate at $455 for the season—it typically is open Memorial Day to Labor Day—while reducing the cost of an individual pass from $265 to $175. Recreation Director Steve Benko said that last year’s price drew some criticisms from residents saying it was too high, that they “don’t go that often” or only go on weekends, “so giving that we are on sound financial footing the committee felt that they would reduce the pass to $175 for the season.”

Commissioners voting in favor of the new slate were Sally Campbell, Hank Green, Francesca Segalas, Katie Owsley, Gene Goodman and Matt Konspore. Commissioners Doug Richardson, Jason Milligan, Andy Gordon and Laura Costigan were absent.

Government

Parks Officials by 6-0 Vote Back Garden Club’s Plan for ‘Parterre Garden’ at Waveny

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Parks officials on Wednesday night voted unanimously in support of a longstanding nonprofit organization’s plan to redesign, re-plant and otherwise improve a prominent garden at Waveny. The New Canaan Garden Club’s plan for the “parterre garden”—located east of the balcony of Waveny House (down that first set of stairs, en route to the sledding hill)—is “timeless and classic” and “engages both visually and physically,” according to Tori Frazer, a member of the organization’s Waveny Walled Garden Committee. “This has always been a formal garden,” Frazer told members of the Parks & Recreation Commission at their regular meeting, held at Lapham Community Center. “We intend for it to stay a formal garden. All the plantings and the plans are classic and will stand the test of time.”

The commission voted 6-0 in support of the plan.

Government

Officials Weigh New Parking, Traffic Proposal for Mead Park

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Town officials are weighing a proposed parking and traffic plan for Mead Park that would preserve its one-way entrance and exit while making other major changes to how and where motorists can go and pull in. Under a proposal from local landscape architecture firm Keith E. Simpson Associates, traffic in the first long area that motorists enter from Park Street would become two-way, while the often-disregarded traffic island in the center of the park would be re-shaped so that it’s more intuitive to motorists, and new curbing would come to a second traffic island near the Apple Cart at Mead Park Lodge so that nobody parks directly on top of it. During a Nov. 8 presentation to the Parks & Recreation Commission, the firm’s Bill Pollack said it was possible to have 90-degree parking for the long stretch along the pond, though some officials said they’d prefer to have more comfortable angled parking there, even if it means losing some spaces. Commissioner Francesca Segalas said she would prefer angled parking because it’s far easier to open a front door “because the front of the next car is not even next to you.”

The proposal also calls for new parallel parking spaces beyond the right-field wall of the large baseball field, new directional arrows on the pavement and crosshatched areas between newly designated handicapped spaces and fire lanes.

Government

Garden Club, Landscape Architect at Odds Over Future of ‘Parterre Garden’ at Waveny

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New Canaan should pause before approving a plan that would see a formal garden at Waveny house changed from its original design, according to local landscape architects. Located directly east of the balcony out back of the 1912-built Waveny house, the parterre garden is “the most important formal garden in town,” an “historically significant” area that “deserves a great deal of thought before it gets radically changed,” Keith Simpson told members of the Parks & Recreation Commission at their most recent meeting. “That configuration of the boxwood hedge has been there for over 100 years and I think it has stood the test of time,” Simpson said at the Nov. 8 meeting, held at Lapham Community Center. “And also, the Olmsted office is probably the best known firm in the history of landscape architecture in the country.