Government

First Selectman on Budget: Zero Increase in Staffing

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With the exception of the finance department, New Canaan in looking to its operating budget for next fiscal year should not add any new staff, the town’s highest elected official said Wednesday. First Selectman Rob Mallozzi cited a tough economy in calling for the freeze and said only the very highest-priority, must-do capital projects should be considered as the budget-planning season gets underway. What follows is the full text of a statement Mallozzi read at the top of a Board of Selectmen meeting at Town Hall that officially kickstarted budget talks with municipal department heads:

“We begin this 2016-17 budget season in a very different economic environment that we have in years. A relatively strong economy over the past four years has allowed our town to expand services and invest in much needed capital projects. We should be very proud of all we have done and remind folks that we have no intention of going backwards.

News

Superintendent of Schools Recommends $2.8 Million Capital Budget for Next Fiscal Year

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An estimated $400,000 restoration of the Farm Road-side parking lot at South School and masonry repairs at Saxe Middle School rank as major items driving Superintendent of Schools Dr. Bryan Luizzi’s $2.8 million proposed capital spending plan for next year. The figure would roughly triple what had been approved in capital spending for New Canaan Public Schools last budget season, though that number does not include the $18.6 million renovation and expansion at the middle school. Presented at the Board of Education meeting Monday night together with Luizzi’s recommended $88.5 million operating budget, the capital spending proposal places into future years some projects that originally had been slated for next fiscal year. For example, an estimated $2.3 million replacement of the 20-year-old roof of South School now is slated for fiscal year 2020, under the district’s fluid 5-year capital plan, the superintendent said. “We will certainly keep a close eye on [the roof] and if something goes very wrong, then we would have to accelerate it, but after taking a good hard look, [Manager of Facilities Operations] Bob [Willoughby] was comfortable deferring that now,” Luizzi said.

Government

Health Insurance Costs Drive Superintendent of Schools’ Proposed 6.4 Percent Increase in Spending

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Superintendent of Schools Dr. Bryan Luizzi on Monday night proposed an operating budget for the district of $88,541,473 in fiscal year 2017—a 6.4 percent increase over current spending. Of the overall $5.3 million increase in proposed spending, two-thirds is driven by health insurance—the end result, Board of Education Chair Dionna Carlson said, of a policy developed by district and town officials three years ago (more on that below), whereby reserves have been taken to understate insurance expenses. “We did it year after year after year to the point where we said, ‘There is going to be a year where you cannot take more reserves and you will have huge jump in your insurance number,’ and this is the year,” Carlson said during the meeting and first read of Luizzi’s budget, held in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School. Specifically, under the proposed FY17 budget (available here as a PDF), the district would spend about $14.1 million on health insurance next year, up from $10.5 million this year. “This is the year, and so we need to focus on [the fact that] it is a [2.1] percent educational budget increase—it is not a [6.4 percent increase].

Government

‘Just a Disaster’: Officials Eye Repaving of Parking Lot at Kiwanis

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Saying the main lot at Kiwanis Park hasn’t been repaved in about 30 years, officials are putting in for funds to get that project done and bring the area in line with others at the Old Norwalk Road facility. Though the access road at Kiwanis has been repaved and the parking lot at the rear is done, “the parking lot there is just a disaster,” according to Sally Campbell, chairman of the Park & Recreation Commission. “The stretch that you really see when you’re in the park is just falling apart, so [DPW Assistant Tiger Mann] is putting that in his capital budget, to get the funds to pave that,” Campbell said at the group’s regular meeting, held Nov. 11in the Douglas Room at Lapham Community Center. The discussion arose during a rundown on projects that Mann has planned for New Canaan’s public parks, including a new trail at Waveny that’s designed to get pedestrians off of the main road through it.