Board of Selectmen

Selectmen Poised To Settle Open Question on Town Hires

By |

The Board of Selectmen is poised Tuesday to discuss if not resolve a matter of division among the elected body’s members regarding part-time employees of the town. While Selectmen Kathleen Corbet and Nick Williams have said the full Board should be approving all town hires, including part-timers, as it has in the past, First Selectman Kevin Moynihan has pushed back, even soliciting a legal opinion from the town attorney’s firm to support his view. In the Nov. 4 memo, lawyer Nicholas Bamonte said he “found no authority in the Town’s Charter or Ordinances that expressly grants power to the BOS to approve the hiring of part-time or seasonal town employees whose payroll have already been approved in the Town budget.”

Yet Corbet in a Dec. 9 response memo cited Chapter 14 Section 1 of the Town Charter, which reads:
“The appointment and dismissal of all employees of the Town, except those who are elected or are under the jurisdiction of the Board of Education, the Fire Commission, or the Police Commission, shall be made by the Selectmen.

Government

Town To Complete Sidewalk Installation on Seminary Street

By |

Town officials last week approved a $14,500 contract with a Bridgeport-based company to design sidewalk sections on Seminary Street. The work will help create a continuous sidewalk on Seminary from Park to Elm Street, according to Public Works Director Tiger Mann. “There are two or three stretches of Seminary that we do not have sidewalks on,” Mann told members of the Board of Selectmen during their Dec. 13 meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. “Right now we have sidewalks that come down from Park Street to 66 Seminary and then it stops and then it begins again for a small piece right before Oenoke Lane, and then stops again and then finishes down to Elm Street,” Mann said. 

He continued: “We have had requests to do this ever since the original installation back in 2007.

Government

‘It Would Encompass All Cellphone Towers’: Selectmen Williams, Corbet Push Again for Reinstitution of Utilities Commission

By |

Saying the town should avail itself of the vast expertise among local residents, especially in light of a divisive proposal to erect a cell tower behind West School, Selectman Nick Williams on Tuesday pushed for the reinstitution of a volunteer body that focuses on utilities. 

The Town Code calls for the establishment of a six-member Utilities Commission, Williams noted during a regular meeting of the Board of Selectmen. Under Section 12-4, the Utilities Commission “is created for the purpose of monitoring the activities and operations of public and private utilities servicing the residents and businesses of New Canaan to ensure that the needs of residences and businesses located in New Canaan are adequately met and that New Canaan’s consumers’ interests are represented before any applicable commission or agency having jurisdiction over the utility in question.”

While First Selectman Kevin Moynihan said that the mission is outdated and can only be updated by the Town Council, Williams said it’s “pretty broad.”

“It would encompass cell phone towers, which I am increasingly coming to the belief that these are antiquated things—150-foot-tall monopoles or whatever you call it—for my purposes seem outdated,” Williams said during the meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. He added, “To be clear, I’m not coming out against the West School tower. What I’m coming out for is to reconstitute the Utilities Commission.”

“What is your opposition to having an independent Utilities Commission, populated by very bright people in town?” Williams said. “We’ve got 20,000 people in this town, surely—in fact, I know two or three by name who have come to me and said, ‘I would like to be part of a Utilities Commission.’ And certainly if you look at the statute, it would encompass cellphone and tower usage.

Government

After Supply Shortage, Town Approves Purchase of $14,000 in Sidewalk Bricks

By |

Town officials last week approved the purchase of approximately $14,000 in sidewalk bricks, following an earlier materials shortage. After facing an initial delay due to the shortage, the town “jumped on” the bricks when they finally became available, according to Public Works Director Tiger Mann. “We provide brick toward other people that are doing work in the downtown areas,” Mann told the Board of Selectmen at its regular meeting, held in Town Hall and via videoconference. 

“So you had Forest Street had some work, and then we had some additional work on Elm Street and then trying to pre-buy for the work on Elm Street from Park Street to Grove in front of the train station … to try to be ahead of the supply chain issue because that is what we ran into originally for the bumpouts,” Mann said. “I had a certain amount of material and then we had to wait for the rest of the material to come and move the contractor away to a different location to come back. That material is on site versus having to move people around.

Board of Selectmen

‘If You Want To Manage, You Run for First Selectman’: Moynihan Pushes Back on Selectmen’s Request Regarding Part-Timers

By |

For the third straight meeting, New Canaan’s highest elected official on Tuesday squared off with fellow members of the Board of Selectmen regarding part-time municipal employees. Selectmen Kathleen Corbet and Nick Williams have said that the Board has an established practice of approving all hires for the town, including those who work part-time on a seasonal or permanent basis. The issue arose when a permanent part-time hire at Waveny House recently was discussed at a Town Council meeting but not before the selectmen. First Selectman Kevin Moynihan responded by saying that such oversight is not the Board’s job, and obtained an opinion from a lawyer in the town attorney’s firm backing up that position. During this week’s regular selectmen meeting, Corbet said she’d reviewed the lawyer’s opinion letter asserting that “the temporary employees, the seasonal employees, the budgeted part-time employees don’t typically come to the Board of Selectmen.”

“I thought it did, so I did some research and in fact I just type in ‘part-time employees’ and they all came up, so we have in fact quite a history of a process as I just further reminded myself, substantially, including every part-time employee and of course there might be one or two that haven’t come before us so I’m going to request that again,” she said.