Around Town

Town Tradition Fading: Six Years Since New Canaan Had Ice Skating on Mead or Mill Pond

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It was Dec. 31, 1993, and this thought came to Cam Hutchins as he—3-month-old daughter in his arms, bundled up in a snuggie—followed the sound of a slapshot toward Mead Pond, where dozens of ice skaters wobbled or glided over a frozen sheet of ice, illuminated by parking lot lights and set that New Year’s Eve against a backdrop of Christmas lights: “As she gets older, we can do this.”

“This” being a cherished New Canaan tradition: Ice skating on Mead or Mill Pond. Hutchins, a 1977 New Canaan High School graduate, recalls the fires burning in the Lions Den at Mill Pond during his Center School days. “All winter long, it seemed like we were always going to Mill Pond,” he recalled. “Skating there on the weekends was a big deal.

Government

Plans Filed for Building Project at Millport That Would Give New Canaan Relief from Developer Loophole

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A plan to add 33 units to the public housing development at Mill Pond would trigger temporary relief for New Canaan from a state law that often amounts to a loophole for developers seeking to skirt local planning decisions, officials say. Under the Affordable Housing Appeals Act, towns where less than 10 percent of the housing stock qualifies as “affordable” by the state’s definition (New Canaan’s is at about 2.4 percent), developers may bypass Planning & Zoning by designating a percentage of units within proposed new structures as affordable. Ten percent is a rigorous standard that towns such as New Canaan are unlikely to meet, officials say, since the state in calculating “affordable” lumps the town into the sprawling geography of the “Norwalk-Stamford Metropolitan area.” Yet there’s a way to get relief under a provision (a complicated provision) in the state law. Under the provision, types of housing are assigned a certain number of points based on variables such as how much they cost (in mortgage payments or rent) and who they serve (seniors or families).

Government

Mill Pond to Get ‘Dry Hydrant’ during Biennial Dredge

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The biennial dredging of Mill Pond is underway, an approximately $10,000 maintenance project that alternates each year with Mead. Mill Pond, which gets a far heavier sediment load from the Fivemile River than Mead does from the subterranean waterway that feeds it, additionally has a screening system called a “gabion weir” installed, according to Mose Saccary of the New Canaan Department of Public Works. “We put this in and the plan is if we keep pulling debris out of the weir, the rest of the pond will stay clear,” Saccary said. The pond—site of the popular annual fishing derby—had gone without a dredge for some 25 years until 2008, when a $1 million project was needed to clear the pond, just eight inches deep and sprouting weeds at the time. The contractor on the job is Norwalk-based Hussey Brothers Excavating.

News

P&Z Chair on Developer Loophole: ‘There Are Some Real Threats’

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Though he declined to name specific properties (so as not to give anyone ideas), the chairman of the Planning & Zoning Commission on Wednesday said the town is at risk of seeing unwanted housing complexes shoehorned into New Canaan by developers leveraging a state law whose spirit and intended purpose—not always evident in practice—is to boost affordable housing stock. Under normal circumstances, that’s a widely embraced goal by New Canaanites who point to valued, essential workers such as teachers, police, firefighters and public works crewmen as candidates for affordable units. Yet the Affordable Housing Appeals Act (sometimes called “8-30g” for its statute number) when abused is a tool that developers wield in order to get around rejections of site plans locally. “There are several parcels in town which may be targeted by—and I’m sorry to say this—probably mostly out-of-town developers who would like to come in and propose 8-30g affordable units there,” P&Z Chairman Laszlo Papp said Wednesday during a Town Council meeting. The law is triggered in municipalities where less than 10 percent of the housing stock is considered “affordable,” by the state’s definition.

Government

Town Eyes Plan to Screen, Sell Dredged Material from Mill, Mead Ponds

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Town officials are looking into whether the organic material dredged from Mead and Mill Ponds—long piled near the southeast corner of Waveny, in an open area known as the “corn field”—could be treated and sold at a profit for municipal coffers. It isn’t clear just how much of the approximately 30,000 total yards of material could be screened and sold—say, upwards of $15 per cubic yard—because some of it may be too “bony” (too many rocks) or too organic, said Tiger Mann, assistant director of the New Canaan Department of Public Works and senior engineer for the town. The DPW is putting together a proposal that will include a cost-benefit analysis—how much would it cost to screen the dredged material (mostly decomposed leaves) and then how much could New Canaan fetch for it, Mann said. When developed, the proposal would need backing from the Park & Recreation Commission and Board of Selectmen (approving the contract for the screener and revised cost of selling the material). Park & Recreation Commissioner Doug Richardson at the group’s monthly meeting on Thursday said one contractor has been paying about $8 per yard for 4,000 yards of unscreened material.