Board of Selectmen

Selectman Corbet Calls for Charter Review in 2024

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Saying the town should seek as much public input as possible in any proposed changes to New Canaan’s major governing document, Selectman Kathleen Corbet on Tuesday recommended undergoing review of the Town Charter in 2024. New Canaan typically forms its Charter Revision Commission every 10 years, Corbet noted during a regular Board of Selectmen meeting. The town last underwent the process in 2016, which also was a presidential election year that saw very high voter turnout here. Yet another 10-year period would mean that Charter-related questions are included on the ballot during a midterm election year. “If you think about when is the, perhaps, opportune time to bring any changes to the Charter in front of the electorate, it’s probably where you expect to have the most people coming to vote and that’s typically in a presidential election,” Corbet said during the meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference.

Board of Selectmen

Selectmen Poised To Settle Open Question on Town Hires

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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

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

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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.

Board of Selectmen

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

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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.

Government

Town Purchasing Its First-Ever Electric Vehicles

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The town for the first time is purchasing electric vehicles or “EVs” for its municipal fleet, officials said Tuesday. 

The two 2023 Chevy Bolts that New Canaan is purchasing from New Canaan’s Karl Chevrolet will be used by multiple members of all Land Use Departments at Town Hall, according to Public Works Director Tiger Mann. Those include Planning & Zoning, Inland Wetlands, Health, Engineering and the Assessor, Mann told the Board of Selectmen at its regular meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. 

“It will be our first in town,” Mann said during the meeting. “So it will be a nice place to start with our Land Use departments.”

First Selectman Kevin Moyinhan and Selectmen Kathleen Corbet and Nick Williams voted 3-0 in favor of the $65,844 contract with Karl Chevy. They are replacing old police vehicles that were shifted to the municipal fleet after exceeding their useful lives, Mann said. Those vehicles, now nearly 20 years old, will be used for scrap and sold for $500, he said.