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Town Council To ‘Reconsider’ Audit Committee Appointment [UPDATED]

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Six months after voting against the appointment, the town’s legislative body is scheduled to “reconsider” adding a local man with a unique history in New Canaan to a prominent municipal body. The following agenda item appears on the Town Council’s regular meeting agenda for 7 p.m. Wednesday: “Audit Committee Appointment – Reconsideration of the confirmation of the appointment of [a town resident] as a regular member for a three year term ending December 1, 2025.”

In denying the appointment by a 6-5 vote at its April 5 meeting, Councilmen (as they had weeks earlier) voiced concerns about the process that landed [a town resident] nomination in front of them. Specifically,  they said that since the Audit Committee is a creation of the Town Council itself, its members should be involved earlier in vetting candidates. Formed in 2014, the volunteer Audit Committee helps oversee financial reporting for the municipal government and school district. The Committee has a vacancy left by founding member George Maranis, who resigned.

Dionna Carlson

Election 2023: Letters of Endorsement

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NewCanaanite.com received the following letter(s) ahead of the July 25 Republican caucus. Please send letters to editor@newcanaanite.com to have them published here. We will not publish caucus endorsements after July 11. Letters received through July 11 will be appended to this post. ***

Over my 7 terms on the Town Council and service with 6 First Selectmen, I’ve witnessed the dramatic changes which have evolved in municipal governance and which proscribe the activities and responsibilities of a First Selectman.

Bill Parrett

‘I Can’t Do This Anymore’: Town Council Chair Pushes Back After Committee Nomination

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The head of the Town Council last week called for the legislative body to get involved earlier in bringing new members onto a prominent committee that helps oversee financial reporting for the municipal government and school district. The Audit Committee serves as a kind of “financial arm” for the Town Council, the municipal body that created it, and as such the Council “should be in the process earlier,” according to Chair Steve Karl. That the Town Council isn’t part of the initial vetting of candidates “is considered to be sort of a blind spot in the ordinance” that established the Audit Committee, Karl told fellow Councilmen during the elected body’s March 29 meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. 

He added, “The Council is getting candidates for this committee without any input prior to populating the committee, and that is a concern because of checks and balances that should be out there. And I’ll open it up for comment, but we have been passed a candidate which we can vote on—we can vote on at our next meeting—or we can send this to the [Town Council Bylaws and] Ordinance Committee for a look as far as: Do we want to have input in this process sooner going forward?”

The Town Council had a say in populating the Audit Committee when that group was created in 2014, yet “we weren’t consulted at all in this process” recently, Karl said, and the nomination of a new member has “gotten all the way through the process to us.”

“So the question is, given the fact that it’s a committee underneath the Council: Does it make sense for the Council to have a say in vetting candidates prior to going through the whole process and then coming back to us? As it stands right now, the Audit Committee was formed by the Council.

Board of Selectmen

Town ‘Hard at Work’ on Application for Relief from Affordable Housing Law 

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The town has not yet applied for its next four years of relief from a widely discussed state law regarding affordable housing but is working hard toward its application, officials said this week. Municipal officials are “moving forward and we are consulting with the town attorney at this point,” Town Planner Lynn Brooks Avni told members of the Board of Selectmen during their regular meeting Tuesday. 

“We are hard at work putting it together,” she said. As of now Planning & Zoning has received just one 8-30g application for an affordable housing project at the corner of Weed and Elm Streets, and “I don’t know whether there are more,” Brooks Avni said. “I am sure there could be more, but we have only one in our hands right now,” she said during the meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. 

Brooks Avni added, “The way it works is the state has 90 days to approve once we formally submit. So if an 8-30g application comes prior to us receiving a Certificate of Completion for Affordable Housing, which is effectively the moratorium, we have to accept and they can file.”

The comments came as the selectmen appointed a New Canaan committee to participate in a regional planning group focused on affordable housing, as per state law.

Alexandra Van Nes

Ethics Board To Seek Additional Information from RTC in Moynihan Investigation

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The appointed town body investigating an ethics complaint lodged Nov. 1 against First Selectman Kevin Moynihan will seek additional information from the local political group that distributed an endorsement letter at the center of the matter, officials said Tuesday night. Members of the New Canaan Ethics Board said during a regular meeting that they will ask the Republican Town Committee for a sample of the envelope that Moynihan’s letter was sent in, as well as any other printed material included in it. “Those things might help with our interpretation of the thrust of the letter,” Ethics Board Chair Tucker Clauss said during the meeting, held at Town Hall. “And the other thing that I know we were talking about before, the list of [those] to whom the letter was mailed.