Board of Selectmen

St. A’s Bid for $150,000 in ARPA Funding for Preschool Stalls at Board of Selectmen

By |

Citing legal advice from the town attorney’s firm, town officials this week withheld their support for a request for American Rescue Plan Act funds for a local church’s proposed new preschool program. 

Pending further information, the Board of Selectmen during its regular meeting declined to move Saint Aloysius School’s request for $150,000 to New Canaan’s two other funding bodies, the Board of Finance and Town Council, effectively stalling it. Selectmen Kathleen Corbet and Nick Williams both spoke favorably of Saint Aloysius’s plans for a new school and “education and faith center” for its downtown campus. “I think it’s terrific in terms of what you plan to do—I saw the whole plans for the campus, it looks great,” Corbet said during the meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. “I just wonder—we have not had a chance to talk about it—but there’s a lot of preschools in New Canaan, both commercial and not-for-profit and I am just wondering this is really to my colleagues here whether we ought to be thinking about if there is going to be a distribution from the ARPA funds, whether it’s not more appropriate to consider all of the preschools that we have here in town rather than just singling one out,” Corbet continued. 

Williams agreed with Corbet, noting that New Canaan has “a number of preschools in town that have survived COVID and it’s been difficult, so I would want to rethink this and maybe look at supporting more than one particular preschool.”

Addressing the Rev. Rob Kinnally, who presented the ARPA request to the selectmen, Williams added, “The other thing and I have to mention this, Father, and I’m not sure about the law on this with respect to the use of ARPA funds to support educational facilities that encourage or include religious teaching. I think we have a mix in town.

Government

St. Aloysius Parish Reimagines Campus with Planned ‘Education and Faith Center’

By |

St. Aloysius Parish is preparing to build a new 26,000-square-foot facility on its campus at South Avenue and Cherry Street that will include a new school, community room, youth center, meeting spaces and large green area connecting all parts. The project is estimated to cost $26 million—more than half of which already has been raised—with construction planned to start in the spring, according to the Rev. Rob Kinnally, pastor at St. Aloysius. “This project re-imagines our parish campus to accommodate our growth from 2,600 families to more than 3,000 families in the past six years,” Kinnally said in a press release.

Around Town

New Canaan’s Memorial Day Parade and Ceremony Return [PHOTOS]

By |

Brian Platz’s grandfather was in his mid-20s, with three children, when he was drafted into the U.S. Marines toward the end of World War II. 

Platz on Monday morning recalled that his grandfather “would tell us that we were actually running out of men.”

“The draft began, if I remember him correctly, with single men aged 18 to 26,” Platz—himself a U.S. Marines veteran, known to many New Canaanites as the town’s chief building official—told about 300 people gathered at Lakeview Cemetery for a Memorial Day ceremony. “Then went to married men 18 to 26. Married with one child. Married with two. Married with three.

Around Town

‘One of the Truly Bright Lights’: Amid Pandemic, Local Clergy Members Form Stronger Bonds

By |

Even prior to the onset of COVID-19, New Canaan’s local clergy association stood out in the experience of the Rev. Stephen Chapin Garner. Collegial and kind, it includes unusually gifted people whose monthly gatherings are free of a type of guardedness can limit such groups, Garner said. As the pandemic set in this spring, bringing unforeseen practical challenges among other demands, New Canaan’s spiritual leaders began leaning harder into one another, according to Garner, senior minister at the Congregational Church of New Canaan. “We laugh together, we joke, we share the challenges of time and we have gone past ‘friendly,’ to friends,” Garner told NewCanaanite.com. “For me, some of these folks are people I would turn to if I had a complex issue in my life, let alone the church.