News

Town Approves One-Year Extension for Cloud Storage of Police Camera Videos

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Town officials on Tuesday approved an approximately $33,000 contract for cloud software storage of evidence footage recorded by New Canaan Police body and vehicle cameras. The department is required to retain video and audio recordings for various amounts of time depending on what the footage is—for example, according to Capt. Joseph Farenga, drunk-driving arrests must be stored for two years. “For our standard footage, I believe it’s 60 or 90 days that we hold onto it if there’s no incident associated with it,” he told members of the Board of Selectmen at their regular meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. 

First Selectman Dionna Carlson and Selectmen Steve Karl and Amy Murphy Carroll voted 3-0 in favor of renewing NCPD’s $33,400 one-year contract with Wallingford-based Telrepco. Carlson noted that there’s “only one data storage company that all the police use in the state of Connecticut,” saying she envisions the cost of storage to rise with the proliferation of body cameras in law enforcement. She asked Farenga whether there are other providers.

Government

Town Approves $65,000 To Reconstruct Heavily Used Trail at Waveny

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The Board of Selectmen at its most recent meeting approved an approximately $65,000 contract to reconstruct a pedestrian trail at Waveny. The trail that runs near a southwestern corner of the park—from where the road that runs through Waveny meets Lapham Road, along the stone wall toward the Merritt Parkway— “doesn’t have the preferred surface that we have in certain areas,” according to Public Works Director Tiger Mann. Instead, it has larger crushed stones and would serve the public better if it had the same surface as the pedestrian trails that run along the Waveny road on the South Avenue side of the park, officials said. “It’s what we’ve been utilizing on all the new trails in Waveny,” Mann told the selectmen during their Sept. 10 regular meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference.

Amy Murphy Carroll

‘I’ve Had Great People Around Me’: Mose Saccary To Retire After 44 Years with the DPW

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Mose Saccary, East Avenue-raised son of a Nova Scotian coal miner, graduated from New Canaan High School in 1978 after coming up through Center School and Saxe. He worked several jobs out of school, including for the architect Dinyar Wadia, at Grand Union and at Walter Stewart’s (“We actually lived on Seminary Street by then, so I could jump the wall,” Saccary recalled.)

“Before that, I worked for Joe’s Pizza when I was about 10,” he told NewCanaanite.com. On graduating NCHS, he learned that two buddies—Joey Lucas, a ‘78 classmate, and Walt Jaykus, one year below—had taken jobs with the town’s Department of Public Works. “I got interested in it and came on board and never looked back,” Saccary said. That was April 1980, and he started as a laborer.

Government

Selectmen, Commission ID Wages Issue within NCPD

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The New Canaanite 2024 Summer Internship Program is sponsored by Karp Associates. Town officials this month discussed what they described as an ongoing salary issue among New Canaan’s finest. 

During the Ag. 6 meeting of the Board of Selectmen, members of the Police Commission asked the selectmen for percentage salary increases for the highest-ranking members of the New Canaan Police Department. Paul Foley, a member of the appointed body, asked the Board to increase the deputy chief and captain’s salary from 2.75% to 3%, and the chief’s from 2.75% to 3.5%. During the meeting, held in Town Hall and via videoconference, Foley said these increases aren’t “quite where other departments are, but it gets them bumped up a bit.”

Foley said the increases would send a message to the rest of the staff that “there is some room for compensation increase.”

Foley said the department has been dealing with an issue where there’s a lack of individuals moving into administration positions.

Government

Town Officials Approve Request To Demo ‘Audubon House’ at Nature Center

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The New Canaanite 2024 Summer Internship Program is sponsored by Karp Associates. Town officials last week approved a request to demolish a long-disused town-owned building at the New Canaan Nature Center. During the Aug. 6 meeting of the Board of Selectmen, officials discussed the future of the “Audubon House,” a deteriorating 15-by-30-foot structure located across from the Oenoke Ridge nonprofit organization’s Visitor Center. 

Department of Public Works Senior Engineer Joe Zagarenski asked the Board of Selectmen for authorization to enter into a contract with Fuss & O’Neill, a civil and environmental engineering company. 

The contract, in the amount of $4,355 plus a contingency of $800 (a total of $5,155), is required to perform the demolition of the rectangular structure, Zagarenski told the Board at its regular meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. 

Director of Public Works Tiger Mann said the cost is funded in the fiscal year 2024-25 budget in a $50,000 line item. The building originally served as a laundry facility for the late Susan Dwight Bliss, a New Canaan resident and philanthropist.