Government

‘That Is a Milestone’: At Last, Pine Street To Be Repaved

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Municipal officials are poised to approve a contract Tuesday to repave the very last road in New Canaan to get a new surface under the town’s comprehensive 21-year-old program. 

The Board of Selectmen will vote on an approximately $525,000 contract, including a contingency, with a Norwalk-based company to do the work on Pine Street—about $25,000 less than an original estimate, according to Public Works Director Tiger Mann. “That will start some time around Oct. 1 and go through the rest of the season,” Mann told members of the Town Council Infrastructure & Utilities Committee during its Sept. 12 meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. “And that is a milestone for us, me, our DPW in general, because that is the last road in town that needs to be paved since we started our pavement management program in 2004,” he continued. 

Public Works officials had said when the program got underway that it would take 20 years to do all the roads “and it’s pretty much exactly 20 years,” Mann said. 

“We were done a year ago but Pine Street was the only outlier,” he said.

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State Plans To Install More Centerline ‘Rumble Strips’ in New Canaan; Public Hearing Tuesday

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[The NewCanaanite.com Summer Internship Program is sponsored by Karp Associates.]

The Connecticut Department of Transportation is planning to install more “rumble strips” on roads in New Canaan. A remote public hearing is scheduled for 6 p.m. Tuesday for the the rumble strips planned for Route 123/Smith Ridge Road from North Wilton Road to the town line, and Route 124/Oenoke Ridge from Country Club Road to Luke’s Woods Road, according to Director of Public Works Tiger Mann. The state Department of Transportation notified the town in March of its intention, saying in a letter that “[c]enterline rumble strips are a cost-effective, proven safety countermeasure that substantially reduce the risks of head-on, sideswipe opposite direction and roadway departure crashes.” “The grooves produce sound and vibration inside the vehicle intended to alert distracted or drowsy drivers that they have unintentionally crossed the centerline,” according to the letter from Matthew Blume, division chief of traffic engineering in ConnDOT’s Bureau of Engineering and Construction. The centerline rumble strips are being installed because the roads have been repaved, Mann said. 

The hearing has been scheduled because “the town requested it in response to the DOT’s proposed installation of rumble strips,” Mann said.  

“On Route 124, the houses are closer to the road than they are on Rte.

News

Elm Street Repaving Scheduled for This Week

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[The NewCanaanite.com Summer Internship Program is sponsored by Karp Associates.]

Town officials last month voted to approve a request from the Department of Public Works to repave the one-way stretch of Elm Street downtown. 

“We went out to bid, we publicly advertised, and directly solicited from six different contractors,” according to Public Works Director Tiger Mann. 

The town received two bids back – Burns Construction and FGB Construction and Burns was the low bidder with a total of $186,879.75. “The funds are available on our payment management program and one of the reasons Burns was low here was because they’re already slated to be night-paving the week of August 6 – August 6 and 7 – so they’ve already given us a timeframe to go and do it,” Mann told the selectmen at their July 22 meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. “They’ve done nice work for us in the past.”

The construction will be performed overnight, according to Mann, from about 9 or 10 p.m. to 5 or 6 a.m.

He noted that in the last two times this repair has been done, there has been no conflict with “any of the operations in the downtown business area.”

He continued: “We’d like to get this paved and put this area to bed.”

First Selectman Dionna Carlson and Selectmen Steve Karl and Amy Murphy Carroll voted 3-0 in favor of the contract. It’s been years coming. Murphy Carroll asked Karl, “How excited are you for this?”

Karl replied: “I can’t tell you how excited I am about this.

Government

Selectmen Call for More Information on Waveny ‘Western Lot’ Project

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The Board of Selectmen on Tuesday morning delayed approval of an approximately $475,000 contract to reconfigure and repave a heavily used parking lot near Waveny House. 

The town has been planning to upgrade the “Western Lot” at Waveny “for several years now,” according to Public Works Director Tiger Mann. “The parking lot is currently poorly designed and noncompliant,” Mann told the selectmen during their regular meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. “We want a much more user-friendly design with better accessibility.”

Yet the selectmen, citing concerns about impervious surfaces and the need for such a project, called for renderings of just what would change at the lot. 

Saying they were unclear about the plan for a project that reaches what First Selectman Dionna Carlson called an “uncomfortable dollar threshold,” the selectmen decided to revisit the contract at their next meeting in two weeks. The contract is for $479,664.19 with New Canaan-based Peter Lanni Inc. The money is available in the DPW budget under their parking lot payment management program, according to Mann. The department contacted 10 contractors regarding the project and received two bids, with Peter Lanni Inc. submitting the lowest bid.

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Town Approves $25,000 for Traffic ‘Flaggers’

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[The NewCanaanite.com Summer Internship Program is sponsored by Karp Associates.]

Municipal officials last week approved a contract for flagging services on local roads, including for the Putnam Road sidewalk replacement. The Putnam Road work, which has about two weeks left, has “alternating one-way traffic,” according to Public Works Director Tiger Mann. 

“We use the flaggers to direct the motorists,” Mann told members of the Board of Selectmen during their July 8 meeting, held in Town Hall and via videoconference. “Since we have one lane closed, we’ve got to be able to get them through the work zone safely.”

First Selectman Dionna Carlson and Selectmen Steve Karl and Amy Murphy Carroll voted 3-0 in favor of a $25,000 contract with All State Flagging LLC. Mann said the town has a contract already with a different company, Precise Traffic Control, “but they are currently working on the paving projects and there’s just not enough flaggers to go around for Precise to utilize.”

The flaggers are there to prevent people from using the sidewalks, but to get drivers through the work zone without risk, Mann said. They also warn motorists on the Putnam curve where they can’t see ahead, he said.