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 Council Pushes Back on West School Cell Tower; ‘Option B’ Proposal Coming

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Members of New Canaan’s legislative body say they will not support a plan to erect a cell tower about 900 feet behind West School (and 600 feet from its playing fields), though they’re expecting the town’s highest elected official to come forward with an alternative proposal in the area. Town Council Chair Steve Karl noted in comments during the elected body’s March 14 meeting that “the Council is definitely exhausted on ‘Option A’ at the West tower.”

“We’ve sent that message loud and clear,” Karl said. “I think we’re all in agreement that Option A is a non-starter. But we are told that there may be an ‘Option B’ coming our way. That could be discussed as early as the end of April, so we’ll wait for that to come our way.

Government

Committee: Renovation of Police Station Could Start Around Thanksgiving, Wrap Up in Fall of ‘25

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Work for the widely anticipated, estimated $27.5 million renovation of the New Canaan Police Department should get underway around Thanksgiving and wrap up in the fall of 2025, so long as other moving parts fall into place, officials said last week. The key to the project’s timing is preparing the longtime home of the Board of Education downtown as a temporary police headquarters, members of the Police Department Building Committee told the Town Council during its regular meeting Wednesday. For that to happen, the school board must move out its Locust Avenue offices and into a newly town-owned Elm Street building, Committee members said. “It really does matter,” Committee Chair Bill Walbert told the Town Council at its regular meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. “If we don’t get the Board of Ed out, into their new space, and they sign off on their new space, then we can’t fit out that Locust Avenue space for the police.

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Affordable Housing: State Moves To Dismiss Town’s Lawsuit

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Saying the town’s application for relief from an affordable housing law does not amount to a “contested case” under Connecticut law—and therefore their own denial of that application is not appealable—state officials on Friday filed a motion to dismiss the municipal government’s lawsuit against the Department of Housing. The town applied last July for four years of relief from the state affordable housing law commonly known by its statute number, 8-30g. In towns that cannot meet a threshold whereby 10% of all housing stock qualifies as “affordable,” applicants for housing developments where a certain percentage of units are set aside at affordable rates may appeal to the state after they’re denied by a local Planning & Zoning Commission. 

The town had qualified for a four-year moratorium in 2017, with the denser redevelopment of the New Canaan Housing Authority-owned apartments on Millport Avenue, and hoped to qualify for another through the redevelopment of the Canaan Parish complex at Lakeview Avenue and Route 123. Yet financing difficulties with the project emerged in April 2019, and then the COVID-19 pandemic caused further delays, officials have said. 

As a result, the window opened for 8-30g applications here in mid-2021. Since February 2022, New Canaan has received three such applications.

Cristina A. Ross

West School Cell Tower: Town Council Calls for ‘Active’ Utilities Commission

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In a blow to the town’s highest elected official, New Canaan’s legislative body asserted last week that the town needs an active volunteer commission that advises on utilities. Weeks into his first term in 2017, First Selectman Kevin Moynihan said that he wished to dissolve the Utilities Commission while tackling cell coverage in New Canaan himself. 

Since then, Moynihan has brought no one forward to populate the six-person commission, which is down to three members—not enough to qualify as a quorum—and hasn’t posted a meeting agenda in four years. 

This summer, after it became known that Moynihan was planning to erect a cell tower behind West School, fellow members of the Board of Selectmen pushed back. In October, when Selectmen Kathleen Corbet and Nick Williams called for the reinstitution of the Utilities Commission, Moynihan said he didn’t “see the need” for it. 

Even so, Corbet and Williams this month pushed again for a reactivated Utilities Commission. 

And last week, the Town Council voted unanimously during an informal straw poll that New Canaan needs an active Utilities Commission and that the Council will do whatever is necessary to flesh that out, including taking input from the Board of Selectmen. “Right now, as we have a very active first selectman—he is having the thought process and the meetings that are not public meetings,” Councilman Cristina A. Ross said during the elected body’s Dec. 14 meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference.