Friday, March 12, 2010
Frisbee golf, tennis, and Shakespeare on the summer Agenda.
As 60-degree weather put visions of summer in New Canaanites heads, the Park and Recreation Commission ushered along several projects being readied for the upcoming season. At their regular meeting Wednesday, the commission approved use of the Mead Park tennis courts for a second annual "Friends Open" fund-raising tournament July 30 through Aug. 1. Sharon Stevenson told the commission that Friends of Mead Park Tennis, which is again organizing the tournament, had already raised about half the estimated $92,000 needed to replace 60-year-old fencing and rotting spectator benches around the courts. Stevenson said her group is also pursing grants; and the Recreation Department put in a $25,000 request for fencing to supplement those efforts. …
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
You couldn't find bigger booster for the USPS.
When Nancy Cornelia became New Canaan's new postmaster Jan. 20, it was something of a homecoming. The Stamford native began her USPS career 25 years ago as a mail handler unloading trucks at the New Canaan Post Office. She ascended to mail-sorting clerk and then window clerk before she accepted offers for promotion after promotion which eventually took her to USPS headquarters in Washington, DC. Now the red-haired, blue-eyed whirlwind says she's determined to make her mark on 2 Pine Street, and not just by being the first female postmaster to serve in the New Canaan Post Office's 192-year history. First off, expect her to straighten the crooked lettering on the post office's exterior without further delay. That stubborn broken door that …
41.145653
-73.495307
New Canaan Post Office
2 Pine St
/articles/new-canaans-new-postmaster-is-a-ball-of-energy
19750
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The Board of Finance asked for further givebacks from an already trim budget.
The Board of Education had pitched a historically low year-on-year increase of less than 2 percent (while still paying out a 2 percent raise to faculty and staff) to the Board of Finance Feb. 4 and it seemed the proposal would pass with flying colors. But then Thursday, the Board of Finance asked the Board of Education for the $400,000 in additional cuts as part of an effort to excise $1 million from the full town budget, just days before a summary would be released to the community for review ahead of a March 16 public hearing. "While we were disappointed with the town's request, particularly given the historically low increase, we were not devastated, nor were we surprised." Chairman Nick Williams said at the Board of Education meeting …
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Improvements identified, but there's no money to implement them.
A needs and feasibility study on how to improve service on the Metro-North New Canaan Branch suggests three multi-million dollar projects be undertaken along its 7.9 miles of track. First Selectman Jeb Walker opened a public meeting about the recommendations Monday night by telling the roughly 40 residents in attendance that he was, "fully behind" the study and, "I think you'll be pleased with what you see." State Rep. John Hetherington echoed Walker, saying the projects, "all look like promising proposals." But the recommendations will remain academic because no money has been allocated for them and, given the state's financial morass, no funding will likely be available soon. Nonetheless the suggestion that a second passenger platform …
The Board of Finance approves a special appropriation to pay part-time clerks.
When town government cut back the budget for part-time hours during the last budget cycle, Town Clerk Claudia Weber warned that her office would run out of money to cover the statutory workload, and it now has. "The assumption was because of the economic times we would have less work, but that was not the case," Weber said. Revenues from taxes and fees collected by the Town Clerk's Office are actually up 19.3 percent year-to-date compared to the same period of the last fiscal year. "It takes time, people" to process all the documents, Weber said. For example, she estimated that processing a single land record request involves 15 steps and about half an hour; 4,546 such requests were filled last year. The Town Clerk's Office had operated…
41.148195
-73.493025
Town Clerk's Office
77 Main St
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Thursday, February 25, 2010
New Canaan is switching to a more hi-tech fine and fee processing system
Prompted by two town officials to change the vendor for managing parking tickets and permits, the Board of Selectmen Tuesday agreed unanimously to install a new system that wirelessly records tickets and will enable residents to apply for parking permits online. Arguing against continuing to use a system provided by NetTech Solutions of Randolph, NJ, Chris Kaiser, the town's technology director said, "Their service has become terrible. They don't respond to us, they don't get back to us, they want to charge us for every little thing we add." Underscoring Kaiser's remarks, Karen Miller, Parking Bureau Supervisor, said after 15 years as the town's vendor, NetTech's service is, "no longer acceptable. I think its support services have gotten …
Friday, February 5, 2010
That's probably because the Parking Bureau is understaffed.
If you've been hanging out in the parking spots on Elm Street for more than 90 minutes recently and haven't gotten a ticket, you may not be able to count your lucky stars for too long. If the Parking Bureau gets the additional personnel it's asking for in its proposed budget, there will be more meter maids (or misters) on patrol in the coming year. The Parking Bureau used to have four people on the beat, but one position was cut during the last budget cycle and a 25-year veteran just retired last week. With the reduced staff, Supervisor Karen Miller and parking attendant Lisa Pia have spread the rotation between the streets, but there's some places they're just not getting to, like the parking lots at the library and the schools. And, …
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
The Board of Selectmen has sent the proposed budget with their adjustments to the Board of Finance.
The Board of Selectmen completed the first pass of the town's 2010-2011 budget last week. While most departments' requests were unscathed, the selectmen did make substantial cuts to the fattest proposals—the Fire Department's operating request and the Recreation Department's capital request—and trimmed budget lines for several other departments. The Board of Finance begins hearing budget presentations tonight. With their operating budget request, the Fire Department had asked for the largest dollar increase of any town department, and the selectmen shaved $40,000—1.33 percent—off the bottom line. Most notably, the selectmen cut the request for training by a third to $30,000. They also cut $4,000 from the uniforms line and $2,000 …
Friday, January 29, 2010
The Recreation Department lists fixes to the tennis courts at the high school and Mead Park as its top capital priorities.
The town spent about $70,000 two years ago to seal the cracks in the tennis courts at New Canaan High School, which are used by all the high school teams and the general public, but Recreation Director Steve Benko says without a more permanent fix the courts are going to become a serious liability. "We can't keep doing nickel and dime patchwork," he added," he said. "[We] got through another season last year and now the cracks have opened up. We don't want some kid tripping on a crack and getting injured." So Benko wants to spend $170,000 to redo the high school courts with the same premier surface that was applied to the Mead Park tennis courts five years ago, which has a waterproof membrane that will help the courts stand up to winter …
Building upgrades and more staff are also top priorities.
The New Canaan Library's 2010-2011 budget proposal is brought to you by the letter "E". The library hopes to add about 4 percent to the collections line in 2010-2011 with the aim of offering more electronic content, and to more than double the IT line to upgrade much-used technology resources. "Today when we buy a book, we buy it in regular print, we buy a book on CD, we might have it in e-audio and in this upcoming year we'll probably be focusing on growing downloadable e-books," said Alice Knapp, Executive Director of the library. The library board is coming up with a plan to expand the collection of e-books the circulated for devices like the Kindle. Knapp hopes to start making these resources available by the end of March, 2010. The …
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