A mediation hearing is scheduled for February 15 in the lawsuit brought by a bank against the owner of an historic 1780 home on God’s Acre. The antique, Greek Revival-style home at 4 Main St. is being foreclosed upon, has been vacant for at least two years, officials say, and is deteriorating. The Bank of New York Mellon filed a civil lawsuit in July 2012, naming the home’s owner as a defendant. According to the lawsuit’s complaint, the owner had taken out a note for a loan in May 2007 in the amount of $2,280,000, and the mortgage on the property was assigned in October 2011 to The Bank of New York Mellon. The mortgage and loan went into default, according to the lawsuit.
A Chevy Suburban. Credit: Michael Dinan
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The district is migrating toward the Chevy Suburban as the “vehicle of choice” for its special education students, Transportation Coordinator Roy Walder said at Monday night’s Board of Ed meeting. New Canaan Public Schools had been using Fords but are going to go with the Suburban because “it is large enough to accommodate the transporting of up to seven kids at one time, all in the back,” Walder said. The district gets a good state contract price for the cars, he said. The transition to Chevy will be done by the 2018-19 school year, according to the board.
Lulu the cat is back home in New Canaan.
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Lulu, a handsome male Parish Road South cat that had gone missing before Christmas, found his way back home Dec. 30. Seemingly, he was found at a construction site in New Canaan and kept by a woman here for four days, then handed off to a friend in Trumbull, who had two dogs that Lulu didn’t get on with, and finally to still another friend Hamden who ended up catching wind that Lulu was a missing cat. Lulu now is getting micro-chipped, Animal Control Officer Maryann Kleinschmitt said, and is a great lesson in why pet owners should have it done.
Elm Street, Jan. 7, 2015. Get out of the crosswalk. Credit: Michael Dinan
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The town in October installed bollards in front of the non-parking-space just below the Dunkin Donuts’ side of the pedestrian crosswalk at the Playhouse on Elm Street. They’re designed to fix the chronic problem of motorists parking there. What’s happened since is that drivers often are parking directly in the crosswalk itself, as shown at right.
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Update/Editor’s Note: The contractor had been unaware of the regulation and the sign has been removed—we have removed the photo.
The New Canaan Zoning Regulations (6.3.F.3) are crystal clear: “Construction signs, painter signs, landscape company signs and the like shall not be allowed in any Residence Zone.” Yet a Ridgefield builder’s sign is not only prominently displayed but also brazenly situated between staked posts along Smith Ridge Road, just north of Norholt Drive. The town’s zoning enforcement officials are looking into it.
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Even with the state-mandated “Regional Uniform Calendar” coming in the 2016-17 school year, New Canaan will seek to preserve its custom of taking a full week’s vacation for Christmas as well as February and April. The Board of Ed on Monday night reviewed a draft calendar for 2016-17. Originally developed as a cost-saving measure for more sparsely populated regions in Connecticut, the uniform school calendar became law in a mammoth budget bill that passed in 2013 (it’s 500 pages long, the section that deals with this can be found on page 432.) No member of the New Canaan delegation to the Connecticut General Assembly voted in favor of it. New Canaan intends to use some of its flex days to get the week in February, though the law requires “not more than three uniform school vacation periods during each school year, not more than two of which shall be a one week school vacation period and one of which shall be during the summer.”