Government

Selectmen Approve Funding for New Ambulance, Boiler Repairs

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The Board of Selectmen at its most recent meeting unanimously approved three expenditures including $9,281.10 for emergency repairs to the boiler at Town Hall, $15,099.10 to refurbish 10 snow plows, and $182,326 for the purchase of a new ambulance. Bill Oestmann, superintendent of buildings, told the board during its Dec. 5 meeting that the boiler at Town Hall developed a problem while he was away on vacation a couple of weeks earlier. “I guess it got cold that week and the heat was not responding very well in Town Hall,” Oestmann said during the meeting, held at Town Hall. ”So, the mechanical company came down and found that there were some issues related to the valves.

Government

‘They Need To Be Separate’: Town Officials Weigh Future of Human Services’ Vine Cottage Home

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Should their current base of operations be sold or otherwise offloaded, the municipal employees who work out of Vine Cottage on Main Street likely could not re-locate into Town Hall due to the sensitive nature of their jobs, officials say. Members of the Human Services Department “feel very strongly that they need to be separate from the Town Hall because of confidentiality issues and the clients that they are dealing with,” according to Penny Young, co-chair of the Town Building Evaluation and Use Committee. “And that is why they were not incorporated into this redesign of Town Hall,” Young said at the committee’s most recent meeting, held Sept. 28 at Town Hall. “So that needs to stay uppermost in our mind, is their function and their need for being separate from Town Hall.”

It isn’t clear just where the department, whose staff includes senior outreach and social workers, would move to if displaced from Vine Cottage.

Government

Officials Approve $44,000 in Contracts To Reconfigure Finance Department at Town Hall

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Officials last week approved approximately $44,000 in contracts to reconfigure the Finance Department’s area at Town Hall in a way that makes it more welcoming and also creates space for two more bodies. The department is “the central service agency” of the town and “people need to feel that they can come in and ask any questions” of the staff there, according to interim Finance Director Sandra Dennies. Yet “right now, when you walk in, you walk into a big gray hall,” she told members of the Board of Selectmen at their regular meeting, held Sept. 12 at Town Hall. “It is not user friendly.

Government

Town Approves $32,780 Contract for Masonry Repairs at Schoolhouse Apartments; Senior Living Facility To Secure Funding for Work

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Officials this week approved a $32,780 contract for a Darien-based company to do masonry repairs to the town-owned Schoolhouse Apartments building on South Avenue. The funds will come from the senior living facility itself, through HUD, according to Bill Oestmann, superintendent of buildings with the New Canaan Department of Public Works. “[Schoolhouse officials] had went out and got some quotes to do repairs on the buildings and sidewalks and they were confused because the numbers were so crazy—all the quotes were something different—so explained to them at that time that these policies had been implemented there, that the town owns all that property, we are liable for all that stuff, so we will mange the project, they are going to give us all the funds through HUD,” Oestmann said at the meeting, held in Town Hall. “They had no problem with that.”

He added: “And at the end of the day, the town owns the building and so we want the work done properly so it will last.”

The 1931-built Schoolhouse Apartments originally had been constructed as New Canaan’s first junior high school, and it was built in a style—brick, with a cupola—that complemented the original New Canaan High School (now the New Canaan Police Department), which opened in 1927 (the same year Karl Chevrolet was founded). Oestmann said DPW officials met with contractors and after the project went out to bid it garnered estimates that varied widely—some $20,000 between them.

Government

‘The Project Is Going Very Well’: Waveny House Roof Replacement Underway

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The widely discussed $2.3 million replacement of Waveny House’s porous and crumbling roof is underway and progressing nicely, town officials say. Contractors are stripping the existing roof and making repairs to damaged areas of the structure beneath it as they go, with an eye on starting the new roof next month, according to Bill Oestman, superintendent of buildings with the New Canaan Department of Public Works. “The risk is diminishing daily as the work progresses and we have not uncovered anything that we didn’t already know about,” Oestmann told NewCanaanite.com. “The project is going very well.”

At this point, workers from Danbury-based Alden Bailey are on track to finish the project ahead of an end-of-year deadline, he said. They’re starting on the east side of the 1912-built Waveny House and are expected to encounter significant structural damage as they go—due mostly to the town’s decades-old neglect of capital maintenance on it.