News

Newest New Canaan Police Officer Sworn In; Tam Receives ‘Officer of the Year Award’; 8 Officers, 3 Civilians Honored

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The New Canaan Police Department on Tuesday recognized eight officers and three civilians for outstanding service to the community during a ceremony that also saw the agency’s newest member sworn in by the town clerk. In addressing Nicole Vartuli, a Stamford native and Westhill High School graduate who is poised for training at the Connecticut Police Academy this year with an expectation that she will undergo field training with NCPD through the early part of 2018, Chief Leon Krolikowski said that “badge you were just issued represents public trust.”

“The public willingly puts this work in your hands and trusts that you will take care of them in the proper manner,” Krolikowski said moments after Vartuli had been sworn in by Town Clerk Claudia Weber. “They do not want this responsibility for themselves. My charge to you today is to do just that: Get it right. We have all heard about the stories of officers who have gotten it wrong.

News

Officials Reject Proposed Rotary at Farm and White Oak Shade

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Calling it a complicated solution to a problem that doesn’t exist, town officials rejected one resident’s proposed rotary for the difficult intersection of Farm and White Oak Shade Roads. Police Capt. John DiFederico called New Canaan resident Jeff Holland’s rendering of a rotary at the offset intersection that also includes Main Street and Old Norwalk Road an “excellent sketch” that’s “very good” in execution. However, if New Canaan is to invest heavily in a solution for the intersection, it must address the most pressing problem facing traffic officials—namely, how to get pedestrians safely across it, according to DiFederico. “I think probably an easier solution and more cost-effective solution would just be to put a crosswalk on White Oak Shade” and install a new sidewalk on the south side of Farm Road DiFederico said at the most recent meeting of the Traffic Calming Work Group. As it is now, a painted east-west crosswalk with a warning sign in the middle connects the southern end of Main Street with the western end of Old Norwalk Road, the start of a sidewalk that runs down toward Kiwanis Park.

Government

‘Taking Your Life Into Your Hands’: Residents Seek Signage To Alert Motorists to Hidden Driveway on Heritage Hill Road

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Traffic officials are weighing a new request to install signage on Heritage Hill Road from a resident who has difficulty pulling out of a shared driveway there. Motorists are traveling faster than ever before on the road—a popular cut-through between Main Street and Route 123—and they pick up speed coming out of a downhill curve approaching Forest Street, according to Juliana McKenna of 175 Heritage Hill Road. “When you come down the hill on your way down toward 123 everybody is going really fast and I guess they pick up speed on the straightaway and then they come around the corner, so when I am coming into my driveway, because when I put my right light blinker on, everybody thinks I’m taking a right onto Forest,” McKenna told members of the Traffic Calming Work Group at their most recent meeting. “So I have to put my emergency lights on to try to get them not to hit me so that I can pull into the driveway and one of our residents, four or five years ago was coming out and got T-boned, and she requested the sign then and was declined,” McKenna said at the group’s meeting, held Oct. 18 in the New Canaan Police Department.

Around Town

‘Most Dangerous When the Kids Are Heading to School’: Residents Voice Concerns About Intersection at Farm and Main

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The offset four-way intersection at Farm Road and Main Street confuses drivers about rights-of-way, a problem that’s exacerbated by limited sight lines and creates a hazard for pedestrians seeking to cross it, residents say. Old Norwalk Road’s Samantha Connell told town officials that her kids attend Saxe Middle School as well as New Canaan High School and walk through the intersection for school as well as sports practice and getting into the downtown. Now that sidewalks run to the end of Main Street and then down Old Norwalk Road toward Kiwanis Park, more people are walking at the intersection than ever before, but motor vehicles at the confounding intersection are focused on each other far more than pedestrians, Connell said during a recent meeting of an advisory group on traffic measures. “The people driving through that intersection at certain hours are in a rush, and unfortunately it is most dangerous when the kids are heading to school or coming home from school and for the rush hour after practice,” she said during the Traffic Calming Work Group’s Oct. 18 meeting, held at the New Canaan Police Department.

Government

‘We Are Angry, Sick of It’: Silvermine Road Residents Seek 25 MPH Speed Limit, Single Yellow Line

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The speed limit along the mile-long stretch of Silvermine Road that runs down from Route 106 to the market and arts center should be reduced by 5 mph and it should have a single yellow centerline, rather than a double, homeowners told town officials last week. The existing 30 mph speed limit is out-of-step with other, similar roads in town that have 25 mph limits, and Silvermine Road has become “is a speedway for contractors racing back and forth between Norwalk and New Canaan,” Mark Thorsheim told members of the Police Commission at their regular meeting on Wednesday. Silvermine is very much a “walking community” and “pedestrian neighborhood” with “pedestrian activities” at the Silvermine Arts Center and with the market and eventual tavern re-opening, Thorsheim said at the meeting, held in the training room at the New Canaan Police Department. “We are angry, sick of it,” he said of the 30 mph speed limit. With that request, Thorsheim and other residents of Silvermine Road asked whether the newly repaved street surface could go back to a single yellow centerline.