Dr. Bryan Luizzi

District Unsure How To Spend $500,000 in Cafeteria Funds Recovered Through Insurance

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District officials say they don’t yet know how they’ll use funds recovered through insurance following the theft of nearly $500,000 from school cafeterias over a period of five years. 

Asked about plans during a budget hearing last week, the superintendent of schools said the money should remain in a fund where it is now while the criminal justice system processes the cases of two former district employees accused of stealing it. “Once that is resolved and decided and moved away, I think you and I should sit and talk have that conversation,” Dr. Bryan Luizzi told First Selectman Kevin Moynihan during the Jan. 24 Board of Selectmen meeting, held at Town Hall. 

Moynihan asked whether the funds could be used to convert school kitchens to natural gas. South School, Saxe Middle School and New Canaan High School now are hooked up, following the first part of a phased implementation plan overseen by Eversource. Luizzi answered that doing so “certainly seems like an appropriate use.”

“I think that as a result of all that has occurred maybe an under-investment through the years has happened in those areas, so I think reinvesting in those areas like that and doing some other things for the benefit of kids and families in those areas would be well received by everybody,” he said.

Dr. Bryan Luizzi

Despite Opposition, First Selectman Presses Idea of New Police Station at Saxe Field

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Though fellow members of the Board of Selectmen are voicing strong opposition, New Canaan’s highest elected official this week has pushed the idea of building a new police station on a Saxe Middle School field where a baseball diamond now stands. First Selectman Kevin Moynihan during budget discussions on Thursday questioned the superintendent of schools about the demand for athletic fields at Saxe and later pressed the recreation director about the prospect of building a replacement baseball diamond at Kiwanis Park. Referring to a grass lot at the Old Norwalk Road park, Moynihan told Recreation Director Steve Benko during a budget presentation to the selectmen at Town Hall, “What I have raised is the possibility of building a ballpark there.”

Benko responded that the area “is not big enough” because it lacks the 205 feet down a right-field line and 225 feet to center field that the current diamond at Saxe has. 

“If you are trying to replicate what we have at Saxe … we do not have that distance,” Benko said. “I taped it out. And someone said to cut into the hillside there, but the problem with the hillside is there’s a rural pond back there.”

Moynihan responded that former Police Commissioner Stuart Sawabini—who brought forward the idea of building a new police headquarters on the Saxe field–also had measured it, as had the parks superintendent. 

Benko said, “I don’t think they have the right measurements.”

The first selectman mentioned Sawabini’s proposal during a press briefing last week, generating wide discussion in town.

Board of Education

District To Pursue Refurbishment of NCHS Planetarium

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Though it’s not part of his $4.1 million capital request for next fiscal year, the superintendent of schools said last week that the district is planning in the future to ask for money to refurbish the planetarium at New Canaan High School. The projector at the planetarium is original, and whenever it needs work, the district needs to fly in the repair person to get it done, Dr. Bryan Luizzi told members of the Board of Education at their Jan. 7 meeting. “It is the same person has been working on it for a long time and it’s time for an upgrade,” Luizzi said at the meeting, held in the Wagner Room at NCHS. “The possibilities in that space have really exponentially changed based on changes in technology.

News

‘It Has Started To Fail’: $2.2 Million South School Roof Replacement Drives Board of Ed’s Capital Budget Request 

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The estimated $2.2 million replacement of the roof at South School is driving the superintendent of schools’ overall $4.1 million capital request for next fiscal year. 

The project had been scheduled three years ago, yet the Board of Finance at the time asked whether the district could defer it, “so we did,” according to the Dr. Bryan Luizzi. “We really feel you cannot defer it any more,” he told members of the Board of Education during their regular meeting Monday night, in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School. “We are spending a lot of time with rain problems after storms and water incursion is an issue. And so we need to keep up with it, or other problems happen and we want to avoid those.”

The comments came as Luizzi proposed an approximately $92 million operating budget for fiscal year 2020, a 2.55 percent increase over current spending. The Board of Ed is to vote on the proposed budgets next week, at which point it goes to municipal bodies for discussion and approval, with a final vote in April. 

The South School roof replacement should be able to get done in a single summer starting when school lets out, Luizzi said.

Dr. Bryan Luizzi

First Selectman Envisions New Road through Waveny Connecting NCHS to South Avenue

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Saying pipes will need to run to South Avenue from a planned power station behind New Canaan High School, the town’s highest elected official said he is in favor of laying that route by creating a new road through a wooded portion of Waveny Park. Such a road also would help ease traffic at the school—a hurdle in creating a workable busing system as part the district’s efforts to start high school later, First Selectman Kevin Moynihan said during a press briefing last week. “We have to bring the pipes from the power plant behind the high school that we are going to build over to Saxe and the YMCA,” Moynihan said during the briefing held Thursday in his Town Hall. “It would be logical to bring it through that area and it is not wetlands. It can be done.