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.

Board of Selectmen

Recreation Seeks $50,000 To Light Second Girls’ Softball Field at Waveny

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Participation in New Canaan softball has grown so much in recent years that in order to provide adequate practice time, a second field at Waveny should get lights for this coming fall season, officials said last week. The organization that runs youth programs here, New Canaan Softball, has already raised $75,000 to light what’s known as the “Water Tower field,” and the Recreation Department is requesting an additional $50,000 from the town during this budget season. New Canaan Softball is anticipating 240 girls in the program this year, up from 90 just five years ago, Recreation Director Steve Benko told members of the Board of Selectmen during a budget hearing held Thursday at Town Hall. 

Joined by Parks & Recreation Commission Chair Sally Campbell, Benko said girls’ softball in New Canaan “has seen a metamorphosis.”

“There’s interest in it and they need more field space,” Benko said. “And one problem is with the coaches’ availability, because they are all volunteer coaches, is the time to practice is in the evening. And we can use the Orchard Field until 9 o’clock at night, but the other field, the Water Tower field, there was approval for the lights and they are willing to raise money for the lights, and to have that second field lit to give them addition time for practices, it would help the overall program now that the numbers are going up, which is a great thing.”

The $50,000 capital request is part of the overall $271,500 that Recreation is seeking for fiscal year 2020.

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.

Government

Public Works: Buildings ‘Buried’ Under Locust Lot Could Raise Cost of Repaving Project

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Public works officials are seeking $500,000 for next fiscal year in order to repave the Locust Avenue Lot, a project that could cost far more depending on what the town finds at it starts to dig up the pavement. 

Thought two years ago to be right for an approximately $4 million decking job, Locust Avenue Lot will need to be taken out and replaced in one shot, according to Public Works Director Tiger Mann, a project will take about two months to complete. 

The true cost won’t be known “until we get in,” Mann said during a regular meeting of the Board of Selectmen, held Tuesday at Town Hall. “We have been told the buildings that were there prior were actually knocked down and buried under the paving structure. If that’s the case, that is probably one of the reasons why the pavement is failing. This number $500,000 does not take into account if we have to go in and dig out everything that is there.”

The $500,000 request is part of a $5 million overall proposed capital spending plan for the Department of Public Works in the area of administration-and-engineering (nearly half of that total represents the town’s pavement management program). In order to find out just how much the paving project will cost, Mann said, the town needs to “dig a couple of test pits.”

“We will go forward and see if we can do some analysis, find out where the buildings were, ask some people who were around to see if they know where the buildings were buried and then go in,” he said.

Board of Education

Police Chief: We Will Restart Effort To Allow Drug-Sniffing Dog in New Canaan Schools

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The chief of police said Tuesday that officials plan to re-start their efforts to work with the district on a plan to allow a trained drug-sniffing dog into New Canaan schools as part of a wider effort to prevent use and abuse of narcotics. 

Responding to a question from Selectman Kit Devereaux while presenting the New Canaan Police Department’s proposed budget, Chief Leon Krolikowski said effort had “stalled” though “we are going to try and restart that movement, to try to do something reasonable and balanced.”

“Because I don’t think anyone wants drugs in school and we want to do our best to try to prevent it from happening and use every tool we have to stop that,” Krolikowski said during a regular meeting of the Board of Selectmen, held at Town Hall. “And we are going to do our best to restart that process and get that discussion going again. Certainly the biggest drug of choice in New Canaan is alcohol and close to that is prescription drug use, misuse of it. Xanax, that’s a big drug. That is being used, and that is from a fairly recent investigation and we see that, a substantial use of Xanax, especially younger people using and abusing it along with other drugs and substances.