Government

New Sugar Maples on Farm Road To Screen Rooftop Equipment at Saxe Addition

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Officials soon will plant four sugar maple trees on Farm Road alongside the new addition to Saxe Middle School, an effort to create the feel of a tree-lined neighborhood street. The 4-inch caliper sugar maples will replace some of the trees that came down on Farm to make way for the new construction at Saxe, according to Tree Warden Bob Horan. Horan told members of the Board of Selectmen at their most recent meeting that he met with Saxe Building Committee Chairman Penny Rashin and Vice Chairman Jim Beall, and that the trees “will hide the building to some extent especially the equipment up on the roof.”

“And I think it will look nice,” Horan said at the selectmen meeting, held at Town Hall. “It’s a continued effort to make some of these streets look nice.”

Funds for the plantings will come from the Board of Education, Horan said. (The school board signs off on the work though funds come from the town-approved Saxe Building Committee budget, officials said.)

Selectman Nick Williams asked whether the sugar maples are expected to create a “tree screen” on Farm Road.

News

‘This Moment Marks the End of Two Years of Planning’: Officials Break Ground on Saxe Middle School Project

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About 30 minutes after the final class of this academic year on Thursday afternoon, town and district officials gathered on the lawn near the northwest corner of the Saxe Middle School campus for a ceremonial groundbreaking of the facility’s widely anticipated renovation and expansion. Penny Rashin, chairman of the Saxe Building Committee—a group of volunteers who initially had signed up for a far smaller project, after PCBs turned up 18 months ago in the school’s auditorium—told about 50 kids and grownups who attended the ceremony that “this moment marks the end of two years of planning for the Saxe Middle School project.”

“This project is going to relieve space constraints at the school, provide a renovated auditorium and provide classroom spaces that the students sorely need to get the terrific curriculum that is delivered at the school,” Rashin said on a humid, overcast afternoon. The project includes the renovation of the 59-year-old auditorium at Saxe, as well as a “right-sizing” of music rooms that a building committee immediately identified as a need, and a 12-room addition that emerged a few months later to address rapidly rising enrollment at the overcrowded middle school. New Canaan’s public funding bodies, the Town Council and Board of Finance, each unanimously supported the project following well-attended public hearings last fall, at which dozens of galvanized parents and other residents, including some students, spoke out in favor of it. Rashin said construction would commence this month and continue through the fall of 2017, under a phased plan that will not disrupt Saxe’s curriculum for students.

Government

‘Thank You, Thank You, Thank You’: Town Council Approves Saxe Building Project 12-0

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The Town Council on Monday night unanimously approved the proposed $18.6 million building project at Saxe Middle School, a widely anticipated vote that officially kickstarts a timetable that should see construction start in June and finish by the start of the 2017-18 school year. The 12-0 vote will trigger a bond issuance to pay for a project that has galvanized many parents, students, teachers and other advocates who have said the renovation and expansion of Saxe are needed to accommodate “slow and steady” growth that’s already overburdening the Farm Road school. Town Council Vice Chairman Steve Karl said he was “very proud” of New Canaan for undergoing the lengthy and in-depth process of studying the project and indebted to the “amazing committee of volunteers” on the Saxe Building Committee, including Chairman Penny Rashin and Jim Beall. “Through the meetings and approvals, you are talking about Board of Selectmen, Board of Finance, Board of Ed, Planning & Zoning, Town Council—you start talking about those meetings and then the great meetings we have had with the public outpouring and input into this project, and as a community that’s what you want,” Karl told about 25 people gathered in the Town Meeting Room for the council’s special meeting. “You want people involved.

Government

‘We All Feel Really Good About It’: Finance Board Votes 8-0 In Favor of Full Saxe Building Project

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After hearing from residents across a wide swath of the town as well as an advisor who described implications for New Canaan’s financial picture, officials on Tuesday night unanimously supported the proposed $18.6 million renovation and expansion at Saxe Middle School. Board of Finance members voted 8-0 in favor of the proposal, formally recommending a bond issuance to the Town Council to pay for it. The vote received applause from an estimated 150-plus people who packed into the Town Meeting Room for the finance board’s meeting, and marks the clearing of what’s been seen as the critical hurdle in a project that has galvanized parents of school-aged kids and others. The Town Council is expected to give the project its formal final approval on Nov. 19.

News

Nonprofit Foundation Planned to Support Saxe Auditorium Renovation, Wider Visual and Performing Arts Community

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The group that’s overseeing the renovation of the Saxe Middle School auditorium plans to create a nonprofit foundation that will accept donations to offset the cost of the capital project itself, as well as to serve the longer-term interests of New Canaan’s visual and performing arts community, officials say. The Saxe Auditorium Building Committee is tapping SLAM Construction Services of Glastonbury (already on the South School windows project) as an owner’s rep, is targeting early-2015 for draft plans of the renovation and is looking at work completed during the summer of 2016, members said Tuesday at the regular meeting of the Board of Selectmen. “What we need to do first is get a decent scope of the work that we think fits with what is economically viable and fills the needs,” committee member Jim Beall said at the meeting, held in the Training Room of the New Canaan Police Department. The selectmen voted 3-0 to approve a $67,240 contract that will bring in SLAM as the owner’s rep and for project feasibility and scope development services. First Selectman Rob Mallozzi commended the building committee for its sensible approach to the project.