Board of Selectmen

Selectmen Approve $23,000 Contract for Flagstone Patio at Mead Park’s Colonnade

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Town officials recently approved a $23,000 contract with a Norwalk company to improve an increasingly used gathering space at Mead Park. The Board of Selectmen voted 3-0 at its most recent meeting to approve the contract with Nature’s Way Landscape Association to construct a stone plaza inside the colonnade area. The project will follow the sprucing up of the columns at the colonnade and improved pedestrian access to the area, a WPA project that originally had been a wading pool that was converted into a “victory garden” following World War II. Recreation Director Steve Benko in proposing the contract said that local landscape architect Keith Simpson had put together a nice plan for the colonnade that called for a flagstone patio and seating area with chairs. “It’s going to be a big enhancement to Mead Park,” Benko said at the Board’s July 23 meeting, held in Town Hall.

Beth Jones

Officials Approve Contract To Convert Town-Owned Oil-Fired Burners To Gas

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Town officials last week approved a $52,800 contract with a Scotts Corners, N.Y.-based engineering firm to convert seven oil-fired burners in town-owned buildings to run on natural gas. 

Approved 3-0 by First Selectman Kevin Moynihan and Selectmen Kit Devereaux and Nick Williams during the Board of Selectmen’s July 9 regular meeting, the contract with Marchetti Consulting Engineers will cover the conversion of the burners in the Parks Department Garage, Police Department, Schoolhouse Apartments and New Canaan Day Care, Highway Garage, Wastewater Treatment Plant, and former Outback Teen Center buildings. Devereaux asked whether converted oil-fired burners are as efficient as purpose-built gas-fired ones. Department of Public Works Building Superintendent Bill Oestmann said that they are not, but that as technology improves this could change. “We’ll get efficiencies going to gas, and cleanliness,” Oestmann said at the meeting, held in Town Hall. “It should be a little better over time and that’s what the engineer’s going to help us understand.”

Government

Moynihan: If Covia Building Is Not Buyable, Renovate Police HQ To Move In Board of Ed

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New Canaan’s highest elected official said Thursday that if a downtown building he’d been eyeing as a possible future home for police and school district administrators is no longer available, as rumored, then the town should move forward with plans to renovate the police headquarters on South Avenue and move the Board of Education in there. Asked whether the Covia building at Elm and Grove Streets was under contract, First Selectman Kevin Moynihan said during a media briefing, “That’s my understanding.” Covia could not be reached for comment. 

Asked what the town would do if Covia is off the table, Moynihan said, “The thought now for South Avenue would be to knock down the rear of the building and build a whole new addition at the rear, with three floors, so the Board of Education would have all the space they need on the top floor.”

The town pays about $300,000 in annual rent for the New Canaan Public Schools’ administrative headquarters at the corner of Forest Street and Locust Avenue. A town committee in December 2017 recommended that Waveny or Irwin should be considered as alternatives. Moynihan initially said the Board of Ed should move into unused space at the Police Department, then targeted the Covia (formerly ‘Unimin’) building at 258 Elm St. as a possibility.

Bill Oestmann

‘What About Us?’: Devereaux Raises Questions About Vine Cottage Sale 

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Selectman Kit Devereaux last week questioned just who in town government would be able to see proposals from those interested in purchasing a prominent town-owned building on Main Street. The Board of Selectmen voted 2-1 last month to approve a request for proposals or ‘RFP’ for Vine Cottage, with Devereaux opposing the move and Selectman Nick Williams and First Selectman Kevin Moynihan in favor. During the Board’s regular meeting July 9, Devereaux asked who would be able to see the RFP responses. When Moynihan said it would probably be himself, Director of Public Works Tiger Mann, Buildings Superintendent Bill Oestmann, Devereaux asked, “What about us?” She referred to herself and Williams. 

“There might be some benefit in us seeing the ones that come in, comparatively,” she said at the meeting, held in Town Hall.

Bill Oestmann

Selectmen Vote 3-0 To Keep Nature Center Animals Cool

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Municipal officials on Tuesday approved an approximately $9,000 contract with a Shelton-based company to install equipment designed to keep cool several animals who live in a town-owned building operated by a venerable nonprofit organization on Oenoke Ridge Road. The Board of Selectmen voted 3-0 in favor of the $9,430 contract with M.A. Garamella, a figure that includes $1,230 in contingency funds. 

The new system at the New Canaan Nature Center Animal Care Building will replace a 20-year-old existing air conditioning unit that had failed, according to Bill Oestmann, the buildings superintendent with the New Canaan Department of Public Works. The project was on DPW’s “list to replace this year,” he said at the meeting, held in Town Hall. The DPW intends to replace the old unit with an air conditioning heat pump which Oestmann said will provide a number of benefits—for example, if the building’s boiler fails, “the heat pump can keep enough heat going to protect the building,” he said. “[It will] also help with the reptiles—when you lose heat in the building you’ve got to move all the animals out,” Oestmann said. 

First Selectman Kevin Moyinhan and Selectmen Kit Devereaux and Nick Williams voted in favor of the contract.