Selectmen Restore Placeholder for Kiwanis Park Funding; Board of Finance Decision Looms

The Board of Selectmen on Tuesday proposed a spending plan for next fiscal year that restores funding to operate Kiwanis Park, though the future of the Old Norwalk Road facility remains uncertain. The selectmen voted 3-0 to pass along to the Board of Finance an overall operating budget of about $153.6 million, representing a year-over-year spending increase of 1.1%. The figure includes Board of Education spending. In a budget season that has seen the finance board call for an operating reduction of 2% in municipal departments, an initial draft proposed spending plan before the selectmen had essentially de-commissioned Kiwanis Park by removing funding for it. Yet Selectmen Kit Devereaux and Nick Williams during the Board’s regular meeting at Town Hall pushed to have $47,000 restored to Kiwanis so that recreation officials have a chance to reinvigorate the park under a reduced-hours schedule next summer.

Skeptical Historical Review Committee Member Calls for Access to Library To Gauge Problems with Facility 

Saying she didn’t believe that New Canaan Library’s building and systems are failing, a town resident and preservation architect on Tuesday called for the town to direct a municipal committee to gain access to records and study the reported problems. 

A review and assessment by the Historical Review Committee “would provide the town with objective, professional information on the status of the existing facility,” Rose Scott Long-Rothbart told members of the Board of Selectmen at their regular meeting, held in Town Hall. A member of the appointed five-member Committee herself, Long-Rothbart continued, “This information, in conjunction with a full accounting by the library of what has been spent in the last 10 to 15 years on maintaining its facility, will give the taxpayers a better picture of what they are being asked to support.”

She referred to the library’s request for $10 million in town funding for its $30 million rebuilding project, unveiled last week. Plans call for demolition of the current facility, including an original 1913-built fieldstone-exterior section overlooking Main and Cherry Street, to make way for a town green. Long-Rothbart said she and others don’t believe the original structure cannot be incorporated into the library’s plans. “I appreciate being invited by the library to view those plans, although at the eleventh hour,” she said.