Government

Police Commission Weighs Request from St. A’s for Handicapped Parking Designation on Maple Street

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Town officials are weighing a request from St. Aloysius Church to designate one or two parking spaces along Maple Street as handicapped for use by those using its main office. Monsignor William Scheyd told members of the Police Commission at their most recent meeting that the request—unconnected to the ongoing Merritt Village application across the street—is designed to serve those coming and going from Stapleton Hall, the prominent brick structure that starts near the corner of Maple at South Avenue. For many of the older motorists seeking to enter the office, Scheyd said, it’s similar to finding a parking spot on Forest Street when headed out to a restaurant there. “I used to take a friend of mine out, who would say, ‘Now say a quick prayer that there is a parking space—more often than not, it worked,’ ” he said during the Sept.

Government

‘That Is My Property’: Business Owner Pushes Back On East Maple Street Traffic Study’s Recommendations

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The business owner involved in an ongoing dispute with residential neighbors on East Maple Street on Wednesday night pushed back on a traffic consultant’s suggestion to change the way he uses his own parking lot in order to improve traffic and safety. Instead of asking him to alter a stone wall (if not remove it) at AC Auto Body and no longer park cars in the northwest corner of the lot, the sight line problem at the corner of Main Street would go away if traffic on East Maple Street is made one-way toward Hoyt Street, according to the business’s owner, Anthony Ceraso. The wall “is on my property that we did have the approval to have erected when we did renovation, as well as the fence,” Ceraso told members of the Police Commission at their regular meeting, held in the training room in the New Canaan Police Department. “So my concern is and my original observation was the easiest way to rectify this was a one-way street. We don’t have to put up any stop signs, any traffic lights, we don’t have to worry about monitoring traffic going in or out of there with the police department giving tickets or warnings, because now it [would be] changed to a one-way street.

Government

‘A Pattern of Abuse’: Police Commission To Remove Auto Shop’s Designated Parking Space on East Maple Street

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The volunteers who oversee on-street parking in New Canaan voted last week to spend $1,700 for a field analysis and sight line study of East Maple Street, an increasingly busy commercial area downtown whose residents say they’re concerned about traffic and safety. At its regular meeting Wednesday, the Police Commission also decided to discontinue a practice whereby an auto body shop on the corner at Main Street is allowed to park on East Maple. Instead, the commissioners said, AC Auto Body will use two designated spaces in the nearby Center School parking lot for its flatbed trucks and could park a smaller wrecker in its own lot. East Maple Street resident David Shea, who has become a spokesperson for the concerned neighbors, told the commission at its July 20 meeting that “what we are looking at is two kinds of streets when you come up East Maple from Hoyt it is a wide street.”

“As you turn in the curb toward Main it becomes a bottleneck, it narrows down,” Shea said at the meeting, held in the New Canaan Police Department’s training room. “What we are proposing is that parking only be on the right-hand side of the street, the usual two hours, and then on the right-hand side going east, that would be no-parking, no-standing [zone] that will allow traffic to pass on a two-way basis and give the residents the parking that they need.

Around Town

Did You Hear … ?

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New Canaan Fire Company #1 recognized members of the volunteer company as well as career staff for excellence in service to their community at the 135th Annual Dinner, held Friday night at Waveny House. Scroll through the gallery above for photos of award recipients, and other photos, in this week’s DYH gallery. ***

In opinions published this week in the Connecticut Law Journal, the state Supreme Court reinstated a second-degree breach of peace charge against Teri Buhl, a New Canaan woman who had been convicted of the misdemeanor offense (as well as a second-degree harassment charge), and later had it overturned in a state appellate court. Briefly, police arrested Buhl after determining that she had harassed a New Canaan teen—the daughter of a man she was dating at the time—in part through use of a fake Facebook account. An Appellate Court in initially overturning the breach of peace conviction “concluded that there was insufficient evidence to support her breach of the peace conviction because the state had not proven that the Facebook posts were publicly exhibited.” Yet the state Supreme Court disagreed with that assessment. Its opinion states: “We further conclude that the breach of the peace conviction must be reinstated because the trial court reasonably could have found that the state had met its burden of proving the other elements of the crime at trial, namely, that: (1) the defendant was the person who posted M’s diary entries on Facebook; and (2) the defendant intended to ‘inconvenience, [annoy] or alarm’ [the teenage girl] by posting her diary entries on Facebook.” See PDF below for the court’s full decision.

News

‘I Was Meant To Be Here For a Reason’: New Canaan Police Capt. Vincent DeMaio To Retire At Month’s End, Begin as Clinton PD Chief

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Growing up in Stamford, Vincent DeMaio’s dream had always been to work for the Connecticut State Police with the agency’s Troop F in Westbrook. A 1985 Westhill High School graduate (he had spent three years at Wright Tech) who went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Connecticut, DeMaio only took the New Canaan Police Department test 27 years ago because he had a buddy who didn’t want to sit the test alone. “He prodded and prodded, and finally I gave in and did it,” DeMaio recalled Wednesday afternoon. In the end, though his pal didn’t end up getting hired, DeMaio landed a job as a New Canaan police officer. That was in 1989, and he’s been serving the department ever since.