Chairman's View: Bike New Canaan (April 22, 2019)

Chairman’s View: Bike New Canaan

APRIL 22, 2019 BY NEW CANAAN TOWN COUNCIL CHAIRMAN JOHN ENGEL

It’s Earth Day. I am reminded we really need bike lanes in New Canaan.

We need to begin with a bike lane down South Avenue that connects Waveny Park, the YMCA, our schools and the New Canaan Village.

I wrote about adding bike lanes in my New Year’s resolutions in December when I wrote about eliminating plastic bags. We banned the bags. Now that it’s warm out, thoughts turn to bicycles and beaches.

Yes, beaches. Darien First Selectman Jayme Stevenson suggested that bike lanes could connect Darien beaches to New Canaan’s parks. While non-residents pay $45 to park a car at the beach, our residents can ride bicycles to Weed Beach and Pear Tree Point for free. Think about it, free beach access.

Former Advertiser Editor Greg Reilly reported last June that the route from New Canaan to the beach is 7.7 miles. Going to the beach from New Canaan is slightly downhill, 30 minutes. The return trip takes 43 minutes.

South Avenue will soon be repaved and restriped. Are we waiting for repaving? Why wait? We should stripe a temporary path now and begin to train drivers and bikers how to share the road.

There are two types of bike lanes. Sharrows are symbols painted in the road indicating that drivers and bicyclists share the travel lane. Existing law already allows for shared use. Sharrows simply reinforce that reality. A 2016 Chicago study concluded Sharrows don’t encourage biking, nor do they improve safety. In contrast, bike lanes are typically four-foot-wide lanes specifically dedicated to cyclists. They exist on busier streets and demarcate bicycle space from motorized vehicle space with a line of white paint. This is what we need on our widest, busiest roads including South Avenue.

My family rented Citibikes in New York City on the first warm day of spring. (The lanes were clearly marked in green paint.) It was the most efficient (fastest and cheapest) way to get around New York City in nice weather. New Canaan should contract with a bike share service, like Citibike in New York and Hubway in Boston. New Rochelle began a bike share program last year with 11 stations. After six months they had 1,400 registered users, had sold 36 annual passes and 67 weekly passes and had logged 5,200 trips over 2,800 rental sessions. Norwalk’s Bike/Walk Commission has selected the same firm, P3GM, to roll out its bike-share program in 2019. Fairfield and Bridgeport may be next. The bike-share vendor hires a local bike shop to maintain the bikes and docking stations. Here, it’s Lou Kozar and New Canaan Bicycle.

Bike lanes. Bike sharing. After we connect Waveny and the train station to Darien’s beaches, we should add bike rental racks at Irwin Park, Kiwanis Park, the Glass House, Grace Farms, the historical society and the library. We must take the first steps to becoming a bike friendly town. This is an inexpensive initiative. It benefits our residents. It’s healthy for the planet and it’s the right thing to do. I’ll be adding this to our Town Council agenda.

John Engel is chairman of the Town Council. Chairman’s View represents the views of the chairman and not necessarily the views of other council members.

Chairman's View: Improve our Planning for Town Building Maintenance (Oct 18, 2018)

Chairman’s View: Improve our planning for Town building maintenance

OCTOBER 18, 2018 BY NEW CANAAN ADVERTISER

New Canaan Town Council Chairman John Engel’s weekly guest column. New Canaan Town Council Chairman John Engel

First, let’s talk about the 100-point Pavement Condition Index (PCI). When a road scores above 86% PCI it’s excellent, requiring only corrective maintenance: crack sealing at about a $1 per square yard. Between 85% and 75% PCI a road is “good” and requires micro-thin overlays and cape seals at approximately $5 per square meter. When a road falls below 75% the road shouldn’t merely be patched, it must be repaved or reconstructed at a price of between $22 and $60 per square yard. “Very good” roads should be maintained for minimal investment and stretched to over 30 years of life.

In 2003, New Canaan’s roads scored 77% and in danger of needing reconstruction. Our Public Works department presented a 20-year plan in order to get our score back to 85% with the greatest efficiency. Unfortunately, between 2004 and 2008 the price of asphalt rose with the price of oil from $50 to $92 per ton and even with steady investment New Canaan’s average pavement quality declined to 74% below which roads need complete rebuilding.

And yet every year we challenge Tiger Mann, the head of Public Works, with questions designed to cut that road budget. Every year he patiently explains the math behind our most efficient system to get the Pavement Condition Index (PCI) from a score of 74% in 2009 to a score that is currently 81%. Every year our roads naturally deteriorate 2.5%. If we spend $2 million then the road quality stays about the same. Spending $2.5 million per year has allowed our PCI to rise about a half-point per year toward that goal. The Eversource road-paving investment amounts to about $3 million over five years and allows us to finish our 20-year plan in about 18 years, hopefully by 2021.

We have not managed the maintenance of our buildings with the same discipline and consistency we have applied toward our roads. This has caused some of us on Town Council to ask the obvious question, “Can we put together a building maintenance program, consistently funded at $1 to $2 million per year, that allows us to chip away at our $20 to $40 million obligation to repair and restore the 56 buildings that the Town owns?” 

First, 50% of that budget is Waveny House. If we are serious about Waveny we must wrap our heads around $1 million per year for the next 20 years. The second step is to identify the buildings that the Town should not own. Legally protect (with conservation easements) and then sell those buildings which are inefficient and inappropriate for a town to own and maintain: the Vine Cottage, the Police Station, the Outback, the Irwin House and Irwin Barn, the Gores Pavilion and the New Canaan Playhouse head that list.

Chairman's View: Yes to GreenLink; No to Sharp Elbows - New Canaan Advertiser April 26, 2018

Chairman’s View: Yes to GreenLink; no to ‘sharp elbows’

New 

APRIL 26, 2018 BY NEW CANAAN ADVERTISER

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.” –John Muir (1912)

Fifty New Canaan residents gathered yesterday (Sunday) to open a GreenLink trail more than 50 years in the making. Trace it to Susan Bliss’s gift of the 40-acre Nature Center (1960), Land Trust founder Jack Gunther (1967), gifts by the Betts (1974), Hupper (1974) and Fischer (1977) families, Richard Bergman’s GreenLinks vision (1990), Judy Neville’s purchase of 36.2-acre Irwin Park (2004), Chris Schipper’s debut (2012), Tiger Mann’s sidewalks, bridges by Eagle Scout Max Marsh and Anthony Sillo, the New Canaan Community Foundation and the Nature Center.

I recently asked a family why they moved here. It wasn’t excellent schools and low taxes. She said our neighbors are towns of “sharp elbows,” and New Canaan has a reputation as a nicer place to raise a family. Be proud of that distinction. We cannot put a price on it. It took an uninterrupted thread of 50-plus years, neighbor support and the last 100-foot stretch of trail.

Let’s talk sharp elbows: The First District Water Department, answering to the ratepayers of Norwalk, is threatening to demolish the 225-year-old Grupe-Nichols-Brown house in New Canaan on May 13 to avoid paying property taxes to New Canaan. General Manager Dominick DiGangi was quoted saying, “I have to protect my investment. I have ratepayers, I have taxpayers. That is who I answer to.” Demolition to protect an investment? The First District Water Company does not treat New Canaan equally to its Norwalk constituents. We pay higher rates on hydrants, on connections and for the water. New Canaan receives less than one cent per 1,000 gallons pulled from the Milne and Grupe reservoirs, while the Water Department charges around $4 per 1,000 gallons.

Consider the difference between our two water companies: Aquarion is the fourth-largest taxpayer in New Canaan, paying $291,000 in property taxes. The First District Water Department holds 168 acres, extracts about 1 billion gallons of our water, mostly for the benefit of Norwalk residents, and pays only $9,000 per year in taxes. This particular 4-acre parcel has been for sale for three years because it is surplus property, not used for any department purposes. Oh, by the way, if they need it, it will be there, undeveloped, under the careful eye of the Land Trust. 

The Board of Finance and Town Council voted unanimously to support purchasing the property, using all means necessary, at the fair market price. The whole town is committed to this initiative, backed with financing from the Land Trust and our 50-plus-year history of conservation.