New Canaan staff propose $19 million capital request, push $3.5M annual pavement plan

Town staff presented the town’s proposed capital and operating budgets and said they plan to ask for $19,000,000 in capital spending for the coming cycle, an increase of $5,000,000 from last year.

The request, presented by Speaker 2, prioritizes road maintenance and sidewalks and includes a proposed $3,500,000 annual pavement-management program. "This gets back to the point where over I did an analysis over 5 years. And over that 5 year analysis, we determined that we needed an average of $3,500,000 per year to make," Speaker 2 said. He said the multi-year approach is intended to keep the town’s pavement condition index from slipping below current levels.

Why it matters: staff said the town has a backlog of sidewalk repairs (estimated at roughly $4,000,000) and that the budget ask includes $750,000 targeted to repair existing sidewalks; there are no general-purpose new sidewalk installations in the capital ask except for a grant-funded Lakeview Avenue project. The capital package also includes $300,000 for parking-lot improvements and $350,000 for ADA upgrades to pedestrian connections near the community center.

Staff explained how contingency and project accounting work: rather than rolling unused contingency into a single town pool, unspent contingency returns to the originating account or to the general fund depending on the underlying funding source. "No — it goes away. So, it will roll back into the accounts that it was there for," Speaker 2 said when asked whether contingency would automatically roll into next year’s budget.

The presentation also covered operating-budget pressures: Speaker 2 said the overall operating budget (excluding sewer) is just under $12,000,000 — roughly a 1–2% year-over-year increase — and called out modest increases in professional services and benefit lines in administration and engineering. Highway department costs showed higher salary-driven growth because of negotiated contract step increases and several recent hires.

What’s next: the Board of Finance will examine the capital ask in detail, and staff signaled they expect some reductions during that review. Speaker 2 said the $19 million figure is a planning request and that the final capital program will be adjusted as the Board of Finance and council deliberate.