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Conservation Commission seeks clearer charter role on sustainability, reporting and grants
Summary
New Canaan’s Conservation Commission told the Charter Review Committee it wants the charter to explicitly add advisory duties on sustainability and resilience, prescribe annual environmental metrics and allow the commission to apply for grants and request budget support.
The Conservation Commission urged the Charter Review Committee to make its advisory role on sustainability and resilience explicit in the town charter, and to tighten reporting so residents and town bodies have clearer information on local environmental work.
Tom Herman, who drafted the suggested edits, said the blue changes were “to advise on sustainability, resilience, and environmental stewardship,” and emphasized adding a recommended set of annual metrics — energy use, emissions, waste diversion and canopy coverage — to the commission’s report. Herman said much of the data already exists and that publishing it would help the town track progress.
Tom Cronin, asked to describe the commission’s existing charge, read from the charter language and summarized its mission: the commission “was created to keep an inventory defining the town's open space and to evaluate those lands for their proper and potential use,” to advise on development management and to coordinate with town departments and other conservation bodies.
Commissioner William Perrette described prior limited activity and gave a concrete example of a land-conservation decision: developers once offered a “10 foot by 20 foot piece of land” between buildings, which the commission rejected in favor of a cash contribution. Perrette and others said the commission has done discrete tasks but that follow-up and active project management have lagged.
Members debated whether particular reporting metrics belong in the charter (which is amended every 10 years) or in ordinance/bylaws so they can be updated more frequently. Kathleen Corbett and other CRC members advised placing technical metrics in ordinance or bylaws while reserving higher-level duties for the charter.
The commission also asked the CRC to recognize its ability to apply for conservation and sustainability grants and to codify the commission’s right to request a budget from the town, noting that formal inclusion could ease grant applications that require town authorization.
On membership and terms, the commission supported increasing membership from five to seven to enable committee work without creating irregular meetings, and discussed lengthening terms from two years to three if state statute permits.
Next steps: the CRC said it will integrate the group’s redlines, prepare advisory language for the Town Council, and share a revised draft with the full CRC and the commission before the May 4 report to Town Council.
