School Board Reviews CIP, Postpones Decision

By Eliza Hallabeck

After hearing from subcommittee members during a special meeting on Wednesday, January 6, the Board of Education postponed deciding on its Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) until its next regular meeting on January 12.

The school board’s Capital Improvement Plan is due before the Board of Finance on January 25.

Board of Education member Richard Gaines said the first two years of the five-year CIP were the most discussed years by the school board’s CIP Subcommittee members. The subcommittee includes Mr Gaines, school board member William Hart, school board Vice Chair Kathryn Fetchick, Board of Finance Chair John Kortze, Newtown Public Schools Director of Facilities Gino Faiella, and Superintendent Janet Robinson, among other members from the town and school district.

“There was much discussion around the [heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC)] systems in place around the district,” said Mr Gaines while explaining the subcommittee’s choices to the school board.

As revised and submitted by the CIP Subcommittee, the first year on the plan has replacing the Newtown Middle School sloped roof and flat roof along with design plan costs for the heating portion of a Hawley project, for a combined cost of $5,543,345, with the total bonded money to be $3,855,509. The second year in the CIP has heating renovation for Hawley School planned, for a total of $3 million, with the total bonded money planned at $3 million. The third year has a Sandy Hook Elementary HVAC renovation planned and the ventilation portion of the Hawley project planned, for a total of $6,591,846. The fourth year has projects for planned for HVAC renovations at Middle Gate School, an air conditioning system at Hawley School, and, what Mr Gaines explained as a possible expansion and update of Newtown Middle School, for a total of $7,068,281, with the full amount to be bonded. The fifth year of the CIP has a renovation of Newtown High School’s auditorium planned, and an expansion and update to Newtown Middle School, for a total of $20,655,374, with $15,659,374 planned to be bonded.

Justification listed in a report from Drummey Rosane Anderson, Inc, an architecture, planning, and interior design company, presented to the school board during the meeting listed roof system failure, an expired manufacturer’s warranty period, and an end of anticipated useful life for the Newtown Middle School roofs as reasons for the proposed roofing project being the CIP’s top priority.

In discussing the projects, Mr Gaines explained, the subcommittee looked at an air quality study conducted in the schools in 2001 by EnviroScience Consultants, Inc. Looking at that, he said, the school board had been asked if air quality at Newtown Middle School was more critical than the air quality at Hawley School.

Test parameters, according to the study results conducted and reported on by EnviroScience Consultants, Inc in 2001, included measurement of temperature, relative humidity, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide. Hawley’s original building was constructed in 1921, and underwent additions in 1948 and 1996. According to the 2001 report, there is no supply air in either the 1921 or 1948 building.

Board of Education member William Hart said, before the subcommittee presented to the school board on Wednesday, the readings were conducted when it was neither summer nor winter.

“From what I can see, Hawley is the most urgent,” Mr Hart said, “because the equipment is the oldest.”

The NMS expansion and update proposed in the CIP, Mr Gaines said, is something the school board can look into closer in the future.

“The expansion that had once been discussed,” Mr Gaines said, “may not be appropriate anymore for the middle school.”

The board also discussed breaking projects into different pieces of projects, which Ms Fetchick said would stop projects from being so large they prohibit work on them.

Board of Education member David Nanavaty said he was concerned about calling and considering projects in the third through fifth year of the CIP as placeholders.

“I just want to make sure the numbers that are in the CIP are the best cost estimates possible at the time,” Mr Nanavaty said.

Mr Gaines said that was why the subcommittee recommended splitting project design costs out into the year before the project was planned, like the Hawley HVAC planning design costs in the first year of the CIP.

Planning and design costs for other projects in the CIP, Mr Gaines said, were not broken out, because the cost for those projects fell below the cost limit of projects marked by the CIP.

Board Chair Lillian Bittman asked her board members if they were ready to vote on the CIP during the special meeting, but members decided to postpone the decision, as Ms Bittman said, to look further into what the subcommittee had presented.

As a subcommittee member, Ms Fetchick said she liked what the committee’s effort was doing.

“I think it is very positive that we are sitting down and discussing [the CIP],” said Ms Fetchick, after the meeting, about the CIP subcommittee. She also said it makes the process more transparent and is, “a step in the right direction.”