‘Re-do’ Expected Soon—

Selectmen Vote Down NHS Funding

By John Voket

Republican Selectman Paul Mangiafico came to the regular meeting of the Board of Selectmen March 17 with two things on his mind regarding a special appropriation and bonding request that was added to the agenda a few days earlier. First, he was perplexed about why the item, authorizing the spending of $38.8 to renovate and expand Newtown High School, was even on the agenda that evening.

In Mr Mangiafico’s experience both before and during his tenure on the school board, but before winning a selectman’s seat last fall, he had seen virtually all capital projects come before selectmen as a final step in a somewhat cumbersome but thorough process of spending taxpayers’ money. And virtually every previous appropriation request he had seen, whether emergency, special or otherwise, essentially came with both Board of Finance and Legislative Council approval first.

Mr Mangiafico also came to Monday’s meeting suspecting he would cast the swing vote to move the project forward, provided just a couple of important questions were answered. Nearly four hours later, and after almost an hour of intense deliberation, Mr Mangiafico voted against funding a proposed expansion, siding with Democratic minority Selectman Herb Rosenthal.

Despite some apparent confusion on the issue later in the meeting, First Selectman Joe Borst came to that same meeting convinced the project should move forward. But during his report to the council Monday, Mr Borst admitted he had “screwed things up” by putting the high school funding on the selectmen’s agenda before the finance board and council had performed their charter mandated duties regarding the special appropriation.

Mr Borst said in his haste to expedite what he assumed would be a 2-1 vote in favor of moving the resolution, which included the high school bonding authorization, he knowingly put the item on the revised selectmen’s agenda out of sequence.

During discussion at Monday’s selectmen meeting, the first selectman showed his cards early on in the discussion, indicating he was inclined to move the resolution to recommending the $38.8 million appropriation request, with the ultimate goal of letting the voters decide.

Mr Rosenthal then read a prepared statement indicating numerous reasons why he could not, in good faith, support the resolution. He prefaced his justification saying he had been contacted by many taxpayers, including a “surprising number,” who traditionally support spending for school initiatives, all opposing the expansion and renovation as proposed by the Board of Education.

“There has been more opposition to this proposal than any other school-related item in the past,” Mr Rosenthal said, adding that the expansion was “one of the big drivers in the proposed 2008-2009 budget causing a proposed mill rate increase of 6.4 percent,” in the 2008 budget — more than double what taxpayers eventually passed following four referenda in the 2007 budget season.

Republican selectman Paul Mangiafico said that he, too, was contacted by many constituents who opposed the school board’s proposal.

Both Mr Mangiafico and Mr Rosenthal expressed the greatest concerns not over whether an expansion was needed; all three selectmen have publicly stated on numerous occasions that they support an expansion project at Newtown High School.

The two selectmen had previously questioned why the school board was moving forward with the most inflated enrollment projections from a consultant who up to this year consistently recommended the Newtown district build its budgets based on lower versions of his own statistics, which are broken up into low, middle and high ranges as opposed to a single trend.

The two selectmen also questioned why the school board apparently rejected another consultant’s report projecting a downward trending student population districtwide over the next decade, which was commissioned by the district from a former state Department of Education population specialist.

Third, both Mr Rosenthal and Mr Mangiafico said they were taken aback by the school district’s latest indication that utilities, staff, and maintenance costs tied to the expansion had escalated from a previous report of $670,000 to more than $2 million annually. And finally, both cited a growing concern over a recent state action against the town of Portland, seeking to recover up to $4.6 million because that town’s student population projection failed to materialize following a $39 million middle school and high school expansion.

Mr Rosenthal told Mr Mangiafico that voting No does not kill the project. But a No vote would force the school board to come back to the selectmen with either an adjusted plan, or appropriate justification for why the district was still advocating for the maximum buildout despite its own population consultants’ reports of downward trending student enrollment.

‘Over A Barrel’

Board of Finance member Michael Portnoy, who attended the selectmen’s meeting, said his board voted 4-2 to move the project in the Capital Improvement Plan, along with supporting the corresponding debt service in the budget because they were told the town was “over a barrel,” and had to either act or kill the project completely. School Superintendent Janet Robinson previously said that if the project died at the finance board level, the district would lose an $800,000 reimbursement for the existing design phase of the plan.

Mr Portnoy said, however, that two days before the council was informed via a memo that fixed operating costs for the proposed expansion had tripled, the Board of Education had led finance board members to believe the ongoing operating costs for the expansion would be just over a half-million dollars. Finance board chair John Kortze told The Bee recently that it was not until after his board moved the project to the selectmen under that presumption, that he learned the annual fixed costs had ballooned to more than $2 million annually.

Mr Portnoy told the selectman Monday that if the finance board was privy to the drastically revised fixed cost escalation, the 4-2 vote to move the project may have had a different outcome.

Mr Mangiafico, who formerly served on the school board, said during his last meeting as a Board of Education member he reviewed the latest population projections the district had commissioned, and encouraged school board incumbents and new board members to thoroughly examine and consider the second and more drastic downward population projections that had just been delivered.

Newly elected school board member Katherine Fetchick, who attended the selectmen’s meeting Monday, said the new school board members asked for a meeting to question the district’s newest hired consultant, Dr Peter Prowda, but that school board chairman Elaine McClure ignored their plea, opting to hold a closed door phone conference with Dr Prowda and then-acting superintendent Thomas Jokubaitis. It was later learned that school board member Lillian Bittman was also invited by Ms McClure to sit in on that otherwise closed meeting.

“There was no discussion at the board level,” Ms Fetchick told selectmen Monday.

Mr Mangiafico said he was “very disappointed” that nobody from the school administration nor the school board chair were on hand to advocate for the passage of the funding Monday evening. Calling in from a vacation in Florida, Ms McClure told The Bee following the vote, that she was unaware the resolution was on the selectmen’s agenda Monday because it was not posted on the town’s website.

Mr Portnoy also reminded selectmen that the school district failed to deliver the resolution requesting the $38.8 million in funding in time for the finance board to act on the request at its last meeting March 10. Mr Portnoy then pointed out that the district supported its 2008 budget proposal based on Dr Prowda’s enrollment projections, and questioned why those numbers were good enough to determine the school’s next operating budget, but not accurate enough to trigger downscaling the high school expansion.

This brought a reaction from Selectman Mangiafico.

“If we proceed, and we end up with a [student] population less than the capacity of the current high school [as Dr Prowda’s projection suggests], my God — what have we done to the taxpayers of this town?”

Mr Rosenthal reminded Mr Mangiafico that in contrast to the current situation, when the previous high school expansion was created, the town supported building to the highest allowable population projections qualifying for reimbursement from the state Department of Education at the time. But due to a rapid escalation in residential development, that expansion hit capacity soon after it was opened.

While he was consistent in his support to move forward with the plan as proposed, after being pressed by Mr Mangiafico, First Selectman Borst admitted he had never actually read the Prowda report.

Legislative Council Chairman Will Rodgers told the council Wednesday that he will be attending a private meeting Monday, March 24, with Superintendent Robinson, Ms McClure, Mr Kortze, and Mr Mangiafico. The goal of that meeting is reportedly to satisfy the selectman’s concerns in the hope he will change his vote when and if a new high school bonding resolution is reissued to the Board of Selectmen.