Selectmen Affirm Bridge Replacement

As Top Priority In Capital Plan

By John Voket

According to Newtown’s Public Works Director Fred Hurley, who spoke to the Board of Selectmen recently as the officials began formulating the next five years’ Capital Improvement Plan (CIP), funds to support a 20-year program for local bridge replacement have been reduced so often that it will now take 30 years to complete the program.

So as the selectmen met to review and rank the CIP for the fiscal years 2012–2016 Monday, one of the issues the three officials agreed upon was prioritizing the bridge replacement program to the top-ranked concern for at least four of the five years the plan covers.

(See a spreadsheet of the proposed CIP at NewtownBee.com.)

The selectmen also came to grips with necessary capital plan reductions that resulted from the town’s strict adherence to a ten percent cap on borrowing for capital projects. Since the rolling CIP and its corresponding borrowing on a year-to-year basis has been based on an assumption of budget growth at 2.25 percent, and the recent growth has been about 1.75 percent, Mrs Llodra said cuts in projects were necessary.

“We wanted to be sure we didn’t bump up against that debt cap,” she told fellow Selectmen Will Rodgers and William Furrier September 19. “We had to do some adjustments to push out or eliminate some projects, at least for the time being, because our debt load was going to exceed the ten percent cap.”

Mrs Llodra explained that in the 2012–13 fiscal cycle was close to what was expected, but the big change comes just one year later when the projected budget justified scaling back capital projects by $1.7 million. To achieve that, Mrs Llodra said she worked with Board of Education Vice Chair Debbie Leidlein to examine, phase, and scale some school projects to begin accommodating the new debt load.

The light at the end of the tunnel comes in 2015 when some bonds are paid off, creating some additional flexibility and providing $25 million in borrowing capacity at the ten percent cap. But Mrs Llodra also noted that the town is committed to reducing its borrowing cap to nine percent eventually, so that the $25 million currently on the chart may be reduced to begin the phasing in of Newtown’s debt cap reduction.

The first selectman also admitted that after 2014, the CIP would become “very vulnerable to change,” because of the possible option of closing the middle school and using the space for other standalone capital projects such as a new community center, senior center, and/or an expanded police station.

“These are all looming on the horizon,” Mrs Llodra said. “We are in such a state of flux that we don’t want to lock ourselves into numbers — just concepts.”

The three new projects that appeared on the initial CIP are a Queen Street area traffic improvement plan, which Mrs Llodra said would be contingent on the town getting substantial grants to supplement local contributions for any work that was determined to be needed in the area.

She also flagged capital improvements for the Edmond Town Hall and the Booth Library, both of which she said were beyond the scope and ability for those buildings’ management teams to handle with operating funds and donations. Mrs Llodra defended providing additional taxpayer contributions to the facilities saying, “Those buildings are part and parcel to our municipal legacy.”

Under questioning from Mr Rodgers, who seemed somewhat dismayed the Edmond Town Hall capital support was being delayed, Mrs Llodra replied, “We’re going to have to develop a relationship to bring [the Edmond Town Hall Board of Managers and Booth Library trustees] into our system,” so they can be an integral part of “how we make this kind of work happen.”

‘Spray Ground’ Postponed

The most high profile change to the CIP was the postponement of the installation of a “spray ground” or water recreation facility at Dickinson Park, which would have provided some sort of destination to replace the natural pool that was closed and filled in several years ago and never replaced.

Initially slated for funding in 2012, Mrs Llodra said that $1 million-plus project would have to be pushed to at least the 2015 fiscal year or beyond.

Mr Furrier took aim at the $400,000 requested in 2013 for Fairfield Hills infrastructure improvements, suggesting that the expense might be saved now that the town’s public health clinic has opted to not relocate to the duplex area of the campus. But Mrs Llodra countered that the funds are earmarked for parking lots and sidewalks.

“The campus is used a lot by people who walk, their dogs, kids who rollerblade, and those activities are taking place on surfaces that are not good surfaces,” she said. “We have to maintain it and make it safe for those uses. We also have to light the campus. Those things have to happen no matter what the future uses are.”

Mr Furrier also pointed out the proposed capital expenditures to reinstitute the town’s open space acquisition program, saying it was odd that the town had to budget capital funds to pay for open space to reduce residential development, when at the same time it was seeking to reduce the amount of space at Fairfield Hills by offering commercial leases, possibly for a large housing development at Fairfield Hills.

‘Apples And Oranges’

Mrs Llodra said that such a comparison was an “apples and oranges” scenario, and reminded Mr Furrier that town land use officials already appealed to the board to try and find funding because of some strategic open space parcels that were either available or expected to be made available to the town to acquire to block likely development.

Mr Rodgers said he didn’t mind on one hand paying to buy open space, while on the other hand reserving certain parcels of “pocket” property to lease at Fairfield Hills.

“Land isn’t fungible,” Mr Rodgers said. “A lot of the open space we have is passive recreational.”

The final chore before moving the CIP to the Board of Finance was ranking projects for the next three fiscal cycles. After some discussion, the selectmen settled on ranking the Bridge Replacement Program as number one for all four years.

In 2012 the board agreed to rank replacement of the Dickinson Park playground at $420,000 second; Treadwell Park infrastructure renovations third at $350,000; and a grant to Newtown Hook & Ladder for the second of three $500,000 installments for the company’s new firehouse fourth.

In 2013, $1 million for open space acquisition was ranked second; phase three of the Hook & Ladder project third; and $400,000 for the Fairfield Hills infrastructure at fourth.

In 2014, open space acquisition remained at second; design phase costs for a new community center were plugged in at third for $500,000; and phase two of three of a walking trail at Fairfield Hills was ranked fourth for $250,000.

The selectmen also briefly revisited plans to seek state funding to begin a multiphase construction of a band shell or similar facility to house outdoor cultural arts activities on the Fairfield Hills campus, although Mrs Llodra did not want to include it in the CIP until the ongoing Fairfield Hills Master Plan review was officially presented to selectmen.

(See separate story about the committee’s completion of the Master Plan Review in this week’s edition.)