Finance Bd. Weighs Advantages To ‘Piecemealing’ School Capital Projects

By John Voket

This week the Board of Finance completed the next in a series of steps in a months-long process of reviewing the next five year’s capital requests. On October 13, the board held a question and answer session with Superintendent of Schools Janet Robinson and school board member Katherine Fetchick.

During that roughly 90-minute session, finance officials and First Selectman Joe Borst heard the first hints from school district officials about how leveraging parts of larger capital projects might help both the schools and municipality get more projects done faster, possibly even saving money in the process.

Following the meeting, Mr Borst said he was planning to take the concept back to the Board of Selectmen next week, to see if any town-side capital projects could be executed in segments, instead of bonding entire projects in a single year.

At the finance board meeting, school officials addressed a series of questions about the school requests posed in advance by the board.

Dr Robinson used the example of breaking out the boiler replacement project at Hawley School. She suggested that perhaps there is an advantage to either just doing the lone boiler project, or rolling it into a districtwide project which might see boilers replaced all at one time in two or more schools.

Responding to a question from finance board Vice Chair James Gaston about reprioritizing a full HVAC overhaul in the building, Dr Robinson shared the frustration of having that significant and costly project on the drawing board for nearly a decade.

“The problem we have is that this [project] has been bumped back and bumped back and bumped back,” Dr Robinson said. “It doesn’t go anywhere in it’s entirety. What we’re saying now is find a way to get it done, we’re being pragmatic about this.”

Ms Fetchick said that the district is engaging the engineering firm CES to study the condition and project a timeline for replacing boilers in district buildings.

“We need to take a look at the numbers,” she said. “We’ve got boiler problems in several different schools, and it may be cost efficient to do all the critical boilers at once.”

Ms Fetchick also defended repairing a portion of the middle school roof that is actively leaking, and reprioritizing it ahead of the work at Hawley.

“As far as Hawley versus the middle school roof [capital proposal], you can not have water leaking into a building,” Ms Fetchick said.

Mr Gaston pointed out that a 2001 study group staffed with industry professionals who work in the heating and cooling trades recommended a full-scale project, which had remained at the top of the district’s capital project list along with a high school expansion for years.

Dr Robinson stepped in saying that the breaking out and reprioritizing of segments of projects is still just a consideration, and the plans may come back looking different after district studies and further review of the comparative costs are completed.

Finance board member Michael Portnoy said he saw an advantage to the district getting a better handle on true projected costs if projects have to be broken into pieces to get accomplished more quickly, or more affordably.

“I think the piecemealing is going to be excellent for our planning,” he said.

Near the end of the meeting, Dr Robinson also acknowledged that she thought the process of having capital projects reviewed first by her staff, then by the Board of Education, and then by the Board of Finance served the process best.

Following the meeting, finance board Chair John Kortze also expressed support for at least exploring the financial advantages of breakout alternatives suggested by both the school officials and first selectman.

“Any way we can look at these projects to realize every savings, or a better way to do them is the way the town should go,” Mr Kortze said. “The Board of Finance hasn’t been afforded that opportunity up to now. Kudos to the superintendent and the board for looking at these projects in a different way.”