This is the second of a two-part retrospective covering a dozen top stories and events that engaged local elected leaders, boards, commissions, and town agencies in 2019.

While 2019 began with a routine report to selectmen on the previous year’s economic and development projects, the subject of Fairfield Hills’ future virtually exploded back into the broader public eye a bit later in the year when a master plan review committee recommended adopting possible limited options for residential/commercial mixed development on the town-owned campus.

During a January Board of Selectmen meeting, Economic & Community Development staffers Christal Preszler and Kimberly Chiappetta reviewed the growing list of buildings that have been demolished, as well as planned and imminent developments, including the renovation of one of the remaining reusable buildings for a planned brew pub.

The office also played a role in coordinating streetscape enhancement within the campus, trail maintenance and improvements, and supporting multiple large-scale public gatherings.

Flash forward to August 19, when the Board of Selectmen spent about 40 minutes hearing a presentation from the Fairfield Hills Master Plan Review Committee.

Committee Chair Deborra Zukowski had an opportunity to review high points of her panel’s findings and justifications for unanimously recommending limited mixed-use development of various sustainable buildings on the campus that should include a residential component.

Before turning to recommendations, the review committee chair restated the official position of her panel: “The Committee recommends that the plan be modified to allow commercial proposals that include a housing component provided that the proposal is for no more than two existing buildings and that the commercial component is consistent with the vision of the property.”

The suggestion of considering a residential component in the revised Master Plan set off a flurry of correspondence to town officials and a rash of posts on locally-focused social network sites — numerous containing incomplete or incorrect information.

That prompted First Selectman Rosenthal to pause the process that would have seen the Board of Selectman accepting or rejecting the review committee’s work — and if accepted, sending those recommendations to the Planning & Zoning Commission for final review and endorsement.

Instead, the first selectman decided to conduct a series of public information sessions on the property, past and future anticipated operating costs, expenses related to demolition of buildings, and options for future development that would culminate in presentations by developers interested in creating mixed use facilities at Fairfield Hills.

Mr Rosenthal said any decisions about the future of mixed-use development at Fairfield Hills would be in the hands of taxpayers and qualified voters, who would be asked to weigh in on one or more related referendum questions — likely on next April’s budget ballot.

“I can’t reiterate enough, nothing is happening without a referendum,” he said. Mr Rosenthal pointed out that the committee’s public survey indicated that many residents opposed the idea of housing but desired development. “Those survey results have to be viewed in respect to the fact that they leave out a big question about what the town should do with the remaining buildings,” Mr Rosenthal said.

The first info session September 23 drew a number of local officials and about 100 attendees who heard a 50-minute presentation that focused almost exclusively on the history of Fairfield Hills and developments since the town acquired part of the former state hospital property.

Mr Rosenthal convened the second in a series of community conversations about Fairfield Hills before approximately 60 residents and town officials November 18. That session centered around a presentation of financial and graphic details that helped illustrate how millions of dollars have been invested in the former state hospital campus since the town acquired a large piece of the property in 2005.

As the year closed, the final information sessions were being scheduled for February 18 and March 16, 2020, at Newtown High School.

Emergency Communications Upgrade Prioritized

A brief outage of 911 emergency communications overnight on January 7 that affected numerous Connecticut communities, including Newtown, amplified an issue that would surface later in the year as local authorizing boards considered a 2020 Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) proposal for a substantial emergency communications upgrade.

The outage served as an opportunity for Emergency Communications Director Maureen Will to remind residents to be sure they know, or have immediate access to, the local alternative phone number in the event a caller somehow cannot reach help if they are dialing 911. For Newtown emergency calls, she said that number is 203-426-5841.

While unrelated to any immediate concerns about the age and viability of local emergency communication equipment and infrastructure, the costly upgrade project took a sudden and more expensive turn late in the year as a newly-hired consultant crunched numbers against needs and identified the right equipment Newtown would need to install an industry grade dispatch and emergency call system.

The Legislative Council wasted no time December 4 listening to a presentation on the proposal from Ms Will and communications specialist Paul Zito, owner of New England Radio Consultants LLC

As the council heard from First Selectman Dan Rosenthal, the project may be completed in phases, but the bonding authorization must be endorsed in full by local voters if endorsed by the council. The planned bonding schedule for the project would request $2.5 million in the fiscal year 2019-20, and $5,041,933 in the 2021-22 fiscal year.

Both presenters told the council that Newtown’s system is far beyond its practical life in certain cases, and within a year, some of the local equipment would no longer be eligible for technical support. Mr Zito said the 18-plus-year-old communications consoles were in such tenuous shape that he advised they not be moved to the new police headquarters facility, which was under construction.

Mr Rosenthal told the council how important the added coverage would be, having recently heard an emergency dispatch scenario during which responders to a call near Lake Zoar had to relay information to the dispatch center because of sketchy radio coverage.

According to documentation, the new system will enhance communications capability for police, fire, ambulance, and public works. It will include six transmit sites and two receiver sites.

New Police Headquarters Plans Finalized

In early March, a firm responsible for delivering the new Sandy Hook Elementary School “on time and under budget” was retained as the construction manager for the community’s new police station project.

A 191 South Main Street building that served as an administrative complex for Taunton Press came one step closer to becoming the town’s new police headquarters after the Board of Selectmen unanimously approved a Public Building and Site Commission (PBSC) recommendation to retain Consigli Construction Company to oversee the project.

First Selectman Dan Rosenthal recalled how he saw Consigli contain the SHES project within a fixed budget and pointed out that its staff had relationships with local building, fire, and health inspectors, along with Kaestle Boos, a firm also familiar with working on Newtown projects that is already contracted to design the new police facility.

Mr Rosenthal said that he would not move forward with a groundbreaking until all construction bids are in and all costs are qualified and within the set project budget. He expected Consigli staffers would “leave no stone unturned, literally, that would generate estimated project cost overruns or delays.”

By early May, the PBSC, working with the design team and construction manager for the new police headquarters, value engineered a comfortable buffer to help ensure the project would be completed at or under budget. Mr Rosenthal and the PBSC also supported authorizing an “early demolition package” that will give everyone involved even further insight about any structural or infrastructure unknowns lurking behind and within the structure’s walls.

On August 27, the PBSC voted unanimously to authorize the new police headquarters’ construction manager to begin soliciting subcontractor bids. PBSC Chairman Robert Mitchell said his commissioners were happy to learn that the pre-construction analysis and subsequent plans bode well for the project to be completed and the building occupied by around November 1, 2020.

“On this particular project, we were really happy that so much onsite construction analysis was done,” Mr Mitchell said. “It means we probably won’t see a lot of dollars added on once the project is moving toward completion.”

Mr Mitchell said he sat in as town finance officials opened and qualified bid packages for various trades September 25, and observed that three trades did not develop a single bid, or failed to get the minimum of three bids to qualify, but when combining professional estimates for those three areas, “it looks like we’re going to be under budget by about $200,000.”

The construction phase for Newtown’s new Police Headquarters commenced within days of a joint meeting between the Public Building and Site Commission (PBSC) and Board of Selectmen November 6. During that meeting, Selectmen accepted a Guaranteed Maximum Price or GMP for the project, which ended up coming in measurably under budget.

The proposed budget for construction was estimated at $10.6 million, and after three aspects of the construction phase were re-bid, the anticipated construction budget was expected to come in at $10.4 million. With the project all but ready to launch, Mr Rosenthal announced that a ceremonial groundbreaking event for the new police headquarters would be Wednesday, November 20.

On that day, warm but brief remarks from Police Chief James Viadero, Police Commissioner Joel Faxon, and Mr Rosenthal countered the breeze that chilled several dozen attendees — and signaled the official start of construction on the community’s new police headquarters.

Local officials were joined by representatives of Consigli Construction and Kaestle Boos — the construction and design firms contracted for the project that will eventually convert the former Taunton Press facility into a modern police station and emergency communications center with room to expand over the next 30-50 years.

2019-20 Budgets — One And Done!

Drilling into the weighty 250-page municipal budget request, it became evident to fellow selectmen that First Selectman Rosenthal’s spending plan sought to take advantage of several opportunities to innovate while laying groundwork to help save taxpayers substantially more money in the future.

With the unveiling of this first draft request to the Board of Selectmen, January 22, 2019, budget season in Newtown had officially begun. In 2019, the first selectman remained firmly committed to continuing investing in repairing and maintaining Newtown’s roads and bridges.

While he continued requesting bonding to help catch up from several years of inadequate budgeting to maintain local roads, this year’s spending plan proposes to increase the DPW’s operating budget by $250,000, offsetting a corresponding amount from the bonding schedule through 2022.

“If we are able to maintain that for four more years, we will reduce bonding to zero and be back to a place where we are contributing $3 million in each annual operating budget for roads,” Mr Rosenthal said. At the same time, plans to pursue a combination of complete road reconstruction, patch paving, and chip sealing this year to improve the greatest amount of road surface possible was already paying off.

“In the current budget, we were able to touch three times as many roads as the previous year for the same money — 25 miles versus eight the year before,” Mr Rosenthal said. Selectmen completed budget work on the municipal side of the 2019-20 budget request February 4 and moved it to the Board of Finance after making several late adjustments.

First Selectman Rosenthal requested a 2.75 percent increase over the 2018-19 adopted budget that included a $250,000 proposed increase in the Capital Roads line for continued local road maintenance. The total proposed town-side spend — including all debt service on capital projects, counting those associated with the school district — went to the finance board at $42,195,736, a $1,128,759 increase.

The finance board also received the Board of Education’s 2019-20 budget request for $78,104,410, a roughly 2.7 percent increase. By late February, the Board of Finance unanimously passed both the Board of Selectmen’s and the Board of Education’s 2019-20 budget requests to the Legislative Council.

On April 3, The Legislative Council endorsed sending separate 2019-20 municipal and school district budget proposals to voters for consideration with a 1.56 percent overall increase in spending. Following nearly three hours of deliberations that evening, the council settled on referring a municipal budget request totaling $42,179,503, and a separate school district request for $78,104,410 to vote.

Council members vigorously debated elements in the school district request, including supply savings, the timing of planned new administrative hires, the special education contingency account, and planned maintenance projects. But in the end, the council sent the spending plan as recommended by the finance board to voters for final consideration, with three council members voting against it.

At referendum, voters would also be asked to approve or reject both budget recommendations, along with four capital spending authorizations: $1 million for capital roads, $2.7 million for a high school boiler/lighting replacement, a Hawley School boiler replacement, and lightning protection at Sandy Hook School totaling $744,239, and $265,000 to cover most of the cost of creating four new regulation pickleball courts at Fairfield Hills.

A few weeks later, officials were reciting the upbeat credo of “one and done” as fewer than 17 out of every 100 eligible residents casting ballots in the April 23 referendum authorized the requested $120,283,913 to fund the 2019-20 annual operating budgets for the municipality and school district, along with authorizing bonding for local road repairs and several capital projects at local schools.

The only casualty of the public vote was the requested funding to build a new pickleball court at Fairfield Hills failed.

New Borough Warden, Town Leaders Elected

May 14 was somewhat bittersweet for Glover Avenue resident Jay Maher. After decades of service to the Borough of Newtown, within the space of a couple of hours that evening, he saw the borough budget proposal narrowly defeated 30-26 and then took the oath of office as the community’s newly elected top official — Borough Warden.

Early the following morning, Mr Maher came to The Newtown Bee office to introduce himself and to talk about proactive plans to see the borough’s roughly quarter million dollar operating budget prevail on its second attempt.

Outgoing Warden James Gaston, who also serves as elected chairman of the Newtown Board of Finance, worked with Mr Maher as a senior burgess along with the board of burgesses to see a $251,530 proposal succeed. But the relatively small group of borough residents who gathered for the public budget meeting and vote Tuesday was narrowly split and sent the document back for some revisions.

Warden Maher said that off the block, he would begin working on making the budget and financial machinations of the borough and its fund balance more transparent to its taxpayers. Mr Maher said he hoped to help inspire an even more involved sense of community among borough residents by promoting resident inclusion when considering projects that have to be underwritten by taxes and/or distribution from the fund balance.

“Having lived in Newtown my entire life and living on Glover Avenue for 30 years with my family, I have come to have great appreciation for the borough,” he said. Approaching the second round budget vote and administration of future budget, Mr Maher said he will be “conscious of spending and conscious of our mill rate.”

In community-wide election news — as they looked toward the year’s end and the conclusion of their first term as elected running mates at the top of Newtown’s local ballot, First Selectman Dan Rosenthal and Selectman Maureen Crick Owen notified The Bee they would be seeking a second term in the fall.

Municipal elections were scheduled for November 5 for many boards and commissions, and slates of candidates were announced in conjunction with party caucuses July 18.

According to information filed by the committees, unless he was challenged by an Independent or petitioning candidate, First Selectman Dan Rosenthal would face no opposition for the town’s top elected seat. The same would hold true for Ms Crick Owen, his running mate. Local Republicans nominated incumbent Selectman Jeff Capeci for another term, and he would also run unopposed.

By the time polls closed on a relatively quiet Election Day, nearly 6,000 — or just over 33 percent of Newtown’s eligible voters — had cast ballots that would frame the makeup of Newtown’s government leadership for the next two to four years. And with no top of ticket contest for First Selectman and a historic lack of competition on the Board of Selectmen, local races were all about which party would either retain or reclaim majority status on the various boards and commissions that have been almost exclusively controlled by Newtown Democrats since 2017.

Ballot counts reported back to The Newtown Bee that were tallied by local registrars verified that Democrats would retain majorities on all but one of the elected panels they had previously held. The Board of Finance ended up losing a Democratic seat, which evened the party makeup on that panel 3-3, while Republicans gained additional seats on the Legislative Council.

In another unique election night twist, a rare tie for the final council seat in District 3 occurred between Democratic newcomers Carol Walsh and Alison Plante, forcing a recount that was held the following morning at Town Hall South. The outcome of that recount, which included all balloting in the 3rd Council District, resulted in Ms Plante taking the seat by a single vote 949-948.

With all the post-election excitement subsided, dozens of newly elected and reelected Newtown officials raised their right hand and swore to serve the community to their best abilities during an inauguration ceremony November 30 that was attended by well above 100 family members and well-wishers who gathered for the ceremony at the Newtown Community Center.

Town Still Awaiting Promised FEMA Reimbursement

Just over a year after a tremendously destructive macroburst cut huge swaths of downed trees and residential destruction through Newtown and several riverside communities in Sandy Hook, Newtown Finance Director Robert Tait told The Newtown Bee May 22 that he expected to see an award letter from FEMA, “any day now,” which would define the federal amount of reimbursement that is expected to total between $1.2 and $1.5 million.

The anticipated lump sum distribution was expected to offset most — if not all — municipal costs, including overtime for town workers, additional contract labor, and even equipment rental costs resulting from the devastating May 15, 2018 storm system.

After hearing virtually nothing more except the reimbursement was in process, First Selectman Dan Rosenthal was caught by surprise September 27 when he learned through a press release issued to the local newspaper that the Federal Emergency Management Agency or FEMA had formally announced the pending delivery of more than $2 million in storm clean-up relief. Mr Rosenthal said he was pleased the municipality was “inching closer to our official FEMA reimbursement, even if that notice came in the form of a broadly issued press release.

“FEMA has completed its review and signed off, which apparently precipitated the press release,” the first selectman added. The promised $2,045,870 grant represented the federal share of the total project cost of more than $2.7 million.

On November 20, the Legislative Council received a briefing on how that money would be distributed once it was in hand. Following the meeting, the first selectman told The Newtown Bee he would be drawing up various proposals on how to allocate the FEMA grant once it is delivered, and those proposals would be presented to the Boards of Selectmen, Finance, and the council in turn for consideration and authorization.

At press time for the Year In Review, the reimbursement distribution was still in process, according to Mr Tait.