“I never want to hear the words ‘value engineering’ again,” Community Center Director Matt Ariniello told the Board of Selectmen on an April 1 meeting while reporting that the pool deck in the Aquatics Center has been developing fissures, and the pool itself has been cracking.

“We’re paying for it later,” said Ariniello, who noted that the Community Center has paid $700,000 in projects after the construction.

Value engineering is a process during a capital project in which items are removed, efficiencies are sought, and other cost-cutting measures implemented to keep a municipal project under the approved dollar figure.

The Aquatics Center was already experiencing difficulty; back in January, Ariniello came to the BOS seeking to add $500,000 to the current year’s Capital Improvement Plan for the center’s HVAC system. The current unit serves the pool area of the community center, and the town just finished a legal settlement with the construction company. The 50 ton unit installed “underserves” the needs of the pool area, and the center had spent $50,000 out of its special revenue fund on the project. The town is looking at whether it can add a second 50 ton unit or what other options will solve the problem.

The Community Center, finished in 2019, cost $15 million, with $10 million of that being paid for by GE and the rest being bonded by the town. Newtown Bee articles from 2018 detail the town’s process to keep the project under that amount using value engineering, including the removal of an exterior deck and bocce court, and one article mentions an unspecified list of 30 items that could be “value engineered to downsize costs.”

Whether the value engineering led directly to the current problems is unknown, but will be part of an investigation that the selectmen appropriated $40,000 to fund. Ariniello said he didn’t think the investigation would cost the full amount. The investigation will require test boring of the soil underneath the pool area, so that means tearing up tile and other structures, which will have to be repaired.

The current problems include “significant movement” of the pool deck, shifting and rising of the deck, separation of the lips of the pool deck, and tiles cracking and popping up.

“It’s creating liability,” said Ariniello, as the damage creates significant risk of tripping by pool goers.

Ariniello noted that “you could fit a full hand” between the pool deck and the coping stone, an area that was first filled in with deck seal and then later, when it continued to split, with rubber insulation.

“This is not something you want to see in a five-year-old building,” said Ariniello.

Ariniello said that the first fear was that the pool itself was moving, possibly due to settling, or popping out from water movement, but that turned out to not be the case — “there was no movement of the pool.”

“By process of elimination, it is something structural around the pool deck that is causing the movement,” said Ariniello.

The Public Buildings and Site Commission, which is already assisting in looking into the HVAC system, was also tapped at the BOS meeting to oversee the pool deck investigation.

Ariniello had already apprised PB&S of the situation and said they are “very vested in finding the problem.”

Editor Jim Taylor can be reached at jim@thebee.com.