The Board of Finance heard a presentation on the Board of Education’s Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) at its meeting on September 27.

Superintendent of Schools Dr Lorrie Rodrigue and Board of Education member and CIP Committee Chair Debbie Leidlein presented the school board’s CIP to the Board of Finance at the meeting with support from the district’s Director of Facilities Gino Faiella and Jack Haggett of Automated Building Systems Inc (ABS) of Glastonbury.

The school board approved its CIP at a June 20 meeting. The plan estimates projects over the next ten years. As approved, projects for the 2019-20 year include replacing a boiler and a lighting energy project at Hawley Elementary School for roughly $744,000 and a boiler replacement at Newtown High School for $2,238,500.

The second year of the plan has a ventilation and HVAC renovation with a partial air conditioning project for the 1921 portion of Hawley’s building for $5,002,000. The third year of the plan has a $3,289,000 ventilation/HVAC/air conditioning replacement project for the auditorium and cafeteria/rooftop units at Newtown Middle School along with a roughly $1,124,000 project to replace/restore the turf field at NHS.

In year four of the plan, there is a proposed $1,370,000 high efficiency gas boilers and LED lighting conversion project at Reed Intermediate School. The fifth year of the plan has a $941,000 project for lighting efficiency and variable frequency drivers and pumps project for Head O’ Meadow Elementary School, according to a summary of the CIP provided with the September 27 Board of Finance meeting’s minutes on the town’s website (newtown-ct.gov). The meeting was recorded and streamed live on the town’s website.

“A lot of these projects are built around efficiency and cost savings in the long run in regard to conservation,” Ms Leidlein said, adding it was harder to estimate costs for projects in the sixth through tenth year of the plan.

Ms Leidlein introduced Mr Haggett to speak about recent projects at Middle Gate Elementary School and NMS and the energy conservation approaches used for those projects.

“A couple years ago, we did some work at Middle Gate with some boilers and lighting and then we did some work at the middle school just this past year in the same type of approach. It was an energy conservation dealing with mostly the boilers,” said Mr Haggett, who added later that he is in charge of working with municipal school systems.

ABS, Mr Haggett explained, performs energy audits for projects to qualify for savings with utilities.

“At the middle school, probably the hottest room in that building was the boiler room and rooms above it because the boilers were so old and dilapidated that when they fired, the heat would come out of the boiler,” said Mr Haggett. “So we’ve fixed that and realized the cost savings in fuel of $190,000 in one year.”

With lighting efficiency efforts, Mr Haggett said the total one-time cost savings at NMS from the project was $214,497. The Middle Gate project, he estimated, saved $61,400.

In addition, Mr Haggett explained the proposed projects at NHS and Hawley in the first year of the Board of Education’s CIP would also have savings associated with the projects, but it is difficult to estimate the total savings at this time.

Also at the meeting, Public Works Director Fred Hurley said the Newtown Highway Department has been working on updates “to see what roads have been finished and completed” roughly every two weeks.

“We’re pretty much on schedule,” he said, after handing out the most recent update to Board of Finance members.

According to the meeting’s minutes, Mr Hurley also told the board his department will finish its road work dependent on weather, and it should finish its planned program before the weather “closes in.”