IPN’s Quest To Change

CIP Process May Carry Over To New Council

By John Voket

Legislative Council member Po Murray did not receive enough support to secure a second term on Election Day, but an initiative she and fellow Independent Party of Newtown representative Gary Davis introduced earlier in the year may be one, if not the single, item of “old business” being carried over as a newly elected council is seated in December.

The IPN’s proposal, which was also supported in part by IPN councilmen-elect Kevin Fitzgerald and James Belden, seeks to expand the council’s influence in the capital improvement plan process. The decision to pass the ideas as submitted to the next council will happen if the current council adopts its finance committee’s recommendation, which came in a unanimous vote November 11.

After sparking a council debate during earlier meetings, the matter came up again in the final minutes of a routine regular meeting November 4. At that time, council members discussed whether to leave the decision to consider the IPN’s proposal to the new council, or to have the current Finance Committee take up the issue and deem whether it should be recommended for further discussion and possible recommendation during the old to new council transition.

The council decided on the latter.

Mr Davis, who was successful in winning a second term as a District 2 councilman, first introduced the IPN proposal on August 5, saying there should be greater council influence at the earliest stage of the town’s capital improvement planning process.

“The council should be more engaged upfront instead of at the end,” Mr Davis said of the process that currently sees the Boards of Selectmen, Education, and Finance each independently reviewing, prioritizing, and recommending large-scale town capital project proposals that range from major road and bridge replacements to the current high school expansion.

During that August meeting, Mr Davis defended the IPN’s plan, saying under the suggested process the panel would be more attuned to proposals the full council is expected to endorse or reject as the final step before the debt service for those projects is factored into the annual budget proposal.

“We should have the ability to participate,” Mr Davis said, adding that perhaps the process might make more sense and be expedited if the council and finance boards received reports on capital proposals from the respective town and school department heads in a joint meeting as the first step in the CIP process.

 

Retool And Resubmit

Failing to gain adequate support for inserting the council in the initial phase of the CIP process, Mr Davis and Ms Murray retooled resubmitted a 21-point proposal that spelled out suggested procedural and “housekeeping” changes, as well as a number of ideas Mr Davis said should be written into the council’s regulations.

Coming into this week’s finance committee meeting, Chairman Joe DiCandido said he recognized early on that the proposal served as a way to politicize the capital request process long before it should be.

“I don’t know if it’s a good or bad idea. The only way to know is to review it,” to determine if it should be brought up before the council, Mr DiCandido said. Based on his preliminary review, the finance chair said, “It’s hard to believe it can be done in a way that would enhance the current process’s effectiveness and efficiency.”

During the committee meeting, both Mr Davis and Ms Murray acknowledged that a number of the points in their proposal were already being done, or were in the process of being initiated internally by the town’s finance authority.

“The first four recommendations are already taking place,” Mr Davis said.

“Some have already been implemented by [Finance Director Bob] Tait,” Ms Murray said.

The IPN proposal redraft shifts the focus from involving the council earlier in the CIP process to extending the town-side CIP to ten years to match a similar practice recently adopted for the school district.

“If the Board of Ed is ten years and the town is five, there is a disconnect in terms of planning,” Mr Davis said. If adopted, this would make Newtown only the second town in Connecticut with a ten-year CIP, joining West Hartford.

We Can Do That

The IPN proposal also directs the first selectman to update the council on the progress of all capital projects every two months. But Mr Tait said during the meeting this practice could be initiated immediately with little more than a click of a mouse to produce that report from existing data.

Another proposal to break out individual bonding resolutions for referenda, Mr Tait said, could also easily be done at no cost beyond the internal administrative time it would take. Currently, some smaller projects to be bonded are bundled into a single bond resolution for consideration by the taxpayers either during town meetings or during the annual budget vote.

Mr Tait said the decision ultimately should be made by the town’s “executive” officer.

The proposal would also automatically reject any requests that are introduced, unless those proposals have already existed on the CIP for at least two previous years.

“That process should make it more difficult for people to swoop in and require funding,” and effectively compromising or “bumping” capital requests that were in the plan, sometimes for many years, Mr Davis said.

Another point that spurred some debate, including input from First Selectman-elect Pat Llodra, is a proposal to approve the first year’s CIP projects at the time of appropriations.

Mrs Llodra said the current process allows for the council to take a second look at all aspects of a proposed project before the appropriation is approved. She said this would be “a dangerous change.” Finance committee member Jeff Capeci agreed, saying the CIP approval could come up to 18 months before the appropriation.

“A lot can happen in that time,” he said. “We may not have the best cost estimates that early.”

Ms Llodra said the current economic environment is not stable enough to lock in project appropriations so far in advance.

“Information 12 to 18 months out may not be valid; the cost for bonding could change — and has in the past to our advantage,” she said. “I don’t have the confidence we could have [the best] information that early.”

The finance committee meeting also introduced an idea, tendered by Mr DiCandido, to consider making the school district budget for ongoing and large scale maintenance. Instead of deferring maintenance until repairs or replacement rise above the cost threshold permitted for capital projects, Mr DiCandido suggested the district pay into a capital nonrecurring fund administered by the town.

Then projects like boiler and roof repairs could be made when needed, paid for from the fund, and not requiring bonding and the long-term debt service of a more expensive capital project.

Mrs Llodra pointed out that school districts by law could not establish such a fund internally, but Mr Tait confirmed that the district could adopt the practice by directing savings to a town-side capital nonrecurring fund that is designated exclusively for school based maintenance and replacement projects.