To the Editor:

At the BOS [Board of Selectmen] meeting on 4/3/17 the Newtown Community Center was once again discussed.

In last week's Letter to the Editor, I referenced a quote attributed to the first selectmen in defense of the DPM representative's "professional guesses and estimates."

This is Mrs Llodra's full quote from the March 20 BOS meeting, as she addressed the DPM representative specifically: "What got us going down the wrong path on this issue is this document." (Referring to a DPM report on projected costs per sq ft from 4/2016) "I didn't appreciate at the time how much those numbers were lowballed to get the project moving forward. Clearly all of us have made errors in our professional lives and this is one. This has set you up for this kind of criticism that to have lowballed it here to this extent in order to get a project moving forward with an honorable intent has created a crisis of confidence that what we have is numbers that we can trust and believe in. So I'm asking that we build that trust. If we're going to move forward we're going to have to trust that you have a handle on the numbers." This quote was not in the BOS meeting minutes, but on the tape available on the Town of Newtown's website.

As I interpret this, Mrs Llodra's first part of the quote states that she wasn't aware of what DPM had done. Mrs Llodra then appeared to insinuate that if the Town of Newtown was to maintain DPM as a contractor, DPM has to regain our trust. DPM are the people we trusted with this community center, and the BOS should have known what DPM was doing. There is no room for trust in DPM at this point.

Most of us are held accountable for such monumental mistakes. Actually, the DPM representative is so confident in her ability to keep her job even after this, that, as she spoke in the lobby to someone I was speaking with, she mentioned that she was confident she'd get the new police station job. DPM has eroded our confidence at this point. We need someone that does not "guess" erroneously to the tune of millions of taxpayer dollars.

I urge everyone to become better informed on the upcoming plans for the community center. They have changed. There aren't the informational meetings and the fervor to get the message out that we had leading up to the referendum vote. The information is out, but it can be misleading. It's not what many had envisioned.

Please ask questions and be informed. This center should be for all of us.

Cris Carvalho

5 Sunset Hill Road, Newtown         April 5, 2017