While the major bulk of deliberation on Newtown's five-year Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) was put off until the next scheduled Board of Selectmen's meeting, during preliminary discussion last week Selectman Herb Rosenthal suggested his colleagues consider adding some additional borrowing to hasten the planned demolition of unusable buildings at Fairfield Hills.

Mr Rosenthal, who was first selectman when Newtown purchased the former state hospital and grounds, said that interest rates on capital borrowing would not remain at historic lows much longer, and that borrowing for the largest projects looming on the capital plan should happen sooner rather than later.

"If there are things we really need to get done, we should borrow when it's advantageous to borrow," Mr Rosenthal said, adding that in particular, he would like to see remediation and demolition plans at Fairfield Hills "speeded along."

Selectmen received an updated CIP at the August 15 meeting that First Selectman Pat Llodra said makes a number of adjustments to take pressure off Newtown's debt load. That concern continued to weigh on the first selectman this week, although she and Selectman Will Rodgers said they were open to considering Mr Rosenthal's idea.

Mr Rosenthal defended his idea saying that rules and mandated guidelines for environmental projects like building remediation are becoming more complex, and the process more costly.

Mrs Llodra agreed that building removal at Fairfield Hills is work that needs to be completed, but with current projected costs to rid the campus of all remaining unusable structures estimated to cost as much as $19 million, she was extremely concerned about the burden any related bonding would put on an already heavy town debt commitment.

"I'm uncomfortable with our level of debt," she told selectmen. "Our local, our state, and even our national economy is not stable, and our annual debt costs are too high. But I recognize the need to do more here."

Mrs Llodra echoed sentiments she stated in a previous report in The Newtown Bee, saying in the coming years she hopes the capital spending plan will strike a better balance between demolition and development. And she was not convinced that earmarking as much as $19 million to strip Fairfield Hills of its massive former hospital buildings represented "a good bang for the buck."

Selectman Rodgers struck a middle ground position, saying that while the remediation and demolition expenses are "big ticket items," the expenses related to taking those structures down continues to escalate.

"It's worthwhile to investigate front loading some of the Fairfield Hills [bonding]," he remarked. At the same time, he agreed with Mrs Llodra, saying, "The economy is too soft to be too aggressive [in borrowing]."

All three selectmen said in reviewing the preliminary CIP proposal that they could not see any items that could be removed to make room for more demolition bonding.

Town Finance Director Robert Tait advised that if related borrowing is increased in the current CIP, the selectmen should make "an internal pledge to minimize bonding" in future fiscal cycles.

Mrs Llodra said another scenario would be for town leaders to decide if increasing taxpayers debt burden in the short term should be offset by reducing day-to-day services in the operations budget. She said another alternative to finding funds to support further demolition bonding might come when the Board of Education weighs in with decisions from its facility study, suggesting some current facility development spending earmarked in the CIP could be offset if a school is closed and that building is repurposed for use instead of building new.

Currently, the CIP has design and building spending earmarked for a new senior center and police headquarters.

"We don't know what the decision is regarding school facilities," Mrs Llodra said. "If the decision is made to close a school, we need to look at the possibility of repurposing that building and adjusting this CIP."

The officials agreed to come back and complete CIP deliberations, and to move that plan to the Board of Finance at the September 19 selectmen's meeting.

Pension Policy Completed

Following a nearly yearlong process, the town Pension Committee completed the final task of recrafting a new pension policy that would carry through a transition away from Westport Advisors, the firm that had been administering local plan investments since 1999.

Officials including Mr Tait and the selectmen have been growing increasingly concerned in recent years as pension investments in the various funds Westport Advisors chose continued to underperform. According to the end-of-year statement on pension performance for the fiscal cycle that ended June 30, the fund's net value has lost more than $1 million.

Last March, Selectmen learned that Newtown's new pension consultant Fiduciary Investment Advisors (FIA) could not take over from Westport Advisors until the town amended or redrafted its pension investment policy. That effort, described a "Herculean" by pension trustee Joe DiCandido, and a "long journey" by Mrs Llodra, was recently completed and the new policy was presented and approved September 6. At its previous August meeting, selectmen laid the groundwork to start the conversion process to FIA as the town's new pension advisor, by approving Wells Fargo to become Newtown's new custodian for both the Defined Benefit and Money Purchase Pension Plan, and the Other Post Employment Benefit Trust Plan (OPEB).

During the August meeting, selectmen also voted to formally separate from Westport Advisors, and to formally adopt FIA as the town pension advisor effective October 1. However, due to the new pension policy being approved just this week, selectmen agreed that the formal changeover to FIA could be postponed up to another month and gave a November 1 date as the hopeful deadline for all transitional paperwork and administration of funds and investments to be completed.

During the September 6 meeting Mr DiCandido and the rest of the pension committee talked about how they worked with FIA representatives to achieve a compromise that all parties felt would be most prudent for the town moving forward. All parties decided that initially 40 percent of investments would be made in the low-fee Vanguard Total Bond Index; 30 percent into the Vanguard Institutional Index; 12 percent into the Vanguard Extended market fund; and the remaining 18 percent into the Vanguard Developed markets fund - which represents international investments.

If pension trustees and FIA consultants agree, the pension committee also qualified a number of suggested investments that could be made in the future, if the initial proposed investments began to perform more positively.

That future proposal would reduce the bond index and domestic equity investments in favor of increasing the international equity as well as putting five percent of investments into a Vanguard REIT Index, which invests in real estate developments.

Pension committee member Patrick Burke, who personally reviewed every prospectus FIA presented before completing the policy draft, said the advantage of moving some of the investments to index funds would result in a verified savings of $139,000.