Tunxis Told Replacement Firm Everything Was Fine At Fairfield Hills

By John Voket

(This is the latest installment of a series of reports on activities related to the management of the Fairfield Hills campus in the years leading up to the purchase of the property by the town in July 2004, and developments since the town’s acquisition of the former state hospital and grounds.)

It was an hour that Maria DeMarco remembers vividly.

Her property management company, DeMarco Miles and Murphy, had been a State of Connecticut professional services vendor for years. She had been called in on short notice by the Department of Public Works for what was expected to be a fairly low profile, temporary assignment.

That assignment, she soon learned, was the management of the former state hospital at Fairfield Hills in Newtown.

“That was February 27, 2004,” she recalled. “We came up to the campus with DPW representatives and some people from Tunxis. We were walking in there cold just one day before Tunxis gave up their management contract.”

That contract for management services between the state and the Tunxis Management Company was actually scheduled to expire June 30, 2004. But according to one source in Hartford, Tunxis owners already knew the state was not planning to renew their contract at Fairfield Hills, in part, because the company failed to submit affidavits attesting to the number and value of gifts they provided to state officials tied to the local contract.

On October 13, The Hartford Courant reported that Tunxis Management Company was not among the more than 500 companies or individuals submitting affidavits in accordance with recent rules instituted by the attorney general’s office.

At one point, Tunxis held more management contracts for state-owned properties than any company. But one by one, over the course of the past two years, all but a few of those contracts expired or were transferred to companies like DeMarco, Miles and Murphy.

On February 27, it took all of one hour for Tunxis managers to transfer all the information, contracts, and keys to Ms DeMarco.

“They basically came in and said, ‘Here are the keys.’ When I asked about any potential problems with the property, they told me everything was fine, everything had been taken care of, and everything was business as usual,” Ms DeMarco said.

“Within 48 hours we lost our water supply, then came the heating issues, then the boiler blew up. We really hit the ground running with nonstop emergencies,” she said.

The biggest frustration in the days following the Tunxis handoff, Ms DeMarco said, was that she was prevented from contacting Tunxis directly for any past management information.

“I was basically told within the first few days of our contract here that any questions we wanted to direct to Tunxis had to be sent through their attorneys,” she said. “That really impeded our ability to get the information we needed that might have helped us prevent some of the things that went wrong, or at least would have prepared us for the possibility.”

As a result of getting little or no information following that terse February 27 meeting, Ms DeMarco said her company was constantly challenged to handle basic day-to-day maintenance, while her employees and contractors were busy running around fixing all the things that were constantly breaking.

But from day one of her contract with the state, and subsequently as the long-term temporary manager once the town acquired the property in July, Ms DeMarco is credited with assisting everyone from the first selectman to the Ad Hoc Fairfield Hills Management Committee with working to reduce expenses related to the care and maintenance of the campus. That included renegotiating contracts with former Tunxis vendors for less money, severing other high priced professional services relationships, and basically examining every cost facet at the facility to determine where she could extract greater value for each dollar spent.

That attitude was not lost on town officials. In fact, one of the first actions taken by the ad-hoc committee after its formation was to extend DeMarco’s management contract on a long-term, temporary basis.

Mr Rosenthal told The Bee in previous interviews that Ms DeMarco’s company and personnel were a pleasure to work with, and called her professionalism and dedication to minimizing the property’s economic drain on town coffers, “refreshing…” when compared to the previous management representatives.

Surprising Expenses

Ms Demarco was among the growing circle of officials connected to the property to express surprise and disbelief when she reviewed some of the expenses attributed to campus upkeep in the 33 months prior to Tunxis Management’s departure from the property. The Bee previously reported charges like a $50 flat hourly fee paid to any Tunxis manager who set foot on the property for nearly half the length of its five-year contract; thousands of dollars in monthly charges to keep Tunxis heating and electrical engineers on the premises; nearly $777,000 for landscaping and snow plowing services; and $764,000 for security personnel and vehicles to patrol the campus, to name just a few.

By all accounts, it has been a challenge to keep maintenance costs under control. Canaan House alone was without a central heating system, suffering from water invasion into the basement constituting a need for toxic mold remediation, while more recently, the overflow of several toilets on Canaan House’s upper floors forced the relocation of town employees and irreparable damage to yards of asbestos floor tiles (now classified as a hazardous substance) that would have to be removed.

But step by wary step, many town leaders, volunteers, and agencies have pitched in to help Ms DeMarco and the town begin whittling down the expenses related to the upkeep at Fairfield Hills.

Some of the steps Ms DeMarco, town officials, and management committee members have been able to initiate to reduce operating and management costs on the campus include:

Potentially relocating all Canaan House staff members to an off-campus commercial location. While final contracts are yet to be signed, Mr Rosenthal said last week he was close to closing a deal to relocate staffers to office space at a facility on Pecks Lane.

That move would save tens of thousands of dollars in fuel costs to heat the nearly three-quarters-unoccupied building, the expense of a rented boiler currently providing central heat, and the myriad of potential and expensive problems associated with the retrofitted town office space there now.

Ms DeMarco has begun rebidding every vendor contract, from lawn maintenance to security to other professional services like plumbing, electrical, and other trade services.

In addition, the town will now supplement services from lawn mowing to infrastructure maintenance to snow plowing, potentially saving taxpayers many thousands of dollars over subcontracting the services.

Outsourced security officers will now traverse the campus in town-owned and town-fueled vehicles. One of the most expensive subcontracts the state formerly paid was during the 33-month period leading up to the transfer of Fairfield Hills to local control. Those charges for maintaining security officers and a vehicle on the campus added up to approximately $764,233.

Those security and safety charges were paid by the state to Tunxis Management, and passed through to Atlanta, Ga.-based Argenbright and its subsequent owner, Cognisa Security.

Ms DeMarco has also adopted the practice of using management tradespeople as needed, instead of the apparent Tunxis practice of paying for management, engineer, and other trade professional to be stationed on campus.

“There’s no reason to keep people around here waiting for stuff to break,” she said. “We’re working to help the town reduce hours, not pad some plumber’s payroll.”

Even the upcoming soil remediation project is set to be underwritten by funds from the auction of residential homes on Mile Hill Road, which were negotiated for as part of the town’s acquisition package. In addition, Mr Rosenthal said the town is seriously considering purchasing or leasing demolition and construction equipment and vehicles that would be used primarily for the remediation and demolition at Fairfield Hills. Upon completion of that work, the equipment would be sold or put into service, replacing existing, outdated town dump trucks, bucket loaders, and a backhoe.

While Ms DeMarco admitted to The Bee recently that she was, in effect, working to put herself out of business, she believes her association with Newtown and the Fairfield Hills project was a “once in a lifetime opportunity,” for her and her staff.

“I really looked at myself and our staff as agents for the town,” she said. “This is a great project for us. It’s interesting, challenging, and I’m sincere when I say it’s an absolute honor to work for the people of Newtown — it’s a wonderful community.”