WESTPORT — Tuesday night’s highly anticipated meeting of the Long Lots School Building Committee — planned to discuss “modifications” to controversial plans for the new elementary school — has been postponed because of a threat of severe weather.

The meeting has been rescheduled for 6 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 11, in Town Hall’s Room 307/309.

With heavy rain, strong winds and potential flooding in the Tuesday night forecast, postponement of the meeting was announced by LLSBC Chairman Jay Keenan in an email message just after 2:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Postponement of Tuesday’s meeting, Keenan wrote, “is due to the predicted incoming weather and travel safety concerns of our consultants and staff who will have longer commutes in the inclement weather.”

The committee’s agenda for the postponed meeting included discussion and potential action on changes to the state-mandated 8-24 municipal improvement application for a new Long Lots Elementary School, which had faced tough questions when submitted for initial review by the Planning and Zoning Commission in December.

To avoid what looked likely to be a negative P&Z vote on the application, it was withdrawn from the P&Z’s Jan. 8 agenda by First Selectwoman Jennifer Tooker last week and sent back to the LLSBC for “possible modifications.”

Plans to build a new school replacing the seven-decade-old Long Lots, recommended by the LLSBC and endorsed by Tooker last October, with an estimated cost of more than $90 million, are expected to be the costliest municipal project in Westport’s history.

Land-use issues for the school’s Hyde Lane site, in particular, have been hotly debated for months. 

Disputes have focused primarily on fate of the Westport Community Gardens adjacent to the school, which planners want removed from the property.

Some neighbors also have raised concerns about potential flooding caused by construction on a site where runoff is already a problem, as well as quality-of-life disruptions posed by development of a large multi-purpose athletic field near several backyards.