By Gretchen Webster

WESTPORT — Two contracts to move the Long Lots Elementary School building project forward were approved Wednesday by the Board of Selectwomen, but not without controversy. 

The contracts are for two consulting firms to assess whether the nearly 70-year-old school should be renovated or replaced with a new building.

An assessment of the existing conditions at the school will be performed by Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates Inc. of Northbrook, Ill., a construction engineering company, for $38,000.  

The consultant engineering firm of Kohler Ronan, LLC, of Danbury will assess the mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems of the school under a $29,100 contract.

The assessments are supposed to take approximately one to three months, according to John Broadbin, deputy director of the Department of Public Works, who presented the contracts at the selectwomen’s meeting.

Selectwoman Candice Savin voted against approving the consulting services agreement with Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, which she said had not done a good job evaluating conditions in advance of the recent Coleytown Middle School renovation project.  

“They were way off the mark with Coleytown,” Savin said of the construction engineering company’s projections for the work. She was a Board of Education member at the time the school was closed for renovations after students and staff reported health problems tied to mold and air quality.

“They made a time line and a price estimate, and they were way off the mark … I have a lot of concerns about them,” she added.

Broadbin said that he believes the firm had performed as expected on the Coleytown project. “This is the first comment I’ve heard about it,” he said. “We found them to be quite accurate with the time line … and they came in on budget.”

But Savin felt Wiss, Janney, Elstner should not be hired for the Long Lots assessment because its initial evaluation of the Coleytown job was inaccurate in terms of the projected time line and costs, although its work on that project was satisfactory once construction got underway.

She asked if other firms had been considered for the assessment. Broadbin said no others had been reviewed, and that the Long Lots Building Committee preferred Wiss, Janney, Elstner.

“I found them to be exacting in their standards,” Broadbin added in defense of the consultants.

Selectwoman Andrea Moore, however, supported Wiss, Janney, Elstner, saying the Coleytown Building Committee approved of the firm and that she “has a lot of faith in those people [on the building committee]. They did a good job.”

Moore made a motion to approve the contract, which was passed by a two-to-one vote with First Selectwoman Jennifer Tooker joining Moore in support of the pact, and Savin opposed.

The town’s second consulting-services agreement with Kohler Ronan, LLC, for the assessment of existing mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineering conditions at Long Lots Elementary School was approved unanimously.

Planning to renovate or rebuild Long Lots Elementary School was given the go-ahead by the Board of Education earlier this year, with programmatic planning also underway.

A final decision on those plans will be made after the Long Lots Building Committee makes its recommendations.

Long Lots Elementary School is projected to have the largest increase in enrollment of all the district’s schools, projected to peak at 680 students by 2028. 

Freelance writer Gretchen Webster, a Fairfield County journalist and journalism teacher for many years, was editor of the Fairfield Minuteman newspaper for 10 years and currently teaches journalism at Southern Connecticut State University.