By Thane Grauel
WESTPORT — The Board of Finance on Monday held its second discussion on funding the design phase of a new Long Lots Elementary School.
The five-and-a-half hour discussion in the Town Hall auditorium touched on a number of topics, but no decisions were made. The board expects to hear a dollar amount for funding at the next meeting.
Some board members questioned why comparable schools built elsewhere were chosen to show certain benchmarks for such projects.
“How did we select this series of comps?” member Jeff Hammer asked Don O’Day of the Long Lots School Building Committee and officials from Newfield Construction. “Were these the only schools that were built new or reconstructed within in a geographic proximity? What were the criteria that went into selecting these comps? And was Newfield involved in every single one of these projects?”
“These are their builds,” O’Day said of the comparable projects.
Might it make sense to include comps in which they weren’t involved?” Hammer asked. “Is that possible?”
“Sure,” O’Day said. “Getting that is probably a little difficult, some of it’s proprietary.”
“You do agree, though, that a comp set really determines your universe,” Hammer said. “And so if you assemble a comp set, that if you want it to be the comp set you can determine your outcome, right?”
“Yeah, or another way to look at it is we want to look at schools, most of them elementary, and we want to get as much detail as possible,” O’Day said. “And the source that we’ve gone to, and I guess this is all reasonably available information, certainly from Newfield, these are the costs of nearby, recent, mostly elementary school construction.”
Finance member Brian Stern agreed with Hammer.
“This is extremely important that we get this benchmarking as best we can and really make sure we understand it, as we assess what is being appropriated,” Stern said. “I think this is worthy of a whole lot more work.”
He also said he’d like to see schools that Newfield did not build.
“I’m not sure we’ve got the right mix of schools here,” Stern said. “I think we need to investigate that a wee bit further.”
“I think from a fiduciary responsibility perspective, if the taxpayers see that we’re only using the probable construction firm to do our benchmarking, that is a little bit weird,” he said.
Danielle Dobin also agreed with Hammer.
“To an extent your peer-reviewing your own proposal, the building committee is peer-reviewing their own proposal,” she said to O’Day and Brian Grant of Newfield. “I’m a little uncomfortable with only about comparable costs for schools that you’ve also been involved with.”
She said looking online and reviewing minutes of meetings from elsewhere could provide a lot of information.
“Pursuant to state granting, there’s so much transparency with regards to developments,” Dobin said. “By our next meeting I’d like to see benchmarking that includes schools not created by the same team.”
Member Liz Heyer asked Grant what information might be proprietary.
He said a lot of information is available from public bidding documents.
“A lot of the reason you have the information you have is because we were commissioned do this,” Grant said. “To obtain this yourself or ask the [school building] committee to do that I think is a gonna be probably a tall task. I think it’s out there, but to put it together in this format and make sure that it’s accurate, that’s gonna be a tall task.
The finance board met until 1 a.m., and also heard from parents supporting the new school, members of the Westport Community Gardens, neighbors and others.
Thane Grauel grew up in Westport and has been a journalist in Fairfield County and beyond for 35 years. Reach him at editor@westportjournal.com. Learn more about us here.
Important as the comp set may be, it wasn’t the headline of the night.
There are no words to describe the sick feeling upon seeing the newly disclosed much vaunted “staging” plan unveiled.
The Long Lots neighbors got their first look at the garbage pile that will sit in their backyards for two years. The gargantuan piles of dirt and junk will sit on what is now the Community Gardens. Please post a photo of it, Westport Journal.
Those who devised this “shit show” of a school project say these neighbors must live with 2,000 truckloads of fill dirt and construction debris next to their kitchen windows, lest they don’t get their shiny new supersized school.
The Town cajoled its Phase One construction consultant, Newfield, to whip up this plan for purposes of this meeting, probably with hope of winning the final construction contract. Staging plans are typically not done until the actual building design is nearly complete.
It was a shocking testament to the lengths the town will go to double cross those who will live with ill conceived plans that fail to address numerous issues raised on this problematic water-prone site in the heart of a quiet residential neighborhood. And one that they will pay dearly for: a 3.5% increase in their property tax.
To further demonstrate that there is no price too high to get their way, the town committee declared that if the Gardens parcel was instead private land that could not be used as a dumping ground, the school could not be built there. They could not build the school.
Now there’s an idea.
I also must give props to the smug BOF chairman for devising new ways to insult town residents.
I have tremendous respect for the BOF members, and thank them for their diligence in reviewing the night’s new information. Thank you to each one for listening and trying to sort fact from fiction.
But … the chair wears his disdain for constituents on his sleeve, like a scarlet letter spelling out “Know It All.” He set up rules and procedures to support tenets of favoritism and thinly veiled predispositions.
Once again, when presenters squirmed their way through tough questions, he took it upon himself to frame up their answers. He is all-in on razing the garden for his personal definition of the “common good.”
This, Mr. Public-Figure Caney, is what democracy calls Fair Comment: You are Gillray’s Napoleon, “looking ridiculous and wearing an oversized hat,” with your plundered booty being towed behind you on stolen horses.
There are other ways to be heard, if not at your altar.
After reading this article, I did a brief bit of research on newly built schools in Fairfield County. I’m no expert in construction and have no affiliation with school construction companies, and I only hope that this information may prove useful to all concerned. This fall, the Town of Brookfield just opened its newly built elementary school. According to the construction company, O&G Industries:
“In Brookfield, O&G Industries completed the brand new $78M Candlewood Lake Elementary School in time for the 2023-24 school year. Tecton Architects designed it with all the needs of 21st-century learning in mind, including state-of-the-art classrooms with 85″ SMART boards and designated maker space for STEM projects. About 1,100 students in total will attend the new 148,855-square-foot school. Phase Three of this project is currently underway with the demolition of the old Huckleberry Hill Elementary School to make way for a new parking lot.
The new school consolidated Center Elementary School and Huckleberry Hill Elementary School into a single elementary school, bringing the fifth graders from Whisconier Middle School to the new elementary school.
This environmentally-themed PK-5 school has a unique building layout that embraces the site’s topography. The building and site design integrate wetlands, play areas, learning gardens, rainwater harvesting, and a nature walk to advance student engagement and environmental stewardship.
A separate Early Childhood Center serves grades Pre-K and Kindergarten, while grade-level pods create a neighborhood feel within the building. Nature-themed graphics and wayfinding provide clear direction to early learners and promote identity and ownership of the school. The building is designed to maximize sustainability and promote student wellness, with efficient mechanical systems, improved air quality, and access to natural daylight.”
See https://ogind.com/2023/og-industries-completes-construction-on-candlewood-lake-elementary-school-brookfield-ct/
According to news reports, the construction costs was $78.1 million. See https://patch.com/connecticut/brookfield/dunn-starts-second-tenure-school-he-helped-get-built
While O&G Industries states that the building is 148,855 square-feet, a news article claimed the facility is 135,000 square feet.
See https://ground.news/article/brookfields-new-78-million-candlewood-lake-elementary-school-welcomes-its-first-students
Using the lower square footage of 135,000 square feet, the cost per square foot is: $579 per square foot. If O&G Industries calculation of square footage is accurate, the cost per square foot is $525.