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08/14/2018 12:00 AMWhen the Board of Selectmen (BOS) called a special meeting on Aug. 13, the agenda included continued discussions regarding a potential lease agreement with Our Lady of Mercy Preparatory Academy (OLMPA) for Island Avenue School. However, despite being included in a special meeting, there were few fireworks on the topic, rather just a show that the town is still moving toward having a lease agreement pulled together for the public’s consideration.
The conversation with OLMPA has gone through numerous iterations over the last few months, with the town moving down to a one-year lease verses a three-year lease due to concerns about the financial viability of the school over the longer term.. At the last BOS special meeting on Aug. 2, the OLMPA debate went on for an hour as members of the BOS and Board of Finance (BOF) dug through concerns surrounding liability, capital costs, insurance, and timing.
At this Aug. 13 meeting, the conversation didn’t even last 10 minutes. The BOS took the opportunity to update the public and members of OLMPA in the audience on where the potential lease document stands at this point.
“The lease terms are all the same and nothing has changed,” said First Selectman Tom Banisch. “It’s just a matter of committing them to a document that we can release to the public for them to consider and understand for when we go to town meeting.”
Town Executive Assistant Lauren Rhines said the document is in the hands of the attorney now and she expects feedback soon.
“The real estate lawyer that sent me the boilerplate commercial lease that I then gutted and retrofitted for this particular agreement is out on vacation, so I sent it back to him last Thursday saying, ‘OK here is what I have drafted,’” she said. “Once we get that working document and it is a little more solidified with the attorney, we will forward it out and it will then be reviewed again before it goes to the town.”
Banisch said once the town has the document in hand, he doesn’t want to rush to town meeting so that residents have time to learn about all aspects of the potential lease.
“I think once that document—and I don’t think we are far off, we are probably pretty close—we are probably going to need about a month to get the word out and have public hearings and do that kind of stuff so people can understand what they are going to vote on,” he said. “We don’t want people coming to a town meeting without any idea of what they are going to vote on.”
At the meeting, one resident, Roz Fahey, commented that she thinks the lease would be a smart move for the town.
“Madison is currently experiencing a major change downtown. Our library will be closed for a minimum of two years for construction, Academy will be vacant another two-plus years and maybe more,” she said. “Let’s allow OLMPA the opportunity to lease Island Avenue and keep it from becoming another vacant asset to our community. In my opinion the leasing of Island to OLM prep benefits Madison in many ways including keeping youth and families in our downtown area.”
Getting to this Point
Parents and families from OLMPA first came before the BOS on April 9 to discuss the potential of leasing Island Avenue School. Closing Island is part of the BOE response to declining enrollment; as of now the plan is to close the school in June 2019.
Our Lady of Mercy School (OLM), located at 149 Neck Road in town, is the main Catholic K to 8 school serving Madison and Guilford since 1954. Over the past few years, the school community has been left in a state of flux following an announcement that the school’s lease would be terminated and then a more recent announcement early this year telling parents that the school building would close at the end of this academic year and the school be combined with St. Mary’s School in Branford.
Following the news of the imminent closure, some OLM families banded together to begin looking for ways to separate the school from the local parishes to form an independent school grounded in the Catholic faith, and find a permanent home, ideally still in Madison.
OLMPA has been looking at Island Avenue School as a potential temporary home for the school since news broke that the home of the current OLM (which is run by the Archdiocese of Hartford) on Neck Road would be closed at the end of this academic year. While the archdiocese chose to merge OLM with St. Mary School in Branford, some members of the OLM community chose to form OLMPA and seek a school site closer to Madison.
As part of its schools consolidation plan, Madison had earlier announced it would close the Island Avenue School after the 2018-’19 school year. Selectmen and members of OLMPA had been reviewing financial statements and issues like liability to see if leasing Island was a viable option after the Madison Public School District formally turns the building over to the town in 2019.
In July, the BOS expressed concern over some of OLMPA’s finances and was reluctant to move forward to the public with a potential three-year lease agreement. Instead, the BOS opted to continue discussions with a one-year lease option on the table. Selectmen pulled together a rough list of terms and conditions it would want to see in a lease agreement, which then led to Aug. 2 meeting at which the Board of Finance (BOF) was included in the discussion to offer input.