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08/21/2018 12:00 AMFinding a viable solution for the Academy School that a majority of residents are willing to rally behind was never going to be a simple or easy task. However, after more than a month of meetings consumed by polling questions, cost estimates, developer proposals, a few stops and starts, and constant stream of opinions from both town officials and residents, the members of the Ad-Hoc Academy Building Guidance Committee are quickly learning that just calling this process difficult might be a significant understatement.
At the committee meeting on Aug. 16, members tried to identify all the information known about the school and its possible development or re-use while simultaneously trying to wrap their minds around a timeline and the amount of work that needs to get done before a polling firm can even begin asking residents for their opinions on a future use of the school.
In short, it all boiled down to one thing: The committee is going to need a little help.
Over the past month, the committee has reached out to the original developers who made proposals to the town back in February. The committee has been in contact with two of the developers who are still interested in a building-only proposal, leaving the land behind the school to the town.
At the same time, the committee has also been trying to narrow down viable public options, essentially identifying what the town could do with the building, and at what cost, if residents wanted to maintain ownership.
Outlining the Costs
To help shape the discussion, Colliers International, a project management firm with which the town frequently contracts, pulled together some rough estimates. The price range goes from $1.5 million to just demolish the building an leave open space to roughly $34 million for full demolition and a complete rebuild of a new structure.
Within the options for public use, the committee has considered a community center, relocating town offices to Academy, and a variety of mixed-use options. While some of those options could fit within the numbers Colliers put forth, the committee expressed concerns that just assigning a ballpark figure to a community center option isn’t going to be helpful to the public without a bit more detail.
“We are going to need more flesh on the bones of these things,” said member Tom Scarpati. “If it doesn’t have some definition to it, how is someone going to say, ‘Oh I would like that as opposed to this.’ We have to do more, but I also agree we are not going to be able to do enough without bona fide professional support to do much better than the numbers that are in the Colliers thing.”
The problem with that approach is that the committee doesn’t have a budget. However, committee member Bob Hale said the charge of the committee is beyond what a volunteer group can reasonably pull off on its own.
“The charge for this, without additional support, is not possible,” he said. “There are five or six public options and then the private option. We could do it with ballpark numbers, but I don’t know if that is enough for the public to do a survey on. It’s certainly not enough to do a vote on.”
The committee eventually settled on asking the Board of Selectmen (BOS) if it would be willing to give the committee access to Colliers for a set number of hours to help put some more detail behind the rough numbers Colliers initially gave the committee. Committee Chair Henry Griggs said speaking with Colliers could help the polling process going forward.
“Every option that we pose in the questionnaire should have a price tag associated and whatever the relative pros and cons are,” he said. “And wouldn’t it make sense to actually sit down with these pollsters and get the benefit of their years of experience working with municipalities and then hone our request for additional resources?…Let them say what kind of info is useful for a questionnaire and then see where we have gaps and then ask for the resources to fill those gaps from a position of knowledge.”
However, despite the move to ask the BOS for access to Colliers, some committee members expressed concern over how likely the BOS—in particular First Selectman Tom Banisch—was to give the committee those extra supports. Kathryn Hunter said based on Banisch’s recent column in this paper (“The Charge and Direction,” Aug. 16), she doesn’t expect his support of this request.
“Tom Banisch is scolding our committee for getting too far afield and not paying attention to the charge,” she said.
Both Griggs and Hale met earlier in the week with Banisch who, by their interpretation of the meeting, said he felt there was enough existing data on the table for a viable poll. In addition, Griggs said in that meeting Banisch still expressed interest in getting some type of Academy question on the upcoming November ballot, which would require a question be formulated by Sept. 1 at the latest.
“At that point he was still hopeful we would come up with a question by Sept. 1, but reading today’s paper in his column it suggests that he sees the challenges there are insurmountable,” said Griggs. “We can move as fast as we can, but we just can’t do Sept. 1.”
The November Ballot
When the committee was first formed, some selectmen had expressed interest in getting an Academy question on this November ballot due to an anticipated high voter turnout. While that hope had just about completely faded away, Scarpati tried to breathe a little life into it one last time at the meeting.
In a lengthy statement to the committee, Scarpati proposed putting a fairly dry question on the ballot designed to gauge the community’s emotional attachment to the Academy building. In short, the question would ask if the town was willing to sell the building for private development at no cost to the town or taxpayers.
“We, the committee, already know some things,” he said. “There are credible developers capable of managing the redevelopment of Academy, with or without the adjoining fields, at no cost or risk to the town. There are three-plus possible community use alternatives for Academy that are credible, but need professional development and would cost $15 million to $20 million, and razing the Academy building and putting a memorial park in its place would be fraught with significant legal obstacles.”
Scarpati said the question would basically ask the community if it is willing to pay to keep the building. Up until the November election, Scarpati said the committee could keep working on fleshing out public development options, but fellow committee members said putting a question like that on the ballot was putting the cart before the horse.
“A ‘No’ vote on giving the property to a developer might be interpreted as a strong statement that we should do nothing or maybe it is a statement that we should demolish it. The binary logic is not there,” said Griggs. “I also worry that from a perception point of view if people say this committee, charged with doing the poll, gathering information, and education the public, in the middle of August decided what that question is, that I think would doom it for sure. I certainly would have a hard time walking down Main Street.”
Hunter pointed out that the committee can’t even consider that possibility because it’s outside the committee charge. Additionally she said the public would cry foul if it saw the committee rush to get a question on this upcoming ballot.
“We were a scant two weeks into the charge when the first selectman attempted three weeks back to gut the charge to move it forward,” she said. “Let’s say we put all ill intent and all that noise aside and it’s a sincere effort to reach a Nov. 6 date. We have heard from other members of the BOS loud and clear that date, while it may have been aspirational, should not drive that process. We have also heard explanations for why it took from April 12 to the beginning of July to actually commission this committee. If timing was that important, we lost three valuable months in the process.”
The committee did not formally consider Scarpati’s suggestion. Scarpati said he wanted to put the idea on the table for discussion, but that personally, he doesn’t want to see the building sold.
“My own personal point of view is I am against developing that for residential or private development,” he said. “I would vote ‘No’ as a private citizen. However, if I was the first selectman at the time, I would vote for it because doing that is in the best interest of the town overall.”
Polling Concerns Linger
The BOS recently approved contracting with Great Blue Research to conduct a telephone poll and assigned additional funds to be used if the committee wanted to include some sort of additional paper questionnaire. However, at the meeting on Aug. 16, some members of the public still expressed concern over the concept of a telephone poll.
With the telephone poll, 400 residents would be called to get a statistically significant result with a margin of error of less than five percent. Some in attendance at the meeting suggested the committee not waste money on a telephone poll and just go with an opt-in poll like a questionnaire or online survey.
Opt-in surveys tend to show more of the extremes in opinion rather than a statistically significant broad sampling of various demographic groups. However, resident Catherine Donovan, a member of the Save Academy group, told the committee that residents are unlikely to accept the validity of statistics if they themselves do not receive a phone call in the poll.
“Math is a funny thing,” she said. “You can show us all how the numbers reflect that the cross sections of the town have been called and tallied, but if my number was not one of those called, I will feel like I didn’t have a final say in the outcome.”