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12/10/2018 11:00 PMWhat should Madison do with the old Academy School? To find out, the town commissioned phone poll that is now complete and more than 1,000 residents have already taken the online Academy school survey. This week is the last week for residents to fill out the online survey, which closes on Sunday, Dec. 16 or when 2,000 responses have been logged.
The poll is being conducted by GreatBlue Research, the firm that has been working with the Academy Building Guidance Committee (ABGC) over the past several months. GreatBlue amassed 10,000 phone numbers for Madison residents—for both landlines and cell phones—and called until it gets 400 responses for a statistically significant result during the week of Nov. 26.
The online poll went live on Dec. 3. After just one day, the poll garnered 605 responses and as of Dec. 10, 1,378 people had filled out the poll according to ABGC Chair Henry Griggs.
“It’s pretty good result so far,” he said. “It can go up to 2,000 responses, so that would be the goal to reach, but that is pretty good when you add in the other 400 who responded to the telephone survey. It’s a pretty good chunk of the electorate in town.”
The survey link is on the town website www.madisonct.org. The committee has also made arrangements to have public computers at the temporary library and at town campus for resident use to take the survey. Up to 2,000 residents can take the online survey, which is the same as the phone poll, and GreatBlue will consider the data from both options independently and collectively. If a resident received a phone call, he or she is asked to not fill out the online survey.
The online poll is live through Dec. 16, unless the 2,000 response threshold is reached before then. Griggs also reminded residents that the survey should only be taken once per person.
“If you have already completed the poll and try to take it again, the survey will remind you of that,” he said.
Once polling is complete, GreatBlue will deliver a report to the committee and the Board of Selectmen (BOS) in January. ABGC will then make a recommendation to the BOS and then the BOS what question might appear before the public at referendum.
As of now, Griggs said there is discussion to release the findings of the poll at the BOS meeting on Monday, Jan. 28, 2019, but the date is not yet set in stone. Griggs said the committee will also meet before that date to discuss the findings and a possible recommendation to make to the BOS.
To learn more about Academy, the poll, and review prior articles, photos, and a video, visit Zip06.com’s new page dedicated to Academy at www.zip06.com/academy.
The Academy Dilemma in Brief
The Academy School building has been vacant for more than a decade and multiple administrations have struggled to find a popular solution for the building and its lot.
The parcel is 5.1 acres, in the historic district, and in the R-2 Residential Zone, which allows for single-family residential, municipal, educational, recreational, and religious uses. The building itself is 53,000 square feet with three floors, 16 classrooms, a gym, theater, kitchen, cafeteria, and music rooms. The building is also on the National Register of Historic places, which means there is a risk of litigation if the building is demolished.
The BOS established the ABGC earlier this year after the public pushed back on private development options presented in February. The committee has been meeting weekly over the past several months to tease out feasible private development options and public/community uses for the building. The private options are, for the most part, scaled-down versions of development options the public first saw, and quickly balked at, in February. Of the four private development options, none use the land behind the structure, focusing on building-only proposals.
The three public or community options include turning the building into a community center, moving town offices back downtown into Academy, or leveling the building and keeping the open space for a park. All public options would come at a cost to the taxpayer.