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05/04/2020 12:00 AMThe Board of Finance (BOF) has approved a lease extension for the Island Avenue School building, locking the town in for at least one more year of renting the space to Our Lady of Mercy Preparatory Academy (OLMPA), a local, private Catholic-based school that initially signed an agreement with the town last year.
Normally the lease would have needed approval by town meeting, but under the auspices of a new executive order issued by Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont, the town approved the lease with votes by both the Board of Selectmen (BOS) and BOF.
The BOS had originally released the terms of the lease with OLMPA on March 9, a modification from an agreement approved in October 2018. A public hearing scheduled for March 30 and a town meeting set for April 2 were both canceled due to the ongoing pandemic.
The new terms of the agreement lowered the annual lease payments from $535,000 to $400,000, and changed a handful of other stipulations, including shifting responsibility for maintenance of HVAC systems from the town to OLMPA, and creating a process for the lease to be renewed for another year with BOS approval.
At least one BOF member, Ken Kaminsky, made it clear he was unhappy in principle with the new lease.
“We, as the BOF, didn’t participate at all in the negotiation of the renewal of the lease,” Kaminsky said at the meeting.
Kaminsky said that while most of the rest of the town was being asked to cut budgets and tighten purse strings, the BOF was itself voting to approve something that decreased revenue by $135,000.
“I just don’t understand where that concession came in, and personally I don’t think we should be offering those types of concessions in this time period,” he added.
BOF member Judith Friedman emphasized that the negotiation process that had resulted in the lease being approved unanimously by the BOS was a lengthy, bipartisan process.
She said she had spoken to members of the BOS about the negotiation process in order to clarify why certain stipulations of the lease had been included, and said she was “comfortable” with it.
The BOF eventually approved the new lease, with six votes in favor and John Picard, who serves as chair of the OLMPA board, abstaining from the vote.
Picard also did not participate in the public discussions concerning the lease