With respect to Mr. Mayo (“Keeping Our Students Safe No Matter What; 11 Feb 2021), there is more to fixing our Schools facilities issues than just appropriating some funding.
Obviously, there are significant deficiencies in our Schools facilities. The Facilities Master Plan (“FMP”) report says that our facilities are in poor condition due to a lack of maintenance over many years. We only spent about half of what KG+D expected on maintenance. This has resulted in a “facilities debt” to get back on top of maintenance, plus many very large capital projects when a near-total replacement is required.
Curiously, after the report was issued, we did NOT see a significant increase in capital maintenance requests. If we’ve been underfunding our maintenance by 50%, why didn’t we see roughly a doubling in the amount of maintenance requests?
Historically, Schools maintenance has not faced much scrutiny. The Julian Curtiss roof debacle changed that. See the BlumShapiro report for capital project management concerns.
The Facilities Master Plan is a wish list without constraints. Projects were prioritized by KG+D based on general BOE guidance, and that prioritization has been implicitly used by the BOE in capital planning ever since. There is no coordination between the FMP and the Town capital spending plan.
Many assumptions in the FMP are proving inaccurate. The most significant is the continuing decline in enrollment, especially in elementary schools. Are the priorities still valid given this decline? Does Julian Curtiss still rank ahead of Central Middle School? Is the Julian Curtiss project scope still appropriate, given that it will expand capacity at an already under-utilized building?
Cardinal Stadium – Everyone wants Phase 1 done soon. The BOE used their discretion to keep the management in-house rather than forming a Building Committee. That has created reasonable governance concerns. The immediate questions around the homeside bleacher footings being in Phase 1b rather than 1a, and whether the amount already budgeted for 1b is now sufficient to cover the full scope (including those footings) are valid, and speak to those governance concerns.
GHS Secure Entrance – Everyone wants the students to be safe. I can only think of one concern around this project. The BOE tried to include a massive expansion – a new “media center” (library) – under the guise of a secure entrance. (That expansion was removed from the 2020-2021 budget request.)
Fields – Everyone wants the fields remediated, and not just at Greenwich High School. Western Middle School is graduating a class that has never played on their own field.
Note that concerns go beyond just “fixing the problem”. Scope, governance, timing, etc, etc.
The Board of Estimation & Taxation and the Representative Town Meeting evaluate capital spending on a project-by-project basis each year. They vet each proposed project. They weigh each proposed project in relation to all other competing capital requests. That’s their responsibility.
If the BOE did similar work themselves, there would be less controversy around the BOE budget.
Brian Raney
writing solely for himself
