There is a temptation, when a ribbon is cut, to assume that history began five minutes earlier.
Central Middle School should cure Greenwich of that temptation.
John F. Kennedy, taking responsibility after the Bay of Pigs, said, “There’s an old saying that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan.” Greenwich has just supplied the municipal version. The new Central is open, the photographs have been taken, and there is no shortage of people willing to be associated with the result. That is natural. It is also incomplete.
The record is less partisan and more interesting.
Greenwich’s 2018 facilities planning identified Central as the one school that ultimately required demolition and replacement. Yet long-range capital planning pushed the rebuild into the 2030s. By December 2021, before the building was ordered closed, the Board of Education had moved the project forward and added money for a feasibility study at the insistence of people with many labels. Then came the January 2022 engineering report, the February closure, emergency shoring and the unmistakable conclusion that the calendar had lost its argument.
After that, no single person “saved” Central. The Board of Education advanced the educational specifications. The Board of Selectmen appointed a building committee. The BET debated and funded. The RTM approved the $112 million appropriation by 179-4. Greenwich’s entire legislative delegation later secured a favorable state reimbursement commitment. The building committee, first under Tony Turner and later Joe Rossetti, did the unglamorous work between the ceremonial photographs.
That last group deserves particular attention. Greenwich depends on citizens who volunteer professional expertise that would cost dearly elsewhere. They sit through early-morning meetings, read estimates, question architects, review bids, track schedules and confront the surprises that every large construction project produces. Central encountered rock, fire-suppression complications, soft-cost pressure, and other expensive realities. This week, the committee said it still expects to finish within the original $112 million appropriation and anticipates roughly $20 million in reimbursements.
That is stewardship, not magic.
Nor is Central an isolated example. Greenwich appropriated about $46 million for the Greenwich High School MISA project and $37.3 million for New Lebanon School. The town has approved $55.8 million for the Old Greenwich School renovation now underway. Those four projects alone represent more than $251 million in gross public investment, before counting Julian Curtiss, Cardinal Field, Riverside’s coming renovation, routine roofs, HVAC, accessibility work and the rest of an aging school system.
Each project has its own political archaeology. MISA endured delays and a cost increase after contaminated soil was discovered. New Lebanon required local persistence and substantial state reimbursement from a different but also dedicated legislative delegation. Old Greenwich survived years of arguments over scope, timing, and price before construction began. Riverside is now entering the same civic machinery. The names change. The pattern does not: needs are identified, costs are disputed, volunteers are recruited, boards vote, taxpayers pay and, eventually, children inherit whatever adults had the discipline to build.
This is where political credit-taking becomes especially tiresome. Taxpayers wrote the checks. State reimbursements reduce the local share, but state money is taxpayer money collected through another door. Volunteers gave the hours. Teachers and administrators explained what children needed. Professionals designed and built. Elected officials argued, amended, delayed, accelerated, approved and, at times, opposed.
That is democracy. It is supposed to be cumbersome because public money deserves friction.
There are lessons in the failure, too. A facilities plan can identify a serious problem and still schedule it too far away. Deferred maintenance can become emergency spending. Saving money in one budget year can increase costs in another. Those lessons should inform Old Greenwich, Riverside, and whatever school comes next.
Central’s opening deserves celebration. It should also produce modesty.
No Republican built it. No Democrat built it. No board built it alone. Greenwich built it.
The best claim any officeholder can make is smaller, and more honorable: I helped.
And the best civic response is modest: thank you, and keep going.
