In an overwhelming vote of 48 to 14, with two abstentions, the Representative Town Meeting postponed considering whether or not the “care, custody and control” of the former library building at 35 Leroy Ave. should be handed over to the school district.
Instead of approving a resolution to give Darien Public Schools control over the building it is already using as its headquarters, the RTM voted to postpone the vote until its first regular meeting of 2016.
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UPDATE, 9:54 a.m., Wednesday: Darien TV79 has now posted this recording of the meeting online.
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Two other RTM meetings, in November and December, are scheduled exclusively for organizing the body (including committee assignments and election of a moderator and other officers) in November, after this year’s elections, and for State of the Town speeches in December. A date has not yet been set for the next regular meeting of the RTM, but the Town Charter says it should be sometime in the third week of January of each year.
Joanne Hennessy, chair of the RTM Planning, Zoning & Housing Committee said the eight out of 14 members who were at the committee’s recent meeting voted unanimously “to say ‘No’ to this resolution and ask that the RTM do the same.”
She cited numerous reasons for rejecting the idea, including questions about what part of the building will be handed over to the school district’s control (“This is a legal document — we should be accurate in what we say.”), and a preference for keeping town control over renovation projects, which she said become “obscure” in the Board of Education budget.
35 Leroy / 35 Leroy
Darien Public Schools headquarters at 35 Leroy Ave.
The resolution would have made the Board of Education responsible for maintaining the property and legally responsible for any problems associated with that (for instance, if someone slips and falls in the parking lot and files a lawsuit), Town Attorney Wayne Fox told the RTM.
With major downtown redevelopment expected, property values in that area may go up, and the town may want to make some money by moving school headquarters elsewhere at some point in the future, it was pointed out at the meeting. If control is transferred, the town retains ownership of the property and can still sell it if it wants, even without the school district’s approval, as long as the town finds a new space for the school district administration, said RTM Member Lois Schneider.
Various RTM members said they had questions about the handover proposed by First Selectman Jayme Stevenson’s administration and already endorsed by the Board of Selectmen. Sometimes, those questions were repeated in whole or in part by other RTM members.
For the most part, RTM members opposing a vote that night didn’t say they opposed handing over control itself, but only a handover without adequate information about it being given to the RTM, which is the town’s chief legislative body.
Here’s a sampling of the questions about the transfer:
What part of the building is being handed over?
Some RTM members said they wanted to know exactly what part of the building was to be under the control of Darien Public Schools. Only 19,000 square feet of the building was to be handed over, but it was unclear Monday night exactly which parts of the building would be retained under town control.
Hennessy said a town study had stated the building has 24,218 square feet. She cited a past statement in a town document that the school district would use 16,794 square feet of the building. A 2011 document mentioned 15,100 square feet for school district headquarters usage. Over time, she said, the school district headquarters might grow to fill whatever space the town gave it.
Currently the school district is already occupying the lion’s share of the structure, but some RTM members, including Hennessy, said the room now designated as the Board of Education meeting room (the former children’s library) was supposed to be a community room controlled by the town government, not the school district.
A letter from Superintendent of Schools Dan Brenner and read to the RTM said the school district controlled that room but was willing to allow other uses as long as there was no scheduling conflict with the district’s own use of the room.
After RTM Moderator Sarah Seelye read Brenner’s letter, RTM Member Jim Cameron asked if there was “anything else you’d like to surprise us with” regarding the specific details of the building space to be transferred. (Seeley responded that she had only received the letter hours before the meeting, and there wasn’t time to distribute it earlier.)
The school district is currently using the basement (or lowest floor) for storage, and the bathrooms have been shut down, Hennessy said. There had been a proposal, since rejected, of moving the town Probate Court offices there (the court offices are currently located on the second floor of Town Hall).
RTM Member Fred Conze, former chairman of the Planning & Zoning Commission, asked why the RTM hadn’t been given specific information on which parts of the building the school district would take over and what maintenance and repair responsibility the town would have for the parts of the building it controls, such as paying for part of the heating cost.
“It would seem to me we have the capacity to put a finger on that number,” Conze said.
First Selectman Jayme Stevenson, who attended the meeting, said that before the RTM approved the Shuffle project, the RTM was given specifications for the areas of the building that would be turned over. That includes 13,313 square feet on the main floor, 4,050 square feet on the mezzanine level and a 1,640-square-foot portion of the basement. (Total: 19,003 square feet.)
“I think it would’ve been fair to distribute those documents” before RTM committees started considering the matter, Cameron said. The part of the building that the school district is being given should be specified in the resolution transferring control, he said.
Who should pay for the ongoing refurbishing work? Should it be done before the school district takes over the building?
The Leroy Avenue building has had ongoing problems, especially with its heating system, that have not yet been repaired.
Denis Maroney, chair of the RTM Education Committee said that although the committee voted 9-1 to recommend approval for the transfer, committee members were concerned that “we’re still unsure if the heat will work in 2016,” even though the town approved almost $7 million for renovations for that and other buildings years ago.
Some RTM members, including Clara Sartori (a former member of the Board of Education) said they didn’t want the district’s budget to reflect those repairs, which are the responsibility of the town.
RTM Member Martha Banks, a former member of the Board of Finance, said that having the school district pay for ongoing renovations of the building is “not fair, nor is it a proper accounting of costs to have the Board of Education replace the roof and some windows next year.” Repairs to part of the roof and some window replacements are needed, some town officials have said.
Board of Finance Chair Liz Mao, who attended the meeting, said the town capital budget, including the capital budget for the school district, is separate from the operating budget and was under line-by-line supervision of the Board of Finance and RTM, unlike the rest of the Board of Education’s budget.
RTM Member Jack Davis said that in the past, school buildings, including Tokeneke School and Darien High School, have been handed over to the “care, custody and control” of the school district while work remains to be done on them. He said that some of the opposition to immediately turning over control of the building was a refighting of the controversy that originally accompanied the “Shuffle” project.
RTM Members Fred Adelman and Mark Adiletta each said they preferred having the town finish the refurbishing work on the building before handing it over to the school district.
Background: The “Shuffle”
The building is the last element of the “Shuffle” proposed during former First Selectman David Campbell’s administration and carried out under Stevenson’s.
The Shuffle involved moving the Darien Senior Activities Center from 30 Edgerton St. to the part of the Town Hall building that now houses Middlesex Community Center. Darien Public Schools headquarters was moved out of that part of the building to the former library building on Leroy Avenue.
A town-wide referendum in December 2011 produced a majority of voters opposed to the Shuffle, but not the 75 percent necessary to overturn an earlier RTM vote that ratified it. Concerns about the cost of the moves and refurbishing played a role in opposition to the project.
Editor’s note: Minor editorial changes were made to this article at 9:54 a.m., Wednesday.