Madison residents should be sure to keep an eye on their phones this week. As of Nov. 26, the phone poll to help gauge public desire on a future use for the former Academy School building is now underway. The online survey is set to go live on Monday, Dec. 3.

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 has amassed 10,000 phone numbers for Madison residents—for both landlines and cell phones—and will call until it gets 400 responses for a statistically significant result.

Pollsters will call between the hours of 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. during the week and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday. All calls will be identified as “GreatBlue” or “860-740-4000” or “-4005,” “-4006,” or “-4007.”

At the Board of Selectmen (BOS) meeting on Nov. 26, members of the ABGC informed the board that polling has successfully begun. Committee member Kathryn Hunter said while the phone polling started Nov. 26, GreatBlue decided to push the start of the online poll back a week.

“The accompanying online survey starts Dec. 3,” she said. “For those who might have said, ‘Oh we saw things that said they started at the same time,’ our apologies. We were told by Great Blue that they would like to be 90 percent through the phone polling before they go live with the online survey because they don’t want to deplete the pool for the phone calling. So please pick up the phone, or go online next week and let your voice be heard.”

Once the online poll goes live, there will be a link on the town website. 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 gets a phone call, he or she is asked to not fill out the online survey.

Hunter thanked all of those who attended the public information sessions in mid-November leading up to polling. For those who were unable to attend, she said all of the source material is available on the town website for residents to take a look at.

Selectman Bruce Wilson, who attended both public information sessions, concurred with Hunter that a good portion of the community is plugged into this issue right now.

“We had a few of the same people who commented and clearly we have people advocating for their particular position and we see that advocacy take on a lot of different forms,” he said. “We see a lot of different perspectives represented, but I think he word is getting out…We are getting a lot of diversity of opinion and certainly more than we were getting the first time around.”

Once polling is complete, GreatBlue will deliver a report to the committee and the 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.

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.