With the deadline for the 2019-’20 capital budget on the horizon, the Capital Improvement Program (CIP) Committee has been meeting frequently, poring over millions of dollars in capital projects and trying to prioritize and identify a funding source for each. Out of all of the projects, one has been a clear point of contention over the last few months: the proposed playground at Brown Middle School.

The annual capital needs of the town, including spending on things like fire and police vehicles or major building, field, or road maintenance, are compiled in the CIP and voted on in the budget referendum each year. The CIP program is designed to create one comprehensive planning document for all of the town and public school’s capital needs for the next five years and evaluate possible funding options.

The CIP includes numerous items, categorized by annual expenses, such as roadwork and vehicle replacement, and the Capital and Non-recurring Expenditures (CNRE) fund, which includes projects such as one-time facilities improvements. The CIP is listed in the town side of the budget, though it may contain items for the schools.

The Usual Process

For items to end up in the CIP, departments submit requests to the Finance Department; requests are then compiled and sent to the first selectman. The first selectman then considers the projects along with the Board of Selectmen (BOS), prioritizes them, and eliminates those he or she does not wish to recommend, and then the remaining projects are sent forward to the CIP for further review. The CIP then later makes a recommendation back to the BOS and the BOS will then pass the recommended program on to the BOF.

Over the past few meetings, the CIP committee has worked its way through the projects listed in the CNRE fund, arguably the most challenging component of the CIP. The committee looks closely at the projects listed for the coming fiscal year and for the most part, no new projects are supposed to be submitted for the coming year. New projects are supposed to drop into the out years (years two through five) so the committee has time to plan funding, but there have been some exceptions over the history of the program. This year the Board of Education (BOE) put five new projects into the first year.

That move sat well with some CIP members, and not so well with others.

The BOE Projects

The five BOE projects include an item for security, a new playground a Brown Middle School, two projects at Daniel Hand High School, and paving work at Brown. CIP member Bennett Pudlin said he was OK with the new projects because the BOE had been holding off on any major capital investments for the past few years.

“All of these are new and they are new on purpose,” he said. “We held off for a number of years on BOE requests except those which were absolutely necessary pending the initial facilities review, pending the Ryerson referendum, and now pending the reconfiguration, so they can’t be punished for doing what they had to do and what they were asked to do.

“I think each one of these we should look at as if this is necessary in this year, but the fact that they are showing up doesn’t trouble me in light of our partnership with them,” he continued.

The CIP ultimately decided to keep three BOE projects in for this coming fiscal year and push out two to later years. Additionally, the CIP opted to split the playground project over two years, going with a phased-in approach. That decision was voted forward unanimously, but only after a lot of discussion.

The Brown Playground

One of the items the BOE did put forward for inclusion in the coming year’s CIP is a playground for Brown Middle School. The number of schools in the district will be reduced to five next year, from six, and so grade configurations across the buildings will change as well. School officials had said a playground is needed for Brown because younger learners will start attending the school next year when it moves from a 5 to 6 to a 4 to 5 grade school.

The playground has been a point of contention on various boards over the past few years, however, in large part because of the cost of the structure. The total bill comes to $654,933 on top of the roughly $190,000 the BOE already received for site work on the property this current year.

The playground would include features like a gaga pit, a poured-in-place surface, swings, and an outdoor amphitheater.

CIP member and Selectman Bruce Wilson started the conversation on the playground, asking that the contingency line in the project be reduced down to the typical 10 percent. That point was agreed on and then Pudlin suggested the project be split in two, pushing the amphitheater component out an extra year.

“There is about $150,000 for the amphitheater and some seating and some fencing,” he said.

BOE members on CIP did not seem too bothered by the split or the contingency reduction, but Wilson said he still has concerns about spending this much on a playground while the town and district tries to figure out how to tackle a $100 million, 10-year capital maintenance plan.

“This is a matter of opinion and I recognize I may be the sole voice with this opinion, but my last point is, is this the right $650,000 to be spending in the school district right now?” he asked. “We have, in the last several years, been talking about needed repairs and my concern is that, after so many year of public discourse over facilities in disrepair, our very first capital planning year is to spend money on a playground—and a significant amount of money on a playground. I’m having difficulty with that.”

Pudlin said the ongoing work to try to come up with an alternative to the $100 million plan is set to wrap up in April, but he is fairly confident there will be no changes made to Brown Middle School, no matter what plan is selected. He said there isn’t a risk to the town investing in this particular facility.

“There is an extraordinary high likelihood that Brown is going to stay exactly the way it is in any option we put forward…All of the discussions point in that direction,” Pudlin said. “Whether that turns out to be the case or not, we will know before [any playgorund expenditure is made] and obviously if Brown is in play, then that money doesn’t get spent.”

CIP and BOE member Galen Cawley said the playground is a more immediate need because of the reconfiguration changes coming next year.

“I think it is the most timely thing we can do given the reconfiguration,” he said. “The existing playground is not adequate so we need something…I think it will also get a lot of community usage I hope…I also think it’s a community showpiece with curb appeal for realtors. Those are the arguments for it and why it is maybe more than just a playground.”

Wilson and other members of CIP also went back and forth on how the playground came about. The BOE received funds for site work at Brown last year, but Wilson said the CIP sheet didn’t indicate further costs and the playground wasn’t slated for an out year in the CIP book.

“Last year when the BOE came to the CIP and the town with a request for $650,000 for a playground at this facility, we had a conversation very much like this and for lack of a better word we horse-traded a little bit and we arrived at $189,000 budget to do work there,” he said. “In no part of that conversation was there an acknowledgment from the BOE that there would be a follow through request for another $650,000 in the following year. I think that we can talk about the numbers and the value engineering and all of that, but the year one that this goes in is just as important. When we had the conversation last year and took the vote and when I took the vote and supported the $189,000, I thought that was the completion of that project and that we were moving forward. I don’t ever recall the BOE saying this is just the down payment on a bigger playground.”

Committee members seemed to have conflicting memories on how the playground proposal came to be. BOE Chair and CIP member Katie Stein disagreed with Wilson and said everyone had a good understanding that the site work was just the first step.

“It was very clear to me that we were going to clear the space and study what was necessary and appropriate for the new demographic of this school,” she said.

Ultimately with the project split over two years, the CIP approved $420,300 for the playground in this coming fiscal year and $170,250 for the rest of the project in the next fiscal year.

The next CIP Public Hearing is Tuesday, Jan. 15 at 7 p.m. at Walter C. Polson Middle School. The CIP will continue to hold meetings over the next few weeks before it makes its recommendation to the BOS by the end of January. To learn more about the program and projects, visit www.madisonct.org/592/Capital-Improvement-Program-Committee.