RTM Eliminates Funding for Dwight Bathrooms, Operation Hope's Roof

The Representative Town Meeting late Monday voted to eliminate a $250,000 funding request to renovate student bathrooms at Dwight School and a $75,000 funding request to replace the roof at Operation Hope from a list of capital projects to be bonded in the 2010-11 fiscal year.

The RTM also cut a total of $53,000 from funding requests to remove an underground storage tank at Fire Station 1 and to replace boilers at the Fairfield Senior Center after Town Public Works Director Richard White said estimates for work on those projects were high.

The RTM approved bonding a total of $887,000 for seven projects, out of an initial list of $1.265 million for nine projects (a $5.8 million bonding request to repave town roads was voted on separately.)

The vote to eliminate $250,000 for bathroom renovations at Dwight School followed a spirited discussion.

Several RTM members said Dwight was due for a bigger renovation in the future and that the Board of Education should try to identify grant money for the bathroom renovations, since part of the project was designed to make the bathrooms accessible to the disabled. They also said the student bathrooms were on the second floor and disabled students had no way to get to them in the first place and that the bathrooms were functional.

But Board of Education Vice Chairman Pam Iacono said some students can climb stairs but are unable to turn handles on sinks or button their pants and that having a stall and privacy when a staff member buttoned the student's pants was a matter of dignity. She added that the amount of money needed to make the bathrooms ADA complaint wasn't much, so the amount of grants that could be obtained for that work wouldn't be much. She indicated that the larger renovation to the Redding Road elementary school could be a long way off.

"Riverfield got pushed off and will be the next one to come in," Iacono said, referring to Riverfield School. "There's been talk of Holland Hill being the next project. I don't know where Dwight will be."

First Selectman Ken Flatto said the timing of Dwight's renovation "is still unknown and there are other projects they [Board of Education members] may want to do."

The vote to eliminate the $250,000 funding request for Dwight's bathrooms was 29 to 15.

RTM members justified eliminating a $75,000 funding request to replace Operation Hope's roof by saying grant money may be available for that project, and they asked Mark Barnhart, director of the town's Office of Community & Economic Development, to look into that. Barnhart said after the meeting that he likely would have enough grant money to replace the roof this year.

The vote to eliminate $75,000 for the roof at Operation Hope, a homeless shelter and agency that helps the homeless, was unanimous.

For the full list of projects that were scheduled to be bonded before Monday night's RTM meeting, check Monday's story in the archives at Fairfield Patch.