On November 11, the public will hear a broader view of needs and costs to improve and repair buildings on the Weston school campus, six quiet months after a proposal to build a new middle school surfaced and sank in the space of a few days.

The 7:00 pm virtual Board of Education meeting on the 11^th features a presentation by Colliers Project Leaders, probably the most prominent school construction project manager and owner’s representative in the state.

In a brief preview at an October 18 meeting of the school board’s Educational Optimization Committee, Superintendent Lisa Barbiero said initial advice from Colliers is, “we have enough studies. What we need now is a path forward.”

Ms. Barbiero said Colliers will present an overview of the studies already conducted, views on that path forward, and an analysis of the costs of improving campus infrastructure to at least “keep all four buildings dry, warm, and cool” with the lights on. And forestalling further deterioration.

That larger context was missing from the proposal that suddenly emerged on May 20 to build a new $112 million middle school, rushing to beat the clock of the annual deadline to apply for state reimbursement.

Since then, a narrative has emerged from some quarters that the Board of Selectmen killed that plan, when in reality it was First Selectwoman Samantha Nestor who called a halt. In our May 23 article, Ms. Nestor referred to more comprehensive work done earlier by a special Facility Optimization Committee (FOC), and said, “here we are in 2024 looking at a proposal that only solves problems at the middle school and not much else, and does it for a lot more money than anyone ever imagined.”

Since then

In the interim since May, the somewhat frequently-asked-question has been “now what?” A frequent response has been that the school board is waiting for word from the Board of Finance about what the town can afford.

The finance board can’t answer that question. What it can do, and is doing, is develop an analysis of what the impact would be on budgets, debt, and tax bills for various levels of capital spending as decisions are contemplated and made.

In September, the board formed three subcommittees to study debt management, the town’s unreserved fund balance, and its capacity for taking on debt. The aim is to provide insight to policymakers and taxpayers — short, mid, and long-term — with an overarching emphasis on maintaining Weston’s triple-A bond rating.

A finished report is expected by early December. By that time, with what is learned at the Board of Education session and from a developing picture of the Town’s facility requirements, the threads of Weston’s overall infrastructure needs and costs may become more visible. For a while, they were intertwined.

Hurlbutt as centerpiece

The Facility Optimization Committee submitted its final report in May of 2022, having developed several options largely focused on the two schools with most urgent issues, Weston Middle School and Hurlbutt Elementary.

The committee’s top recommended option, “2 Prime,” called for renovating the middle school and turning Hurlbutt over to the Town to house staff currently in the Jarvis building and the Town Hall Annex. The Annex and school district central office building would be demolished to make way for construction of a new Pre-K to first grade school. This would free the Town to sell or lease the Jarvis property for commercial development in the village district.

It is not clear when or why the idea to repurpose Hurlbutt fell off the table, but fallen it has. Concepts discussed by the school board’s optimization committee included using it as an environmental studies center.

In community forums and tri-board meetings before and after the FOC’s final report, no one from the district administration or school board voiced an objection to vacating Hurlbutt. Since then, the district has stated a determination to maintain a four-school campus, but “2 Prime” also envisioned four schools.

Whatever the reason, it seems likely that the disconnect on Hurlbutt at least partly explains the two-year action gap from May of 2022 to May of 2024.

About the FOC

Seeds of misleading narratives about the work of the Facility Optimization Committee were planted while the panel was still in session and took root in some of last year’s municipal election campaigns.

Lest those narratives cause confusion this time around: the committee did not vote on party lines to propose a $100 million bond to fund option “2 Prime.” It did provide cost estimates for all options, ironically not part of its original assignment.

The committee’s final discussion and vote was not as much about which option to recommend as it was about whether to recommend any option at all. A majority eventually voted to do so, with no evidence of partisanship.

The Democratic and Republican members from the Planning and Zoning Commission both voted yes. The Republican and Democratic members from the Board of Finance both voted no. The committee’s chair, an expert in the facilities field, was an Unaffiliated voter.

The final motion came with the understanding that nothing about it was binding on anyone, that all of the committee’s work would be handed over to the boards of Selectmen, Finance, and Education, who would each have their own way with it, and that any ultimate output was unlikely to resemble the original input.

20+ years ago …

As discussion picks up now about construction, renovation, and bonding, reference is bound to be made (and already has been) to 2001, when the town voted to issue bonds for $79,435,000, a decision that made Weston one of the highest debt-per-capita towns around, until last year. The extent to which it handcuffed the town from funding routine maintenance of roads and existing facilities is debatable.

At any rate, memories fade, and a lot of Weston residents, maybe most, didn’t live here 20 years ago.

It did not cost, as some have said, $80 million to build Weston Intermediate School. The cost approved by voters for that project was $28 million. State reimbursements brought the net to Weston taxpayers down to $23 million.

It appears that a separate $3.1 million line item, originally intended for a middle school auditorium, went to a high school auditorium instead.

A good portion of the remaining $48 million in the bond package went to the high school for renovations and new construction, including music and arts classrooms, physical education and a cafeteria, a science classroom wing, expansion of the media center, a new track and field, and other minor renovations. State reimbursements came to just under $6 million.

Another part of the $48 million was for improvements at Weston Middle School, including funds for music rooms, renovation of science classrooms, and a special education room. At Hurlbutt, funds for site work on driveways and parking were in the package too. So were the Zenon waste treatment plant, new septic fields at Revson Field and Bisceglie-Scribner Park, and new recreational facilities at the schools, Bisceglie, and Morehouse Town Park.

Correction: In the original edition of this article, we referred to Colliers Project Leaders as Colliers Engineering & Design, a different entity within the very large Colliers portfolio. We regret the error.

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