Danbury scrambling to build CT’s first condominium-style school before enrollment surge hits

Rob Ryser  DANBURY - The city’s plans to be first in Connecticut to open a school in an office park under a condominium-style agreement has put leaders in a race against an Oct. 1 grant deadline to get blueprints to the state.

Missing the state deadline would make Danbury ineligible for an 80 percent reimbursement of the school’s estimated $90 million cost, members of a city task force warned during a meeting this week.

“We have a bubble of students who are coming through in the next three-to-four years,” said Mark Boughton, the former longtime mayor who heads the task force. “If we’re not ready for them, we’re just not going to have space.”

If the city’s plan was conventional to house up to 1,400 upper grade students in a new career academy at the massive west side office park known as The Summit, meeting the state’s Oct. 1 grant deadline might be less ambitious.

As it is, there is nothing conventional about Danbury’s plans to buy 210,000-square-feet of office space from the owners of The Summit’s and convert it into classrooms and labs.

“We have to do a formal submission of an application that doesn’t exist right now because this has never been done before,” said Antonio Iadarola, the city engineer and a task force member, speaking during a Tuesday Zoom meeting. “I have had discussions with the builder about condominium-izing the space, which is very interesting to the state, because they have never done a school that’s under a condominium-ized ownership.”

There is also optimism among task force members that the city has found a solution to a classroom space crisis, brought on by a steep and steady enrollment climb that is unlike anywhere else in the state.

“The beautiful thing about The Summit is 90 percent of the square footage that we need is already constructed,” Iadarola said. “There’s only going to be a small, 25,000-square-foot addition that’s going to create a lobby area on the ground floor and also create a gymnasium.”

It helps the cause that Danbury’s plan was approved in principle by the state legislature and signed into law by Gov. Ned Lamont in September, along with smaller school construction funding projects in Brookfield and New Fairfield.

Boughton, who left City Hall abruptly in December to become Lamont’s tax commissioner, said leaders in Hartford along with Danbury’s own legislative delegation support the city’s novel approach to its enrollment crisis.

“The Summit is probably the most convertible building that we have, it will be able to accommodate the students that we need to put there, and it can be done quickly,” Boughton said. “Everybody is on board because this is not a political thing; it’s about taking care of our kids.”

The city’s scramble to finalize plans, to negotiate contracts, to get approval from voters and to submit a grant application by Oct. 1 is part of a larger effort underway at The Summit to create a “city within a city” at the 1.3 million-square-foot former world headquarters of Union Carbide.

In December, the healthcare system known as Nuvance that runs Danbury and Norwalk hospitals made headlines by signing a lease for 200,000-square-feet of office space The Summit.

The city’s efforts to open the career academy at The Summit also come at a time when separate efforts are underway to open a charter school in Danbury. Those plans got a major boost when supporters announced earlier this month that a philanthropist had donated $25 million to build the school.

The fate of the proposed Danbury Prospect Charter School remains in the hands of Hartford, however, where Democratic lawmakers from the city’s own delegation are opposed to funding its year-to-year operations for fear it will take resources away from public schools.

Among the next steps for the career academy task force is to send preliminary plans to the state and ensure that the path in the unchartered territory is clear.

“They know we have a problem and they recognize we are doing everything we can to deal with the increased enrollment and the overcrowding,” Iadarola said. “Honestly, this is going to save millions of dollars for not only Danbury but the state, because I don’t see any other opportunity to do a project with this sort of deadline other than to do an existing building retrofit.”

Connecticut has nearly $1B in new federal relief. Legislators and municipalities want to know how Lamont plans to divvy it up.

Keith M. Phaneuf  Fresh off extending Gov. Ned Lamont’s emergency powers, state legislators are pressing Lamont on how and when he will divvy up nearly $1 billion in new federal relief earmarked for education and housing — and they aren’t alone.

The largest lobbying group for cities and towns also wants to know when more than half of that money — approved by Congress more than a month ago — will go to local school districts.

And behind those questions is another big one:

Can Lamont, whose emergency powers to handle the coronavirus pandemic recently were extended until April 20, make those decisions by himself — even though he insists he won’t?

“We should know who has the ability to draw this [federal money] down. We should know the exact time frame — all of that,” said Rep. Toni E. Walker, D-New Haven, co-chair of the budget-writing Appropriations Committee. “We are finding this by going to other sources rather than from the administration, and that is very concerning.”

The committee’s other co-chair, Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, added, “We should be getting information out to local school districts so they can properly reset their budget.”

Not long after Congress enacted a $900 billion relief bill on Dec. 21 — which President Trump signed six days later — Connecticut learned it included nearly $750 million to support education here, and more than $230 million for affordable housing.

The linchpin of this new money was $492 million for elementary and secondary schools. Another $225 million was earmarked for higher education, and $28 million for emergency education needs identified by the governor.

But since then, the Lamont administration has said little about this.

The administration responds that things aren’t as simple as they seem. Federal guidance for much of this funding wasn’t released until January, and some details didn’t come out until just one week ago. And Paul Mounds Jr., Lamont’s chief of staff, said that while the administration isn’t legally compelled to work with legislators to craft a funding distribution plan, it nonetheless has pledged to make it a collaborative process.

“I can tell you this, this administration will be putting forth a [plan] that will take that into account, that goes through the legislative appropriations process,” he said.

Senate President Pro Tem Martin M. Looney, a New Haven Democrat, said Wednesday that legislative leaders’ decision to endorse extending Lamont’s emergency powers until April 20 was with the understanding that all spending decisions must go through the legislature.

“The legislative branch will continue to exercise its constitutional and statutory authority to appropriate any and all funds distributed to the state of Connecticut where federal law allows for such discretion,” he said. “We of course will continue to work with Gov. Lamont and his staff over the coming months to draft a budget all sides can agree to.”

But some questioned whether the governor isn’t rushing funds to local school districts now so the administration can grab bigger headlines in a few more weeks.

Lamont will submit his next two-year budget proposal to legislators on Feb. 10. And if the rollout plan for this federal money is released then, some say it could give the appearance the Democratic governor — and not Congress — is channeling this much-needed relief to Connecticut’s schools.

“I would be very disappointed if I find out this money is incorporated into his biennial budget proposal — to give the governor personal accolades,” said state House Minority Leader Vincent J. Candelora, R-North Branford, adding school districts already are developing their budgets for the next fiscal year and already should have received details on what to expect.

Max Reiss, Lamont’s communications director, responded that the governor has been consistent in protecting education throughout the pandemic.

“The Lamont administration has supported institutions across the state, large and small, through the use of federal funds since the start of the pandemic,” he said. “The approach has been successful, as it’s led to hundreds of thousands of school children having an in-person experience this year. The next round of funds, as prescribed by federal guidance, will focus on continued support for safe in-person learning and to focus on educational recovery and learning acceleration for every student.”

But Joe DeLong, executive director of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, said the dearth of immediate details is the latest in a general “lack of transparency” that has typified the state’s handling of federal funding since the pandemic began in March.

The General Assembly, which adjourned the regular 2020 session two months early last March, has been limited largely to virtual committee meetings since.

Lamont declared a six-month public health and civil preparedness emergency that gives him sweeping powers — provided the legislature does not block him. Leaders of the Democratic majorities in the state House and Senate have endorsed two extensions since then.

But DeLong said Wednesday that legislators need to form a special commission to track all federal dollars received, how they’ve been assigned and when they are disbursed, to keep both lawmakers and the public informed.

“Everyone needs to understand where those expenditures are going and why they’re going where they’re going,” he added.

Both Candelora and Senate Minority Leader Kevin Kelly, R-Stratford, said the latest extension was a mistake. The GOP favored limiting any further extensions to 30 days, provided lawmakers also begin an immediate review of all executive orders issued by Lamont during the pandemic.

“Connecticut is where constitutional government was born. The people have a right to know what’s going on,” Kelly said, adding that the lack of information on federal funding “erodes the people’s trust.”

And Candelora added that the stakes in this debate are huge.

President Joe Biden’s new administration has proposed another massive round of stimulus that includes $350 billion in new flexible aid for states and municipalities — meaning it could be used not only to cover pandemic-related costs but also temporarily replace eroding revenues in their budgets.

If such a proposal were to pass, that likely would mean billions of dollars for Connecticut.

“Democratic legislators are in no position to cry about how the governor is spending all of the federal money when they have, time and again, handed the car keys over to him,” Candelora said, adding the legislature must “reassert itself as a co-equal branch of government.”