Funding shift causes discord on school board
GREENWICH — A vote to reassign capital funds from a heating, ventilation and air conditioning project to instead improve school cybersecurity devolved into tension among Board of Education members and school administrators.
The request, brought by the district’s Chief Operating Officer Sean O’Keefe to the school board at a recent meeting, was to shift $650,000 away from a $3.79 million request for a new HVAC system at North Street School.
School cybersecurity, which officials said is especially important given the emphasis on digital learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, had been in the town budget in previous years, but this year was left out.
The request produced intense scrutiny from members Karen Kowalski and Peter Sherr on the school board’s budgeting practices and a 2018 document, known as the Master Facilities Plan, that lays out large building projects and their projected costs.
Money could be shifted away from the North Street project, O’Keefe said, because its scope was likely smaller than anticipated, based on more upto-date estimates for a similar HVAC project at Cos Cob.
“Basically, the number that was in there for North Street, we believe now, based on the actual numbers for
Cos Cob, is higher than it needs to be,” Board of Education Chair Peter Bernstein said at last Thursday’s meeting. “So shifting this money would not affect the North Street HVAC project.”
O’Keefe described the North Street project as “of the same vintage” as the Cos Cob HVAC project, for which the board approved $1.477 million. The project’s scope was less than originally estimated, and so the budget was significantly cut from the original $3,184,633 projection in the board’s 2018 Master Facilities Plan.
The project was first part of the board’s 2021-22 capital request, but because of the deteriorating condition of the system, was expedited and taken out of the request.
O’Keefe and the district’s Head of Facilities Dan Watson said the actual cost of the North Street project would likely come in below projections.
Kowalski, however, questioned that claim and raised concerns over the inconsistent estimates provided to the board, though she didn’t disagree with the need to fund cybersecurity.
“I just don’t understand the math and the information that’s being given to the board,” she said. “The Master Facilities Plan — the number there is $2.8 (million). The number that got approved at the last meeting for North Street, I think is $3.7 (million) . ... Not sure where that came from . ... And all of a sudden we’re OK taking $650,000 away from that.”
“The math is a little fuzzy to me and it doesn’t make sense,” Kowalski continued.
Further, she questioned why that number was ever suggested, if at the time of the board’s vote the district understood that the scope of the North Street project would be similar to that of Cos Cob project, which would cost only $1.477 million.
“It’s a unique situation,” O’Keefe said. “We are thinking that the number is going to be similarly high. We have not yet bid North Street, so we don’t know for sure.”
Asked for the source of the $3.7 million figure, Watson said it was derived from both the Master Facilities Plan and with the help of consulting engineers. The Master Facilities Plan, he added, is not exact and its projections are not final.
“The Cos Cob project as it was in the Master Facilities Plan is at a different scope than what we’ll end up doing,” Bernstein added. “What’s in the Master Facilities Plan is guesswork, they didn’t go and bid all these projects out.”
It’s the second consecutive board meeting where Kowalski and Sherr questioned estimates from the Master Facilities Plan. At the Dec. 17 meeting, before the board voted to approve its capital budget, the pair attempted to add $3.8 million for a wholesale fix to the district’s lingering lack of compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), which had resulted recently in a federal investigation.
They generated the $3.8 million figure, they said, from the Master Facilities Plan, but were told that such a wholesale fix would likely greatly exceed that number.
On Thursday, Sherr referenced the December meeting in making his argument that lack of faith in the Master Facilities Plan could cause a “credibility problem” for the board. He also implied Watson has failed to notify the board about problems with facilities, the second time in as many meetings that Sherr has taken a shot at Watson.
“We’ve requested very specific money for a very specific school and here we are 30 days later cutting that number by 20 percent to fund something else,” Sherr said. “But we don’t even know if that’s a good number. We’re guessing that it might turn out like Cos Cob. Dan (Watson), you’re an expert at this. I hope you’re right. But this is no way to run a railroad.”
Watson stated that he took no part in authoring the Master Plan, which was compiled by Mount Kiscobased KG&D Architects. But Sherr, a line of direct questions aimed at Watson, pointed out that Watson was head of facilities at the time the plan was created.
“I’m quite curious as to where you’re going with this because we’re not going to try to be assigning blame to any individuals,” Bernstein said, cutting Sherr off and ending the discussion.
The board unanimously approved the request to reassign the capital funds to cybersecurity.