Board of Finance: City looking at $300M price tag for school projects
STAMFORD — Stamford has many school buildings in need of repairs. Now it needs to find the money to fix them.
The first order of business will be funding two projects — a near-complete reconstruction of the district’s biggest school, Westhill High School, and a new building at 83 Lockwood Ave. to house a preschool program.
“How big are the numbers?” asked Mayor David Martin Thursday night at the Board of Finance as he was about to present the price tag for both projects. “They are big.”
In total, they will cost about $300 million combined, according to information presented at the Board of Finance Thursday night.
Martin said he believes the city can fund about $125 million of that amount over the next five to seven years without affecting the city’s bond rating.
To fund the rest, the city will depend largely on state and federal dollars.
But Martin said Stamford hasn’t traditionally received large amounts from the state, compared to other Connecticut cities. In recent months, he has spoken to state representatives, senators, Gov. Ned Lamont and Speaker of the Connecticut House of Representatives Matt Ritter about the need to fund Stamford’s school buildings.
“We’re going to need about half a billion dollars over the next five to seven years,” he said, later adding, “We’re going to need major support that we have not received historically from the state.”
The Westhill project would either be a renovation or new building.
During the board meeting, most of the time was spent talking about the option of building a new
structure — a four-level school on top of the baseball fields located behind the current school — and then demolishing the existing Westhill building.
The Lockwood project would involve either renovating or reconstructing the former home of the Trailblazers Academy charter school and turning it into the new home for the district’s early childhood education, known as Apples.
Glenn Gollenberg, the architect for the project, presented three options to the board.
One would involve renovating the current 100,000 square foot structure, while the other two include tearing down the building and creating a new center at a smaller footprint. All options would be able to accommodate about 676 students.
Mary Lou Rinaldi was the lone member of the Board of Finance to vote against appropriating money to the Lockwood project. She said she would rather the money go toward Stamford’s traditional K-12 schools instead.
“I have some serious doubts about support for this pre-K facility because it’s not a Charter-mandated service that the city has to provide and I’d rather see it go to our schools that really need help,” she said.
Superintendent Tamu Lucero responded by saying that pre-K is an area of concern both at the national and state level, and that the state was very receptive to the idea of renovating or replacing the Lockwood facility and providing a full preschool program there.
“When we talk about closing the achievement gap for our children, I really think we we need to think about ... early intervention and our students coming into our kindergarten through third grade programs ready to learn,” she said, later adding, “This is really what is needed in Stamford for our students to get off to a good start.”
While the board voted in favor of appropriations for both the Lockwood and Westhill projects and amending the capital budget by adding the appropriations, that does not mean the work is set to go forward. After the projects are submitted to the state and funding is either acquired or not, the board would have a chance to vote on bonding authorization before the work could begin.
“This board would get another chance to weigh in on either of these projects before any significant amount of money spent,” said board chairperson Richard Freedman.