Fairfield residents likely to lose flood insurance discount due to Penfield Pavilion violation

FAIRFIELD — About 1,800 residents are likely to lose their discount on flood insurance in the coming months due to Penfield Pavilion’s Federal Emergency Management Agency violation with the building’s foundation, officials said.

Town officials told a crowd of about 100 on Thursday they hoped to avoid residents losing the 10 percent discount, which is available because Fairfield is a class 8 participant in the Community Rating System. This classification means Fairfield adopted a flood plain ordinance and adheres to strict guidelines regarding federal codes for buildings on the coast.

Becky Bunnell, the chair of the Fairfield Beach Residents Association’s coastal environment subcommittee, said before the meeting she hopes the town can get an extension from FEMA. She said people are unsure of what options the town has, and are worried about the higher prices.

“There’s a lot of questions that people have,” she said. “They don’t understand what options were looked at and if we priced out other options.”

First Selectwoman Brenda Kupchick told the audience she was working with FEMA and the town’s federal representative and senators to try and get an extension.

But unless the town shows real progress toward addressing the FEMA violation at Penfield Pavilion before the end of March, federal officials said they would notify insurance companies participating in the flood insurance program that Fairfield’s community rating could be downgraded and make residents ineligible for the discount.

“This violation still exists and we want to see this property come into compliance,” Melissa Surette, a FEMA official said at the meeting, which had frequent interjections from the audience.

FEMA is mainly concerned the foundations beams were built out of code with federal regulations at Penfield Pavilion, which is a venue at Penfield Beach that hosts 150 events a year and has public amenities. Officials closed it for reservations last year while it addresses the issues.

In the summer of 2011, Fairfield finished a $5 million rebuild of Penfield Pavilion, but a year later it as critically damaged in Hurricane Sandy. A second, $7.4 million rebuild was completed in 2017, but officials say the town was notified as early as 2016 that the foundation was being built in violation of regulations. The town appealed twice, but those appeals were denied.

Surette added that a downgrade in rating would allow Fairfield time to become compliant with FEMA’s standards before the town is put on probation or suspended from the National Flood Insurance Program.

Dean Savramis, another FEMA official, said once the town is downgraded, probation typically follows soon afterward. He said probation comes with additional costs for homeowners who pay for flood insurance participating in the

NFIP. He said if there is no meaningful progress toward compliance after probation, FEMA would have to have a serious conversation about suspension.

But there is another pressing issue at the location — contaminated fill connected to the fill pile scandal was used under the building and its parking lot. The town has been dealing with the fallout from the scandal, in which a number of former town officials and private business owners were arrested for allegedly conspiring to deposit contaminated soil around town, for several years and it has cost the town millions to clean up.

Kupchick said the town has to clean the fill no matter what happens with Penfield Pavilion, and presented two options for what the town can do — repair the building or tear it down and replace it with something smaller or nothing at all.

The first option would leave the building in place but remove the contaminants and bring the building back up to code. She said that is estimated to cost $11.5 million. If the town goes with the second option of tearing it down and maybe building something later it is estimated to cost $8.5 million.

Kupchick said it would cost $5 million to clean the fill if the building was still there and $4 million if it was not. She said several times throughout the meeting that she would prefer the town opt to leave the building in place, as it is loved by the community and took a long time to finalize and build.

“(We should) move forward, comply with the law and close this horrible chapter in our town’s history,” she said.

She said fixing the foundation and remediation at Penfield Pavilion is estimated to take 12 to 15 months once it begins, adding she wanted to start the process of approving funding sooner, but felt as though officials from other town bodies would not have supported it.

Some officials who wrote comments on the meeting’s corresponding Zoom call pushed back on that.

“There wasn’t any discussion about Penfield until Aug 31, 2022,” said Jill Vergara, a Democratic member of the Representative Town Meeting’s District 7. “The second appeal (against FEMA’s notice of violation) was denied in June 2021. Why did it take so long to get a proposal to town bodies? That meeting occurred six months ago. Why has it taken so long to have a public forum on this?”

The audience was able to write questions on cards for officials to answer. Most of the questions concerned the timeline, the process, the town’s options and how the town allowed the issue to happen in the first place.

Kupchick and Town Attorney James Baldwin cast blame for the issue on former First Selectman Mike Tetreau and his administration for building the pavilion out of code and ignoring the warnings from FEMA about the violation during the process. Baldwin said all decisions regarding the building being constructed in violation to regulations were made by “a very small group.”

Kupchick called the situation, “our community’s nightmare.”