Reps weigh ‘lock box’ for school repair funds
STAMFORD — City lawmakers want to ensure that officials learn something from the school district’s mold crisis.
They passed a plan to create a fund dedicated to repairing school buildings.
Long-deferred roof, foundation, window and other maintenance allowed water to enter buildings and mold to take hold — one school has been closed and students in several others are crammed into makeshift spaces while classrooms are cleaned and fixed.
A so-called lock box for repair money would be a kind of insurance against it happening again, members of the Board of Representatives decided at this month’s meeting.
They voted 30-1 to allow residents to weigh in during a public hearing scheduled for June 18.
About a dozen representatives sponsored the proposed “Ordinance Providing for a Special Revenue Fund for SchoolRelated Capital Projects.”
One, Rep. Benjamin Lee, D-15, chairman of the board’s Legislative & Rules Committee, explained why when his panel met in May and voted unanimously to recommend that the full board bring the idea to a public hearing.
The committee has discussed the plan for months, Lee said.
“This sets up a mechanism,” he said
during the committee meeting. “It won’t solve the problem, but it may help change the dynamic. The money that goes into the lock box … could be used only for one purpose.”
Money would go into the lock box from many potential sources. If, say, the city’s electrical bill, which can vary significantly, was coming in less than budgeted for the year, representatives could ask that the excess money go into the lock box instead, Lee said.
“We could say to the mayor that we would like it to go toward the schools,” Lee said. “The mayor could then make an appropriation.”
According to the proposed ordinance, the appropriation would have to be approved by four of the six members of the Board of Finance and two-thirds of the Board of Representatives.
“Unless this fund is created, school capital projects will fall into the same underfunded heap as other problems in the city have fallen,” Rep. Susan Nabel, D-20, another sponsor, said during the committee meeting. “Perhaps this will provide a beginning or a seed for some insurance that school capital projects will not be consistently ignored going forward, since we hope to have learned some lesson from the crisis that erupted last year.”
Mold began showing up in school buildings last July, a time of record-breaking rainfall. Westover Magnet Elementary School was closed and students and faculty were moved to a renovated office building on Elmcroft Road.
To pay for the repairs, the city has doubled its debt limit to $50 for the fiscal year that starts July 1 and expects to do the same the following fiscal year. The city set up a Mold Task Force that to date has spent about $6.5 million, more than half of it on leasing and reconfiguring the Elmcroft Road office building.
The task force so far has requested $25 million to repair Westover and $5 million each for four other elementary schools – Davenport, Hart, Toquam and Stark. Mayor David Martin has asked school officials to apply for state reimbursements for which the city doesn’t usually qualify.
The repair costs helped drive the tax hike for fiscal 2019-20, which will amount to an average 3.2 percent for property owners.
But school building repairs aren’t the only need that could be fulfilled with help from a lock box, Rep. J.R. McMullen, R-18, said during the committee meeting.
“Will this blossom into lock boxes for roads and parks?” McMullen asked. “Two years ago we talked about excess money going to roads, and that didn’t happen. It’s an admirable idea, but a waste of time because there are so many priorities. And that’s the purpose of budgeting anyway.”
During the full board’s June 3 vote to move the measure on to a public hearing, Rep. Nina Sherwood, D-8, was the lone “no.” It’s because the Board of Representatives does not have the authority to appropriate money – only to approve money the mayor’s office seeks to appropriate, Sherwood said.
“So we would be making this lockbox, this fund to put money in, but we can’t put any money in it,” she said. “The idea is to pressure the administration to put money in, so it would just be a political tool.”
Call it “a talking point,” she said.
“I don’t see how it really will make any material difference,” Sherwood said. “It’s just a reaction to the mold crisis, not an effective or even partial solution.”
The June 18 hearing is slated for 7 p.m. in the Democratic Caucus Room on the fourth floor of the Stamford Government Center. After members of the Legislative & Rules Committee hear what residents have to say, they will vote on a recommendation for the full board, which will take up the lock box plan when it meets July 1.