With an eye toward helping craft long-term plans for dealing with the town’s under-repaired buildings, the Board of Education wants to see a clear pathway delineated on how to proceed.
Chair Ruth DeLuca announced on Thursday evening, Apr. 17, that she and member Lori Bufano would represent the BOE on a new short-term committee that will aim to plan the policies and procedures for a new infrastructure fund the town is starting, alongside two members each from the Board of Finance and the Board of Selectmen.
“That committee is going to lay the groundwork for the alternative capital resource to support Wilton’s infrastructure needs,” DeLuca said. “The Board of Finance has committed, I believe, $375,000 to start the fund, out of this year’s budget.”
DeLuca also said that she and BOE member Patrick Pearson would serve on the next iteration of the Town and School Needs Assessment Priorities Committee (TSNAP), which First Selectman Toni Boucher is planning to appoint for a second year.
TSNAP made recommendations this year on what infrastructure capital projects the town should bond, prioritizing about a dozen of them that had a combined price tag of around $10 million.
DeLuca, however, emphasized the charge of the TSNAP committee should be clarified before it gets underway again for a second year, so that people don’t waste time.
“What I had expressed concerns over is that we ensure that members of the TSNAP committee, that their time and energy is put to the best use and is respected,” DeLuca said, with Superintendent Kevin Smith serving as one of its members.
“Given the scope of work that’s in front of us as a town, I think it would be important that, prior to that committee meeting again, that there is a really clear-written understanding of what the purpose of the committee is, its scope of work, and also what its deliverable product is, and what the timeframe is,” she said.
After its formation last year, TSNAP struggled for several meetings with confusion over its charge and purpose, with some members focused on a one-year priority plan and related costs, while others hoped to look farther ahead toward a big-picture plan.
“The project and the work in front of us really need more comprehensive planning and understanding,” DeLuca said, citing “a one-year and five-year time horizon” for TSNAP’s work.
“Not understanding how work one year will then affect the future years out, I think, does a disservice to the overall planning horizon, so I’ve asked that that be completely mapped out and understood,” she said.
DeLuca said she wants to see a TSNAP subcommittee formed to “really set the understandings and the mutual agreements of what is going to be coming out of that.”
“Hopefully that’ll be rolled out in the coming weeks as well, coming from the Board of Selectmen,” she said, suggesting TSNAP may start meeting again by June.
Pearson, who served on TSNAP for its first year, voiced support for DeLuca’s view.
“We just need a very clear map of what is expected, right,” he said. “We can’t toil around for four meetings wondering what our (mission) is.”
DeLuca said she hopes TSNAP members will also gain some understanding of funding possibilities as they proceed, “to really kind of set the stage of, how do we achieve the amount of work that’s sitting in front of us in a responsible and deliberate manner,” she said.
DeLuca said the six-member infrastructure fund committee would probably only meet about three times in order to craft the structure and guidelines for how that money will be collected and allocated.
“That will probably kick off next week and then, by the time the school year is over, it will be settled and ready to go,” she said.
At this time, Boucher and Selectman Ross Tartell will also be serving on that committee, along with BOF Chair Matt Raimondi and BOF member Tim Birch.
“It’ll set the structure and the processes and procedures about how that fund will work moving forward,” DeLuca said. “The fund is limited to just infrastructure, so it’s just municipal and town and school buildings.”