Carrano to RTM: Where’s Our Van Going?

Frank Carrano, the chairman of the Board of Education, asked the Representative Town Meeting (RTM) last week to put a process in place for finding a new central office for the Board of Education, asserting the town had allowed ​“outside influences” to determine deadlines that defied reason and good sense. He also said he is deeply concerned about where the BOE will go and that there was no funding in place for the new space.

Carrano did not mention First Selectman Unk DaRos and the Giordano family by name. But he was clearly referring to a series of deadlines set by the Giordano family as part of a proposed swap of buildings that has taken the time and energy of the RTM and its administrative services committee in recent months. 

The swap involves three buildings. The Board of Education (BOE) central office would move to the Canoe Brook Senior Center, which is owned by the town and the senior center would move to 175 N. Main St building, which is owned by the Giordano family and is called the Office Network. In exchange, the Giordano family would get the BOE building at 1111 Main St, a key corner in the heart of town. The Giordano family plans to convert the corner BOE building for commercial or business use as part of a larger development. Click here to read more about the family’s plans for the area.

​“We are not going to just have our boxes and wait for a van to pick us up and then tell us where we are going,” Carrano said, referring to three different buildings proposed as possible sites for the BOE’s central headquarters. The current plan, put forth at a public BOE meeting Jan. 19, sends the BOE’s central office to Canoe Brook Senior Center, where the RTM meeting was held. It is where DaRos wanted the BOE to go from the outset and it has been discussed for years.

“We need to know and plan and work it all out. …we just can’t have people telling us on the same day that a contract has been signed and that we need to give them an answer tonight or tomorrow morning,” Carrano said. ​“This is not the way the town should be doing business.” He asked the RTM to put a process in place. ​“We want to work with the town. But we can’t do this if we are locked into another room and we only get to come out when decisions are made.” 

Democratic RTM member Joshua Brooks was on his feet, responding angrily. He told Carrano the matter was being returned to committee.

“We are working on the process. Nobody is telling you today you have to move tomorrow,” he declared. (Indeed the signed agreement between the town and the Giordano family does not take effect until Dec. 31, 2011 in order to give the parties nearly a year to move.) ​“I would also like to point out that you say you are cooperative but at the last meeting when you were here you were not.”

DaRos was supposed to address the RTM’s administrative services committee and the RTM at meetings last week. But on Monday Trista Milici, DaRos’s executive assistant, informed Gail Chapman-Carbone, the committee’s chair, that after questions had been raised by RTM members, he needed additional time to provide more detailed information in his formal presentation. After a long discussion that centered on Carrano’s questions and answers, the swap issue was sent back to committee. DaRos will address the committee on Feb. 8 and the full RTM on Feb.9.

The history of the BOE building itself or its national stature has not been part of the public discussion. Jane Bouley, the town historian, spoke eloquently about the history of the BOE building, a former post office, at a meeting last week. She urged that 1111 Main be saved. She said it was part of an historic district and should not be sold to a developer. She repeated what she told the Eagle in a recent interview, that the town will regret giving this building away. It could be used for departments in the now overcrowded Town Hall, she said. But if the swap went through, she asked that there be a deed restriction preventing any owner from tearing it down or changing its general appearance. 

Back at Canoe Brook, Carrano first appealed to the RTM for direction. ​“In my view it is very unfair of the town to ask the board to agree to a contract that doesn’t assure that you allocate the necessary funds for that contract to be carried out. We need to have a better sense of the process,” he said.

DaRos is acting under a tight deadline imposed by the Giordano family. The first deadline was Dec. 31, 2010. (Actually Michael Giordano said at a meeting the deal was supposed to be completed by September, 2010.) Then the deadline was extended to the end of January. Now it has been extended to Feb. 9, the night of the next RTM meeting.

The implication is that the RTM will vote the measure up or down. But it could also send it back to committee, as it has before. If that happens, presumably the deal is over. The proposed agreement has gone through various changes, including removing a clause that contained what some have called a sweetheart deal to benefit the Giordano construction company. 

What became clear during Carrano’s long discussion with the RTM is that this was a conversation he should have been having with DaRos. But the two men no longer have a working relationship. Both men acknowledge that. It ended after DaRos asked Carrano to give up the chairmanship of the Democratic Town Committee because he believed it was a conflict of interest to hold that post as well as serve as head of the BOE. Carrano saw no conflict.

DaRos had previously outlined his Canoe Brook plan at the BOE meeting earlier this month. The board, along with Schools Superintendent Hamlet Hernandez, seemed upbeat about Canoe Brook. Last week Hernandez and the full board did a walk-through Canoe Brook, an 8,000 square foot building. The current BOE building is 3,700 square feet.

Carrano did not say he was speaking for the entire BOE or for Hernandez or that his words represented their thoughts. DaRos pointed out that Carrano has known for some time about the move to Canoe Brook. He told the Eagle that about a year ago Carrano and Dr. Kathleen Halligan, the former school superintendent, ​“sat in my office to discuss the move to Canoe Brook and were very excited by it.”

DaRos was not present at the RTM meeting when Carrano spoke. Second Selectman Fran Walsh did not respond to Carrano. In an interview with the Eagle afterwards, DaRos said he found Carrrano’s concerns about funding the project unrealistic.

“We can put together a budget,” he said. ​“We can do that. Their only responsibility is do you want to do a swap or don’t you? The uses of the building, the design and how it is paid for is another argument” he said.
 
​“His statements are amazing. I believe that Mr. Carrano should be more worried about textbooks and test scores than our capacity, and our ability and our willingness to build them a new office space. I mean it,” he said.

DaRos said an earlier proposal to renovate Canoe Brook for the BOE was far too expensive and had been abandoned. ​“If he [Carrano] thinks everybody is a god-damned fool in this town, if he thinks we are going to spend $240.00 a square foot for a renovation of office space he’s got another thing coming. You can build a new building cheaper than that.”

He said he priced things out after that the board took its tour of Canoe Brook last week. He said he understood that Hernandez wanted to move some things around. ​“It is under $100 a square foot to do this whole thing and put in everything they want,” he said.
 
DaRos said his senior center/BOE plan came from the Plan of Conservation and Development, (POCD) which was adopted two years ago and outlines the town’s needs for the next ten years. ​“I am trying to solve several problems, all of which were discussed in the POCD. I read it. I paid attention. It said the BOE needed to be moved and that the likely place for them was the senior center. Moreover it states the seniors needed to be taken care of.”

From DaRos’s point of view, he ​“seized an opportunity,” he said, referring to the Giordano property. ​“In the future this would cost a barrel of dough to do the same thing.” With this swap ​“all those things are accomplished for half the money if you did it individually.”

Carrano’s concerns were met with empathy, not from the Democrats, but from the Republican side of the aisle. There are nine Republicans and 21 Democrats on the current RTM. 

Three key Republican RTM Members, Attorneys Frank Twohill and Peter Black and Dennis Flanagan, the RTM clerk, said more time is necessary. 

“I see it as another four to six months before we could really move forward,” Black said. He said the town had to better understand the ​“needs of senior center ​“and the BOE. ​“I share some of your frustration,” he told Carrano. ​“I know a lot of members of the RTM share it. We recognize you have to be on board with this.” 

Twohill pointed to the town budget and said $1.5 million has been allocated for the renovation of the senior center. At the same time Twohill criticized the first selectman’s back-and-forth changes. ​“It is a changing plans cape and it really needs to stop.”

Dennis Flanagan, the RTM clerk, reminded the audience that ​“we are going into a budget year very shortly. As the RTM we should be very careful appropriating this kind of money in this economic climate.”

However, Democratic RTM member Paul Muniz explained that the needs of the seniors and the BOE had been fully outlined for years. ​“Let’s take a step back.” He referred to the POCD, a plan that also included a new fire headquarters, recently approved. ​“We don’t believe that the some of those matters taken up in the past year are spontaneous. They are part of a plan.” He told Carrano that ​“it is useful to express your frustrations but it is potentially more useful to offer solutions.”
 
Carrano repeated how upset he was that DaRos signed an agreement with the Giordano family for the BOE building on Jan. 14 without telling Carrano or his board beforehand. ​“I thought we had all understood there can be no agreement until the BOE agrees to vacate the building.”

In the end, he all but told the RTM that the BOE would not go to Canoe Brook. ​“An agreement that is not complete is not good enough for the BOE,” he said of the fact that no funding was put in writing. ​“You cannot at your next meeting (in February) approve an agreement because we are not going to sign an agreement at the next meeting,” he said.
 
At the RTM meeting Carrano did not publicly raise the other option, that the BOE be moved to the Giordano building at 175 North Main, a palatial space of 14,000 square feet that would be home to a school staff of under 20. The BOE has previously voted to go there. The two-way swap gives Giordano the BOE and the BOE his building. It eliminates the seniors.

After Carrano left the meeting, John Opie, the Republican third selectman, met up with him in the hallway.

He said to Carrano that perhaps the natural thing to happen is for the BOE ​“to go to 175.”

“It might be,” Carrano said, giving no guarantees.

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