Following the unveiling of the latest Town Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) to the Board of Selectmen, First Selectman Dan Rosenthal explained a number of short- and long-term goals he is hoping will meet with approval from the Boards of Finance and the Legislative Council in the coming weeks.

In a detailed discussion with The Newtown Bee this week, Mr Rosenthal talked about shifting the short-term focus more pointedly to road work and public safety projects.

He also detailed a plan to slowly begin rolling back the level of bonding for capital initiatives in favor of shifting more money into a capital non-recurring fund, so the town can do more “pay as you go” investing, versus piling on the added expense of protracted debt service and bond anticipation note or BAN costs.

That aspect of the plan, incorporating capital spending the first selectman is now theoretically scoping over ten years instead of five strictly for planning purposes, would drastically reduce not only the amount of borrowing being done, but would reel back the percentage of the annual budget reserved for debt service from nine percent to below 8.5 percent.

All things remaining equal, a look at the latest CIP proposal shows the town’s 2019-20 planned borrowing of $11.4 million would drop drastically to $6.2 million by 2021, then to $4.1 million in 2023, and to only $1.2 million by 2027. There is also a provision suggested by Mr Rosenthal and supported by Town Finance Director Robert Tait to do zero bonding in the 2024-25 fiscal cycle.

At the same time, a number of projects that were markedly closer to bonding in the previous CIP have been pushed back out in the timeline, including a series of capital improvements at the C.H. Booth Library. A placeholder of $250,000 initiated under the previous administration for the Sandy Hook Permanent Memorial project — which has been more clearly defined — represents the only new bonding added to the current CIP at $2 million per year in 2019 and 2020.

In his first step toward the planned shifting away from bonding toward funding more capital projects and equipment through capital non-recurring, and to adhere to the town’s debt service policy, Mr Rosenthal said he reduced approximately $40 million in department bonding requests over the next five years to $35,500,000. Leaving room for necessary bonding for school district capital projects, Mr Rosenthal said preliminary bond forecast calculations indicate that the five-year CIP total should be around $45,000,000 to achieve those goals by 2025.

Priority in project selection was given to public safety projects, including the planned new police facility, roads and bridge projects, replacement or refurbished fire apparatus, and a critical emergency console and radio upgrade that could include the construction of a new radio communications tower to better transmit emergency radio traffic to and from notorious dead spots across town.

The first selectman said he is also committed to accomplishing various public buildings improvements and projects on the Fairfield Hills campus, at Edmond Town Hall, and at the library.

Regarding the daunting and expensive challenge of bringing Newtown’s town roads and bridges up to safe and easily navigable standards, Mr Rosenthal said he sees annual spending of about $3 million for the foreseeable future as the sweet spot. That plan does come with a goal of shifting from more bonding in the short term to building most of that $3 million into annual operating budgets.

“By 2020, I’m hoping to get to a point where we’re bonding about $1 million annually and including $2 million in the operating budget,” he said.

Mr Rosenthal is also open to some creative planning to try and reduce a projected $6.8 million cost for the emergency communications systems upgrade. The first selectman said he would be open to discussing partnering with one of the various communication companies looking to build a new cell tower on land the town has already reserved and then including all the town’s emergency communications hardware on it, along with the controlling company’s related cellular hardware and infrastructure.

“That project is relatively close in the CIP (2021), so we need to explore some options to getting that $6.8 million cost down,” he said.”We have land set aside for the emergency communications tower. But the question is, can we bring in a private sector partner to build that tower?”

While the town is committed to replacing a fire department tanker in 2019 with an anticipated cost of $575,000 and a second tanker in 2022 for $535,000, he and fire officials are open to purchasing a used quint truck — which is a combination pumper and ladder unit — versus buying one new. He said both the Sandy Hook, and more recently, Hawleyville fire companies have had good luck purchasing used quints.

Mr Tait said the current tanker placed at Hawleyville Fire Department is 31 years old and will be replaced first in the 2019-20 fiscal cycle. The tanker due to be replaced at Sandy Hook Fire & Rescue will be 28 years old by the time it comes up for purchase in the 2022-23 fiscal year.

Mr Rosenthal and leaders at Newtown Hook & Ladder are planning on refurbishing the town’s primary ladder truck, which will avoid the high cost of buying a new one for five or more years.

“This way, we’re spending $800,000 and getting two ladder units instead of well over $1 million just to buy a new ladder truck for Hook & Ladder,” he said. There are also CIP earmarks for two new pumper truck replacements for $750,000 in 2025, and $770,000 in 2026.

Regarding the escalation in allocations for the permanent memorial, Mr Rosenthal said both he and prior First Selectman Pat Llodra knew the $250,000 previously set in the CIP was simply a placeholder.

“And while I do not believe the eventual finished project will be $4 million, I’d rather have more than enough set aside in the CIP than have to come back an add funds to an amount we requested that might be underestimated,” the first selectman said.

“Primarily, what I’m hearing from the public is to get the roads and road infrastructure back in shape,” he said. “And we can’t do that and make a case for borrowing for elected or less essential projects when we really need to focus on fixing the roads, building a new police station, and replacing or upgrading fire apparatus.”