Nearly 14 months after First Selectman Dan Rosenthal announced he would be pursuing “dispute resolution” with several Community Center vendors, and more than ten months after the center opened, the town will recoup $135,981 that will be applied to a special fund created by the Legislative Council.

A lengthy mediation was initiated last fall, and was a preferred option to taking the vendors to court, according to the first selectman. That option was taken, Rosenthal said, after the town “reached an impasse trying to negotiate informally.”

“We pursued [a settlement] because we felt the town needed to speak up for the taxpayers,” Rosenthal told The Newtown Bee on June 1, ahead of the Board of Selectmen approving the settlement and moving it to the council to create the special fund from which the settlement would be distributed. “It was very difficult with four parties, so we decided mediation would be the way to go.”

Over the course of proceedings, the first selectman said all parties involved — the town, Caldwell & Walsh Building Construction, Inc, Quisenberry Arcari Architects, LLC, and Amara Associates, LLC — each stated their cases, “not laying blame but detailing our grievances,” Rosenthal said. “And the mediator listened to our claims.”

The first selectman said the mediation involved only “challenged items that were not owner-generated enhancements.” All other contended change orders that resulted from town requests were settled before the final distribution of funds according to documentation supplied to The Newtown Bee.

“As a result of this mediation closing out and all parties signing off on it, the town has now settled all known claims for the building,” Rosenthal said. He added that a couple of issues related to tiles cracking in the pool area, and an oversized fire pump have not yet been resolved.

“We’re still working on a modification [for those claims],” the first selectman added.

The Backstory

In late February of 2019, The Newtown Bee first reported that local Public Building & Site Commission members were growing exceedingly frustrated after discovering several shortcomings that occurred during the design phase of the project, where key construction aspects and/or materials were not included and had to or would have to be retrofitted into the project at additional expense.

In at least one case involving steel work at the center’s main front and rear entrances, delays in getting the plans redone and approved, while adding little or no additional cost, put an already lagging schedule at least three weeks behind. This was one of the first issues to come to Rosenthal’s attention.

It was noted at the time that steel structural elements for the canopy over the senior center entrance were not included in any original plans. PBSC Chairman Robert Mitchell said this was discovered so late that it generated a change order, along with potentially added expense.

The Newtown Bee also learned that steel supports for movable partition walls that would section off one larger space in the senior center and two larger spaces in the community center were also not included in original plans. The first selectman and PBSC chairman both explained that making fixes would involve having to get steel beams into already completed rooms and installing them in the ceilings — not a small effort.

That gaffe also involved measurable un-budgeted expense.

Officials were ultimately pressed into pursuing some type of resolution after discovering steel work and supports that were integral aspects of the community center’s front and rear entrance ways were also missing from plans. At the time, the first selectman said, “...finding out about [these issues] once the project is 75 percent done deprived us the opportunities to adjust things in an earlier stage to pay for what we needed to pay for.”

“Had these items been bid and in the project from the beginning, we would have compensated,” he said, adding in a later interview, “These things that were missed or not bid because they weren’t in, or weren’t right in the plans, are not the responsibility of the town.”

'Serving Community Well'

In the end, Rosenthal said the community center — which was substantially underwritten with a gift from General Electric following the Sandy Hook tragedy — was a facility the community could be proud of.

“It’s a really nice building,” he said, and serving the community well.

“There were issues with the building, and through this resolution process we came to a reasonable conclusion, while avoiding costly and protracted legal action whose outcome was certainly less certain than pursuing arbitration,” Rosenthal said this week. “Through the process there was a lot of give and take. But we ultimately defended the taxpayers. It’s important for the town to assert itself when things like this project don’t go as planned.”

Regarding the settlement, which was initially set at $230,000, the parties agreed the town would cover $95,000 on change orders that originally totaled $109,438 and had not been paid.

Those charges were for:

*Modifications and added materials and installations in all showers;

*Re-installing piping for a sand filter and booster pump and re-carpeting an area that incurred water damage from improperly installed discharge piping;

*Added labor costs from the roofing contractor after delays pushed roofing installation around the cupolas and main entrances from the fall into winter months;

*Replacement of water in the pools that drained due to a design issue, and creation of an access road behind the facility for the water trucks;

*Removing and reinstalling tiles around interior vestibule doors after it was discovered no threshold was called for;

*Compensation for divers and supervision on three occasions to locate pool leaks and add extension pipes to the overflow lines “because they were designed below the water level of the pool.”

Town legal costs for the proceedings, according to settlement documents, totaled $72,423. The first selectman said that expense was distributed from the town’s general fund over two fiscal years.

The $135,981 coming back to the town and going into a special revenue fund will be used to reimburse funds for furnishings and equipment in both the community center and the senior center, Rosenthal said.