Town Poised To Sign

Fairfield Hills Purchase Contract

By Jan Howard

The contract between the State of Connecticut and the Town of Newtown for the purchase of the Fairfield Hills campus is in the hands of members of the Board of Selectmen and was scheduled for discussion at their meeting Thursday, October 16, after The Bee went to press this week.

“If the Board of Selectmen approve, we have to give the state a check for $400,000, which is ten percent of the purchase price,” First Selectman Herb Rosenthal said Wednesday. The remainder of the purchase price of $3.9 million is due at the time of the closing.

Mr Rosenthal said if the selectmen give their approval Thursday night, he hopes the contract will be signed the next day.

The contract will be signed contingent upon a final agreement with Potatuck Fish and Game Club, which currently owns the water supply for Fairfield Hill, and selection of a water company to operate the system, prior to the closing on the property, Mr Rosenthal said.

The Potatuck Club has been negotiating an agreement that would provide the town with water rights to its section of the aquifer and protect the aquifer.

Under the agreement, the town would pay the club’s Potatuck Land Company a lump sum, which has not been announced, plus a payment per gallon, which would go into a conservation fund to monitor and maintain the Pootatuck River and aquifer.

Currently, the aquifer provides water to town government offices at Fairfield Hills, Garner Correctional Institution, Reed Intermediate School, and Nunnawauk Meadows, a senior citizen housing complex.

“We are down to a final draft,” Mr Rosenthal said of the agreement with the Potatuck Club. It is just a case of “lawyers’ last minute wordsmithing,” he noted.

The contract to purchase Fairfield Hills has been under negotiation between the town and the state for the past two years.

Mr Rosenthal said he believes residents would be pleased with the contract. He noted that the two years since the town approved purchase of the campus “gave us time to do the environmental studies we needed to do.”

Mr Rosenthal had stated in September that there were no real stumbling blocks to the water issue, adding that most issues had been resolved at meetings between the town’s attorneys and representatives of the state and Potatuck Fish and Game Club.

The purchase of the campus was part of a larger appropriation of approximately $22 million that included renovations of Fairfield Hills in addition to other projects.

Mr Rosenthal said the closing on the property should take place before the end of the year.