Most of the information that citizens use concerning Greenwich, Connecticut policy and politics comes from the local media outlets. This forum endeavours to provide a more complete set of viewpoints on current issues in town. The authors are local residents who hope to provide insight into how decisions made in the town will affect all of its citizens. Others are welcome to comment. The only rules are no personal attacks on anyone and back up your opinion with verifiable facts.

Friday, December 15, 2006

Board of Ed Musical Chairs

"Ed board may move" (Greenwich Time, 12/15/2006) highlights yet another location for the Board of Education's administrative offices. This selection, the Senior Center/Arts Center, makes the total a of three different locations chosen in the last six months, as well as staying in their current building. To recap, the Board of Education has favored the following alternatives: build a building next to the current administration building, build an addition onto Town Hall, and now, move into the Senior Center/Arts Center. These three are in addition to the alternative of remaining right where they are.

Once again, the scatter shot approach to making a decision has captured the headlines, and will surely generate editorials and letters expressing the outrage or applause of the local citizens. The issue here is not whether the Board of Education needs new administrative offices, the question is where. The true issue is not about money, either, as the Board of Estimate & Taxation recognises the need, also. The underlying fiscal reasons are simple: the former Havemeyer School building to both expensive to operate and not suitable for offices. In fact, $13.4 million has been placed in the capital plan to accommodate moving the Board of Education's administrative offices.

But of the three options that have been put forth, are any of them realistic or fiscally prudent? To understand that $13.4 million number, it can be put into perspective this way .... the Board of Education has identified its needs to be approximately 25,000 square feet of space. They have also identified several wishes for this office space ... including proximity to Town Hall. Using the lease costs for the temporary space occupied by the Fire Department on Holly Hill Lane as an example, the lease expense per year for 25,000 square feet of space comes to approximately $875,000. Using the $13.4 million capital request as basis for comparison, this represents more than ten years worth of leased office space. In addition, if the Board of Education approached a landlord with the proposal to lease 25,000 square feet of office space for ten years to house the administrative offices, the cost per square foot may actually be lower than the $35 used in this example.

The scatter shot proposals also do not take into account the effect that any one of the proposals has on other community needs for space. The Senior Center as it is configured today is not workable for the burgeoning senior citizen population in Greenwich. The Greenwich Center for the Arts has proposed a valuable and much needed use for the Havemeyer Building, and with recent articles in the Greenwich Time indicating a public desire to improve the auditorium and rehearsal rooms in the Greenwich High School, several goals may be accomplished. An addition to the Town Hall building will be extremely disruptive to the operations of the Town government, as well as having a large impact on employee and citizen parking there. And constructing yet another Town owned, operated, and maintained building doesn't seem to be financially prudent, either.

Rather than looking deeper at other alternatives, the Board of Education has consistently chosen to discuss the most expensive and disruptive proposals to achieve their goal of operating in modern office space. Greenwich has a large inventory of office space in the community. And, with the exodus of UST and Unilever, even more office space will become available in the near term future a short distance from Town Hall. Shouldn't the Board of Education review their wish list and adjust their expectations for their administrative offices? In ten years time, the requirements for administration may be vastly different .... wouldn't more flexibility for the Board of Education's administrative offices be a benefit?

With every suggestion, the Board of Education needs to expand their view to encompass the needs, requirements, and desires of other Town agencies and community organizations. No one argues that the Board of Education should be operating in more efficient space for their administrative offices, but the costs of each proposal must be weighed against the needs of the community and its citizens as a whole.