The Board of Selectmen at its most recent meeting approved a quarter-million-dollar contract with a Farmington-based company to replace a failed Saxe Middle School boiler.
First Selectman Kevin Moynihan and Selectmen Kathleen Corbet and Nick Williams voted 3-0 in favor of the $249,872 contract with All State Construction Inc.
Joe Zagarenski, senior engineer in the New Canaan Department of Public Works, said the failed boiler is one of three at Saxe and “the other two are at the end of their usable life.”
“So we expedited the design and bid of the ‘boiler plant replacement project,’ ” Zagarenski said during the Dec. 1 meeting, held via videoconference. He was joined in presenting the contract for approval by Dan Clarke, manager of facilities and operations for New Canaan Public Schools.
Moynihan appeared to take issue with Zagarenski’s assertion that “funds are currently available” for the new boiler.
“How are they available?” Moynihan said. “I thought the budget for the one boiler was $100,000. And I’m a little confused, Dan, too, as to how we did not have boilers for Saxe in the five-year capital plan for the Board of Education, other than one boiler for $100,000. So how are funds available?”
Public Works Director Tiger Mann said that the $100,000 earmark to which Moynihan referred was part of a $775,000 total.
Zagarenski added that town officials are expecting this week to get a preview set of the sign for a combined heat and power or “CHP” project that’s expected to come in at about $440,000, “which will leave enough money for the entire project.”
Moynihan said the matter appropriately belonged with the Board of Finance “becasue estimating a boiler at $100,000 and then it comes in $227,000 [before a contingency add-on] and then the other two which were not even in the Five-Year Plan to replace it all?”
“I assume the Board fo Education is going to ask for that for next year’s budget,” Moynihan said. “It’s a Board of Finance issue, but I think it seems like it’s not great estimating as to what the future cost of the project is going to be.”
The selectmen asked what is the estimated replacement time for the other two boilers (later this academic year or next summer), how old those boilers are (installed in 1997 at the time of a renovation), whether there are boiler issues at other schools (replacements for the elementary-level boilers are in the Five-Year Capital Plan) and whether the town uses the more energy-efficient condensing boilers (yes).