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Jennings Elementary School custodian Steve Jones can rest assured: His kids will get their newer, safer bathrooms next year. The Representative Town meeting approved $2 million in renovations to Fairfields schools and town-owned buildings Monday night. The board also agreed to build a new playground and resurface the old space at the Early Childhood Center.
This is a vital part of our community, Pam Iacono, Board of Education vice chair, said of the playground project. Hopefully it will be here for years to come for many of our children to shine and develop and grow into productive members of our society.
The Board of Education and the Department of Public Works went before the Board of Selectmen with nearly $2.9 million in bonding requests for school and town building repairs. But after taking the advice of the Town Facilities Commission, the selectmen trimmed the list of projects.
The plan the RTM approved Monday will renovate the bathrooms at Jennings and perform roof repairs at Roger Ludlowe Middle School. It also endorsed replacing the fuel tanks at four other town-owned buildings, repairing the roofs at the Old Academy and the Fairfield Senior Center and buying a new truck for the Fairfield Fire Department.
It will also build a new playground for the Early Childhood Center housed at Fairfield Warde High School to accommodate the extra kids the program will handle next year. The town will also resurface the existing playground with a safer rubber matting to replace the current woodchips.
The RTM cut out about $600,000 worth of work, including a new boiler at Dwight Elementary and a new backhoe for the DPW. It also trimmed the work on Jennings bathrooms, Roger Ludlowes roof and upgrades to the bunker at H. Smith Richardson golf course to the bare essentials needed for safety.
Although Im in favor of this project in the long run, given the state of our financial condition at the present time, Im in favor of postponing it and taking it up next year, RTM member Peter Ambrose, R-2, said of the decision to cut the Dwight boilers, a sentiment that was carried over into other cuts by the RTM. The renovations to the schools will begin this summer. All projects should be finished before the start of the 2011-12 school year.
What school improvement projects would you like to see? Share your opinions in the comments below.
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