At Tuesday morning’s Central Middle School building committee meeting, chair Tony Turner said the previous tenor of informality would stop.
Central Middle School, constructed in the 1957, was condemned last February. Signs posted on the front doors signed were signed by Greenwich’s building official Bill Marr declaring the structure, Dangerous and Unsafe for Human Occupancy. Students were farmed out to different schools until the building was shored up and deemed safe.
The committee’s goal is to build a new school.
Turner noted new guests were present Tuesday morning – some via Zoom, some in person – including town attorney Barbara Schellenberg, the president of Construction Solutions Group (CSG) Jim Giuliano, members of the press and the CMS PTA.
“We have a lot of rancor and a lot of animosity in our committee. We have very deep divisions. We have misinformation in the community, which is very sad,” Turner said. “We’re not going to have any more getting personal or having personal attacks, no more people feeling harassed or intimidated. No more ad hominem attacks.”
Recently there was a flurry of letters to the editor hinting at the situation, including letters from Dina Urso (Dec 8 in response to Nisha Arora’s letter to the editor published in Greenwich Time on Dec 7, one from Laura Kostin (Dec 11) and a follow up letter from Nisha Arora (Dec 12).
“I made it very clear in our meeting last week that we needed to stop. It didn’t stop. It will only got worse,” Turner said.
Turner said he would no longer allow rancorous behavior, and would be strict about limiting comments to the merits of a question.
“If we start to have behaviors that go down these paths, I’m going to adjourn the meeting and we can reconvene at another time when things cool off,” he continued. “It absolutely has to stop.”
Turner reminded the group of the powers and duties of the building committee.
He quoted Section 2, paragraph 45 of Greenwich’s Municipal Code:
“In supervising the construction of the project, the committee shall adhere to the educational specs and requirements prepared and filed by the Board of Education. The committee, in its supervision of the construction, shall have all the powers and duties of the commissioner of public works with respect to the construction of public buildings and public improvements of the town. Such supervision shall include but not be limited to, the selection and employment of an architect, approval of plans and specifications, and requests for necessary appropriations in advertising and acceptance of bids.”
Further, he said, “We will no longer have attempts by members who want to discuss the changing of the ed specs. If you disagree with what the ed specs say, you disagree with town code, and that’s another issue, not for this committee.”
Turner said he had the sense that the ed specs might be revisited at some point, and for those committee members who wanted that to happen, there would be avenues to pursue that outside the committee.
“I believe this kind of restriction, that is going by Roberts Rules of Order like I’ve described, it restricts or throttles creativity and innovation. It restricts teamwork, which we need. We’ve tried to be nice about it and say please stop, but it hasn’t,” he said.
With those warnings in place the committee discussed and voted on agenda items 3 and 4.
After the votes, committee member Greg Piccininno asked if he could make a motion for the committee to discuss a cease and desist order they had all received the previous day.
Mr. Turner declined.
“I’m not going to entertain that – or the town attorney,” Turner said. “We need to let the flower bloom and see what she comes back with. She is very much apprised of it.”
