On Tuesday, July 5, Cabezas DeAngelis engineers delivered their engineering analysis of what it would take to install sidewalks on lower Main St. in New Canaan. The report was delivered to the town engineer, , and will be presented at the meeting of the Fire Commission Tuesday night.
A copy of the engineers’ report is attached at right.
Installation of the sidewalks were included in a approved by the . Inclusion of the sidewalks in the road bond was the focus of a referendum, which was held on April 27, and which was .
Patch asked the two Republican candidates campaigning for First Selectman to respond to the information in the report. Both and responded to the following question. Their answers, provided by e-mail, follow.
Patch: The engineering report for the Main St. sidewalks was released on Tuesday, and I wonder if you would share with me your response to the report and what your recommendations would be to the Town Council in terms of moving on this report and the installation of the sidewalks.
Response from Paul Giusti:
I had an opportunity this morning to review the information regarding the road and sidewalk design. As you requested, here are my thoughts:
In reviewing the preliminary design plans for the road and sidewalks for Main Street, there are a number of steps that need to be taken and a number of questions that remain to be answered in order to gather the facts and make an informed decision.
The plans need to be reviewed by the Fire Commission as well as the Police Commission in order to obtain their input. The Department of Public Works needs to obtain bids to establish the cost of the project. The design also needs to be reviewed to determine if there are opportunities for value engineering to find ways to reduce the overall project cost without sacrificing what is needed. All of this information will be provided by the Department of Public Works when they make their presentation to the Town Council.
The efforts to obtain the needed input and to determine the construction costs are moving ahead. Once that information is available, the Town will have all of the facts and can bring the interested parties together, gain informed consensus and take the appropriate action.
Response from Rob Mallozzi:
There was a total lack of leadership and inadequate planning on the part of this administration that led to this inevitable situation. Who isn’t in favor of sidewalks? I use them, you use them, and they are a wonderful component of our great town. But pitting neighbor against neighbor because the Town voted to move forward without a true cost estimate or a defined path made no sense to me back in February and throughout the spring. I don’t for one minute believe that the majority of the 1300 citizens who voted against spending money on sidewalks intended to deny sidewalks to Main St residents or South School families. This issue came up in a road bonding discussion and caught folks by surprise.
I would ask the Town Council to establish a ceiling on what we will spend on these sidewalks before we go much farther. Remember, the estimate the Town Council and based their vote for the inclusion of new sidewalks in the Road Repaving Project was $400-500,000. If installing sidewalks requires the taking of private property or the removal of utility poles, I believe it would be a deal breaker. It appears from the report that this is a likely scenario. I also think the referendum decision would be null and void if the amount exceeds what the residents understood when they voted for sidewalks in April.
As I have lobbied for all along and was quoted in Patch when I announced my back in February, we need to pave Main Street as it is in terrible condition. I have also mentioned many times and have investigated with Richard Stowe, that we should seriously consider adding bike lanes to the paving project (very little cost), so we can make headway toward the goal of delineating a path/walkway from the road. But we must repave Main St. at the earliest possible time frame.
I agree that the two answers clearly distinguish the candidates. Giusti gives a measured response by discussing the necessary steps needed to move forward, including getting input and support from the various relevant town bodies. Mallozzi responds by 1) denigrating the previous administration (perfectly in accord with the negativity and accusations that have characterized his entire campaign), 2) declaring he is both for sidewalks ("who isn't") and against them (utility poles and property issues are "deal breakers" rather than problems to be solved thru leadership), and 3) bringing up an issue (pave Main Street!) that wasn't even a part of the question. I agree...here we have it.
Rob, as for your response, it at least shows that you have a fairly strong opinion on the matter. One thing though, another commenter did point out that you are pointing fingers at Walker again. While he may have blown certain things, don't pull an Obama and make blaming the last administration a central tennet of your campaign. It would do a great disservice to voters that are more interested in forward looking thoughts!
Sidewalk costs have not been rolled into the paving bond. They may be, if the sidewalk project goes ahead, which is not a certainty.
Patch provides our readers a platform on which to share thoughts, information and perspective in real time. It's not meant to be a place to shout insults at neighbors. Keep this in mind next time you're about to hit "Submit".
To be clear, the referendum didn't mention the sidewalks at all. It read "Shall the action taken by the Town Council on February 16, 2011 approving a $4 million appropriation and bond resolution for the Town’s road network be repealed and overruled and returned to the Board of Finance for reconsideration?” The "road network" covered by the bond included the possibility of sidewalks, but not necessarily. It allowed the town to fund sidewalks out of the bond, if a plan to do so was later deemed to make sense, but it did not call for the building of sidewalks. In other words, it provided flexibility. It is extremely odd that you all are so adamantly against such flexibility, unless, of course, your claims that "no one is really against sidewalks" is actually false, and you are simply looking for an administrative way of preventing them from even being considered without actually opposing them politically.
Please identify which fact has been "twisted" by me.
"I also think the referendum decision would be null and void if the amount exceeds what the residents understood when they voted for sidewalks in April." The residents did not vote "for sidewalks" in April. They voted not to send approval of a road network bond issue back to the BoF for reconsideration. It may be true that those who voted "yes" on the referendum were doing so in opposition to sidewalks. But those who voted "no" were voting to allow our representatives to do the job they were voted into office to do, namely make decisions on our behalf. And the decision on whether to install sidewalks has still has not been made, much less decided by the referendum. Another point that Mr Mallozzi misunderstands...the cost of sidewalks is entirely irrelevant to the approval of the bond issue. The size of the bond issue was going to be the same regardless. The complaint from those opposed to sidewalks was that money should not be diverted from road improvement to sidewalks. But either way, the money was going to be spent. The only question was what it would be spent on. And, of course, if the sidewalk project turns out to be much more costly than original projections, it can still be squashed by public opposition. An actual proposal has not yet even been made, much less approved by the TC. The notion that the referendum is somehow "null and void" due to higher-than-projected potential sidewalk costs is absurd.
I don't know where you get your revisionist history or what your rationale is, but the referendum we had was absolutely about building the sidewalk on Main Street. The language was stated as such for legalese, but anyone that wrote a letter, post, put up a sign, or got signatures, knows that the referendum was about sidewalks. The vote was divisive and extremely close.
All I can tell you is to read the language of the referendum, which does not mention sidewalks. To be sure, many "yes" votes seemed to be motivated by objections to the possibility that sidewalks could be funded by the bond. But a referendum does not become "null and void" based on speculation about the motivations of voters. All the vote actually did was to approve the actions of the TC in authorizing a bond issue which allowed for the funding of sidewalks. The funding of sidewalks was not mandated, and is still not at all certain.
Untrue opinions? An interesting concept. In any event, you say: "How can you explain away the fact that the engineering report was not completed until 3 months after the referendum and 5 months after the TC vote." Because the engineering report was not relevant to either. As I have pointed out (obviously to no effect), neither vote was about actually authorizing spending on a sidewalk project. In fact, the motion on which the TC voted on Feb 16, authorizing the issuance of the bond, read as follows: "To consider and act upon a resolution entitled "A Resolution Appropriating $4,000,000 for the Town of New Canaan’s Road Network and Authorizing the Issuance of $4,000,000 in Bonds of The Town to Meet Said Appropriation and Pending the Issuance Thereof the Making of Temporary Borrowings for Such Purpose; AND that no monies be spent on new sidewalks on Main Street, until after a public hearing to be chaired by the Chair of the Public Works Sub-Committee, to be held March 3, 2011 at 7:30 p.m.” Please read that carefully. The vote, which passed 8-2 (Foley and Campbell opposing), specifically declares that NO monies be made available for sidewalks pending further consideration and public hearings. To portray the bond authorization as an approval of any spending, much less open-ended spending, on sidewalks, as the Mallozzi/RAW camp is doing, betrays either an ignorance of events or disingenuous demagoguery.
http://www.newcanaan.info/filestorage/9494/9226/3352/9787/9802/11841/town_council_minutes_110216.pdf
What "costly mess" are you talking about with regard to the sidewalks? How much money has been committed to sidewalks to date? What was flawed about the referendum? BTW, I agree that the sidewalk issue will be resolved based on further fact finding, but that has always been the case. It has nothing to do with "at this point", as if something has changed. Also, I agree that a process problem was exposed by the arbitration issue, both in regards to legal fees and communication between town bodies. But with regard to the bonding process and the execution of the Long Range Plan (er...there isn't even a plan yet, much less the execution of it!?!?), in what way is the "PROCESS" broken?
The previous (current) administration SHOULD be criticized for concealing information from voters and before the budget was passed by TC. Walker and De Waele should resign, with all due respect.