Light at the End of WHS Construction Tunnel

Members of the Wilton High School Building Committee held what they expect was their penultimate meeting on Tuesday and even they expressed some surprise at that fact.

The school's massive renovation project is nearing completion still ahead of schedule, with just a few tweaks necessary to already-installed systems and payouts of some of the last contracts to be finalized. Barring any unforeseen issues, the project will finish around $3 million under budget.

"There's light at the end of the tunnel," said Bruce Hampson, who led the meeting. "And I don't believe it's a train coming in the other direction."

The Building Committee is now in the process of moving its many contractors into "close out" status, a somewhat elaborate process that requires a variety of completed tests, certifications, punch list completions, etc., before payment can be issued. The committee had ten contractors requesting final pay at its last meeting in January and will add five more to the list, leaving Ferguson Mechanical as the only of 16 contractors with work left to finish.

Much of the work left to be done consists of refining systems that are already in place. For instance, the HVAC system, which accounted for approximately 50 percent of the entire project's budget, must be tested by a third party commissioner to ensure it is working properly (certain parts of the building have been reported as having fluctuating temperatures and the new and old wings still need to be synchronized).

But on the whole, the project is largely complete and the renovations were commended not just by town officials, but also by the teachers using them. Jim Luckey, the chair of the Science Department, said in September that in his 20 plus years in the school system, the construction was well beyond his expectations. He echoed his statement on Tuesday, saying he believed it was invaluable for teachers to have been part of the planning process for the construction and that this should be a hallmark of future renovations. Hampson said the same.

"I think one of the reasons the project was so successful in meeting the needs of the stakeholders was that the stakeholders were intimately involved before we put pencil to paper and all the way through the construction."

Sean O'Toole received commendation for his work seeking funding and rebates through Connecticut Light and Power. Hampson said that over the last three years, O'Toole has earned the school system about $285,000 from CL&P in energy efficiency initiatives.

Finally, Hampson touched on the progress of the bonding issue to support the construction, noting that through the town CFO Sandra Dennies, Wilton was able to float bonds around 3.31 percent.

"They hit the market very, very well," Hampson said. "When we started the project, the municipality couldn't even float a bond...and we ended up around 3.3 percent."