FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 15, 2011

Magnet School “Deal” is a Consequence of Bad Decisions By First Selectman Herbst

Poor decisions and high-stakes gamesmanship by First Selectman Tim Herbst blew up in Herbst’s face and the faces of all residents of Trumbull residents with the passage this week of a permanent and irrevocable shift in the town’s border by the state legislature.

The shift essentially placed Fairchild Memorial Park, near Old Town Road on the Trumbull-Bridgeport town line, within the borders of Bridgeport. The park is the site of a proposed Bridgeport magnet high school but it would have been located within Trumbull.

“The first selectman had a deal in his hand that paid Trumbull millions of dollars, while allowing valuable oversight of the magnet high school project,” said Democratic Town Chairwoman Nancy DiNardo. “And he blew it. In the end he badly overplayed his hand.”

The massive school project, expected to accommodate 1,500 students from around the region, had been approved by the Trumbull Inland Wetlands and Water Courses Commission and was under consideration by the Planning and Zoning Commission. At the same time, the two governments had worked out an inter-municipal agreement that was very favorable to Trumbull. Under the terms of the agreement, Bridgeport would:

• Pay $1 million over 10 years to Trumbull.
• Pay several hundred thousand dollars to the Trumbull Center Fire District.
• Pay for road repairs on Quarry Road and Old Town Road.
• Cover all first-responder emergency services associated with the school.
• Provide the town of Trumbull 150 student slots in the school.

Beyond that, Bridgeport was going to have to comply with the stringent oversight of the Trumbull Planning and Zoning Commission, and it would have had to pay the town of Trumbull about $750,000 for a building permit.

But at the last minute, Herbst upped the ante, asking the state government for $5.2 million for communications equipment and for additional road improvements. At that point, the deal collapsed and a new arrangement emerged, somewhat enigmatically, that led to the Legislature’s action, and all of the elements of the inter-municipal deal are lost. Trumbull will be made forever smaller with no commensurate concession from Bridgeport. And even though First Selectman Herbst touted the new arrangement as a win-win deal, the truth is it’s not. Trumbull, having had a pristine parcel of parkland sliced from its borders, got nothing more than the right to negotiate to own a much smaller piece of land on Quarry Road. Deed restrictions severely restrict potential uses of the parcel.

“This represents a historic setback for the Town of Trumbull,” said DiNardo. “Make no mistake about that. Trumbull would have gotten the magnet school—a good thing—but the town would also have had several million dollars to help in a variety of ways, and the Trumbull Planning and Zoning Commission would have been in a position to protect the neighborhood from the blasting and rock grinding that's going to occur there for the next two years. And in addition, the Trumbull Board of Education would have realized savings by having such a large group of students moving into the magnet school. That’s all gone.”