Library Supporters Embark On Two-Month Drill

By Scott Benjamin

BROOKFIELD – Library officials are on a two-month drill to get residents to approve spending $14.77 million to achieve a goal that began before Belichick and Brady became the pride of New England.

The Board of Finance, which has four recently-elected members, is currently getting input from a financial analyst on how the town would be able to pay for the proposed library, which would be built on the horse statue field at the Municipal Center - and the pending renovations to Huckleberry Hill Elementary School (HHES) and the police headquarters – both of which don’t yet have a price tag.

Yvonne Cech, who became the library’s director last April, said in an interview that the Board of Finance will likely vote on the proposed 35,000 square-foot structure early next month and a special town meeting, which had initially been slated for December 21, is now tentatively scheduled for Monday night, January 8, at Brookfield High School. Since there is a 45-day waiting period for appropriations of $1 million or more, a referendum would be set for February 27, just two days before the last extension for a long-standing $1 million state grant for the project would expire.

The two-floor facility would be built on the horse statue athletic field at the municipal campus on Pocono Road. It would replace the 42-year-old, 9,000-square foot building on Whisconier Road, where there are cramped study areas and only 38 parking spaces.

However, The News-Times has reported that youth soccer supporters have circulated a petition in opposition to the proposal, noting that about 20 years ago they raised $160,000 to construct the field. Some of them also believe that the town should first consider improvements to HHES before embarking on the new library.

Additionally, state Rep. Steve Harding has said he supports eventually building a library but that presently he is “very leery” about the proposal because of the town doesn’t know the costs for the other two pending capital expenditures.

First Selectman Steve Dunn, who annexed a second term in November, has said that “over time” the three projects can be built without increasing the tax mill rate, since the town’s current debt will be slashed in half over the next decade and the emerging 198-acre Town Center of Brookfield will generate $1 million to $1.5 million in additional annual tax revenue over the coming years.

Catherine Lasser, a member of the Board of Trustees of the Brookfield Library and the Library Foundation, said there is a plan to defray at least $1 million in costs over the next three years through fund-raising.

However, on the last two major school construction projects, Brookfield voters have had to approve additional appropriations. The expansion of Whisconier Middle School, which was approved in 1998, needed a second referendum in 2000 to secure money for an auxiliary gymnasium. Voters approved a $31 million appropriation for Brookfield High School (BHS) in 2003 but later had to ratify an additional $750,000 appropriation for the project. The BHS project also underwent extensive value engineering from architects so that it would conform to the costs.

Selectman Harry Shaker, a long-time youth coach and former member of the Board of Education, said during his bid for first selectman this fall that the horse statue field is not a good site for the new library.

However, Christina Cumberton, who chairs a 13-member ad-hoc committee seeking to find space for new athletic fields, said another field has been identified in the area between the pump house and the Municipal Center to replace the horse statue field. That would keep the soccer players on the municipal campus and close to the popular Kids Kingdom playground, which was initially constructed in 1989 and then renovated in 2012.

Cumberton, who also is the chairman of the committee for the proposed new library, said the ad-hoc panel will submit its final report in February. Dunn has said that he is confident that there are enough town-owned properties to address any elimination of existing fields.

Harding has said the town should continue to pursue options of building a new library in the Town Center of Brookfield near the Four Corners intersection of Federal Road, since it would help generate customers for nearby retail outlets.

However, Cumberton said the committee for the new library did an extensive search through the Town Center, noting that any potential parcels were either off the market or had extensive wetlands.

“We even asked a couple of homeowners if they had interest in selling their house in the near future,” she said.

Cech said that aside from the additional land acquisition costs of building a new library in the Town Center, it also would have a parcel taken off the town’s tax base.

She said there are “a lot of synergies” in having a library on the municipal campus, since it would be near the Municipal Center, the Senior Center, the southern entrance to the Still River Greenway, athletic fields and the Post Office.

Lasser said the initial master plan for the Ptak property, which was purchased at a January 1981 referendum for the municipal campus on Pocono Road, indicated that eventually a library would be built on the site.

Then-Gov. M. Jodi Rell (R-Brookfield) said during a ceremony at the Post Office in 2006 that Brookfield previously had two Post Offices and some residents didn’t think that there would be much traffic to the new facility on Pocono Road.

“Now we could not imagine it not being here,” she added.

Cech said that Doyle Coffin of Ridgefield, the architectural consultant, has designed the proposed structure to address maintaining the current staff levels. She said the only additional operating costs would be a projected $66,000 annually for two part-time custodians and a part-time maintenance worker.

She said the space is comparable to the library that opened along Main Street South in Southbury in 2006 and would have some similarities to other 21^st century-style libraries, such as the one that opened in Ridgefield in 2014 and features a number of meeting rooms, which are constantly booked.

Cech said the proposed Brookfield Library would have 10 meeting rooms as well as additional space for the 800 to 1,100 children who attend programs monthly.

During a July 2015 interview then-First Selectman Bill Tinsley said mobile digitization had reached the point where “a library would be about the last place that I would go to get information.”

Cech disagreed, saying that libraries have become even more vital during the Internet Revolution, noting that this fall her staff provided a public library card to every freshmen at BHS so they could have 24-hour digital access instead of just having it during the academic day.

The library has had to wait in line for more than a decade to consider a new facility.

In August, 1999, former library Director Robert Gallucci first discussed the need to expand operations beyond the current facility, which opened in 1975 after state House Speaker Fran Collins, then the representative from the 107^th District, helped secure state funds to buy the parcel.

A formal committee to build a new library was established about 15 years ago and Rell attended a fund-raising tea on their behalf in 2004, shortly after becoming governor.

An ad-hoc committee chaired by former Danbury Hospital Vice President Pete Peterson in 2004-2005 considered options for new construction at the senior center on Pocono Road, recreation improvements and a new library. The committee’s report called for interim improvements to be made to each of the projects. The senior center expansion was completed in 2010. The Kids Kingdom playground was rebuilt in 2012 and the town beach and Cadigan Park renovations were finished in 2015.

Jerry Murphy, who was first selectman at the time, said during the mid-2000s that probably all three projects could have gone forward if the town wasn’t facing the long-term bonding costs on adding science labs and building two synthetic athletic fields at Brookfield High School, as well as updating the structure to current building codes.

Cech said the proposed facility would be at least a silver level in green technologies, making it far more energy efficient than the current library.

She said if the current library is vacated, she is confident that it can be used for municipal office space or sold to a private developer.

Cech said the library will sponsor information sessions, speak with civic groups and send information via the social media over the coming weeks to generate support for the referendum.

If approved, she said design specifications could be completed by spring 2019 and the new structure could be open by late fall 2020.

Cech said she is confident that the proposal will be ratified. She noted that the plan received enthusiastic support from focus groups last summer and 5,500 Brookfield residents have library cards.

She declared, “The time is right.”