Newtown Officials Spent Part of GE Gift, Split Money into Two Appropriations

Caption: Newtown First Selectman Patricial Llodra says she is unsure as to whether plans to build the senior center and pool would continue or if the town would start from scratch with a new project.

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By Rebecca Carnes

First Selectman Pat Llodra and town officials authorized and began using donated GE gift money to hire architects, designers, and even a construction company to start the process of designing and engineering a senior center and pool project, town records show.

The town requested that its first payment of the $15 million GE gift money awarded to the town after the Sandy Hook tragedy be in the amount of $450,000, which is under the $500,000 mark which would require a town referendum vote before using.

Town officials have been spending the money since Aug. 27, 2014. GE didn’t hand over the initial $450,000 check until Dec. 30, 2014, according to town Finance Department records. About $81,000 of that money has been spent so far.

GE noted in a legal contract with the town that $10 million of the gift should be used on the planning and construction of a new, stand-alone facility with $5 million of the gift reserved for operating costs after it’s built.

The town charter, which outlines the law of the town, says the Legislative Council must set forth a town referendum on all special appropriations of $10 million or more. The town then made a second special appropriation of $9.55 million to allocate funds for a senior center and a near Olympic-sized pool on the Fairfield Hills campus.

The Board of Selectmen, Board of Finance, and the Legislative Council all voted last February to approve the special appropriation of the $9.55 million for the project.

George Ferguson was the lone Legislative Council member to vote against the appropriation during a May 7, 2014 council meeting.

Reached by phone Wednesday, Ferguson said he had asked Llodra during the meeting for a copy of the transmittal letter from GE Foundation to the town, stipulating precisely what the gift was for.

“Pat (Llodra) said she wasn’t going to share it with me, so I said, in that case, I will vote ‘no’,” Ferguson said, adding that he has extensive experience working with foundations as part of fundraising work and that correspondence between the donor and recipient to iron out intended use of money is typical before anything formal is signed.

Llodra said during an interview Wednesday that she didn’t know what Ferguson was referencing and that there has been no town correspondence with the GE Foundation other than the signed contract.

When asked if there needed to be a public referendum on how to appropriate the GE gift money, Llodra said to contact the town attorney, David Grogins.

In an e-mailed response, Grogins said the two appropriations of $450,000 and $9,550,000 met town charter requirements.

Newtown’s finance director, Bob Tait, said early yesterday that a scheduled April 28 town referendum on the GE gift money appropriation (which was cancelled by Llodra on Tuesday) was a “courtesy” to voters and didn’t need to go to a town referendum. Later that day, Tait clarified saying that anything over $10 million needed to go to a public referendum.

Since the money gift was announced by GE in November 2013 and then formally awarded by the GE Foundation to Newtown on Nov. 19, 2014, Llodra had scheduled four public information sessions all within the last month.

The first one on March 3 was cancelled and the second one was held at the Newtown senior center on March 7. During the fourth, public information meeting held on March 24 at the Municipal Center, some residents shared their concerns that the town-dubbed “community center” paid for with the GE money was senior-focused.

The next day Llorda scheduled three more public meetings all to be held before the April 28 referendum vote, but then cancelled the three meetings and announced on Tuesday that she would recommend pulling the GE gift question from the town referendum altogether.

A sample of the two-layered referendum question was presented to residents at the March 24 meeting and would have asked voters to either accept the GE money and spend it on the senior center and pool, or reject the money from GE altogether.

With the town referendum on the GE money likely cancelled, Llodra now says she is unsure as to whether plans to build the senior center and pool would continue or if the town would start from scratch with a new project.

At the 2013 meeting when GE and the town publically announced the $15 million gift, Llodra said that during the recovery from the 2012 school tragedy it was increasingly clear that Newtown “lacks a central meeting space for the whole community.”

She then thanked GE for their generous donation and said that it will “help us develop a community center, connecting people of all ages.”

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