Source
At the August 9, 2023 Board of Education meeting the superintendent gave a detailed, contemporaneous account of what had happened to the school's paving project since the board voted 5-0 on June 14 to appropriate up to $120,000 to repave the upper parking lot and basketball court as a safety matter (~23:13). On July 27 the school's contractor applied for a standard town right-of-way permit and it was denied, on the grounds that the school needed to go through planning and zoning and wetlands. The planning and zoning chair then told her and the board chair that it was not a planning and zoning matter and they did not need to come before the commission; the wetlands commission wrote that it was not a wetlands matter. On July 31, at the First Selectman's request, the school met with the paver and public works, after which the town administrator sent new conditions: no permit unless the project was approved at a Board of Selectmen meeting, town-hired laboratories to test soil and asphalt compaction, paving-thickness monitoring, Cape Cod curbing, and public-works backfill. The paver, of forty years' experience, said he had not seen such conditions on a job this size. On August 4 the superintendent sent the town administrator and the First Selectman the sections of the town charter that except the board of education from those requirements, and received no reply. With the administrator away, she was told the only official who could issue the permit in his absence was the First Selectman; the board chair called him, and no permit issued. The board closed the upper lot for the school year (~23:41-36:02).