The fair point
On the bathroom project he was right, and he was not alone in saying so. It is worth saying that plainly, because most of this account runs the other way.
There is a criticism the First Selectman has been making of the elementary school, and he is right about it. It is worth saying so plainly.
The elementary school’s bathroom renovation went out as a request for proposals and came back as a design-build job, with the school’s own engineering firm both pricing the work and acting as general contractor [1].
For a small repair, that arrangement is ordinary and sensible. The firm knows the building, the job is too small to be worth a procurement exercise, and nobody should want a school running a competitive bid every time a pipe fails. For a project of this size, it is a reasonable thing to ask about, and somebody should have asked about it.
At the Board of Education in October 2025 the First Selectman asked about it [2]. At the Board of Finance that December he came back to it, saying there was a problem with how things had been done [3].
He was right.
He was also not the only one raising it, and there is no sense pretending the question was invented by him, or that it was unfair, or that it was part of anything. It was a good question about a real thing, asked in public by an official entitled to ask it.
I am writing it down because it is true, and because anything I write about this man that could not bring itself to say so would not be worth your time.
Sources
- Board of Selectmen meeting, January 12, 2026 – the bathroom project moves from a competitive bid to design-build (2026-01-12)
- Board of Education meeting, October 9, 2025 – the First Selectman questions the bathroom contractor selection (2025-10-09)
- Board of Finance meeting, December 17, 2025 – the First Selectman on the bathroom project and the school’s process (2025-12-17)