A permit for its own lot, on its own money

The school tried to pave a parking lot it had called a safety hazard, with money it had already set aside. It took four months, the lot closed for the year, and in the end the school had to hand its own money to the town to get the work done.

The upper parking lot at Andover Elementary is the one closest to the main office. It is where certain staff and parents park. In 2023 the Board of Education considered it a safety problem, voted five to nothing to appropriate up to $120,000 to fix it, and set out to pave it over the summer, when the children would not be there ^[1].

It was the school’s own money, appropriated by the school’s own board, for work on the school’s own grounds. The plan was to have it done before the buses came back.

It was not done before the buses came back. It was not done that year at all.

On July 27, 2023 the permit was denied ^[2]. The stated grounds involved planning and zoning and wetlands, and both of those bodies subsequently made clear that the work did not require their approval. Days later, at the First Selectman’s request, the school met with the paver and public works, and a new set of conditions arrived from the town administrator: no permit unless the Board of Selectmen approved the project, town-hired laboratories to test the soil and the asphalt compaction, monitoring of the paving thickness, Cape Cod curbing ^[2a]^[2b]. The paver, who had been doing this for forty years, said he had not seen that on a job this size. The public works supervisor confirmed those things were not required of every job ^[2].

Take the conditions seriously for a moment, because they deserve it. Drainage matters. Compaction testing is not a frivolous thing to ask for. A town that is going to be blamed if a parking lot fails in three years has a real interest in how it is built. None of that is the argument here.

The argument is what it took.

On August 4 the superintendent sent the town administrator and the First Selectman the sections of Andover’s own charter that exempt the board of education from those requirements, in terms, by name ^[2a]^[2b]. There was no reply. With the administrator away, the school was told the only official who could issue a permit in his absence was the First Selectman. The board chair called him. No permit issued ^[2].

On August 14 the Board of Selectmen took it up, and the First Selectman moved to authorize the administrator to issue a conditioned permit ^[3]. That is real, and it should be said plainly: he moved to let it happen. But it came after the denial, after the conditions, and after the window to pave before school had closed. And the condition attached was the one that mattered: the school’s money would have to pass through a town-held fund, and the Board of Finance would have to vote to release it ^[3].

Three days later the town administrator explained the arrangement to the finance board without any decoration at all. The town controls that money, he said. It is not at the complete discretion of the school ^[4a]^[4b].

By September the school was being told the town would not accept a check made out to the contractor. It would accept only a check made out to the Town of Andover. The school would have to unencumber the money it had already set aside, hand it back to the town’s general fund, and let the town book the work and pay the bill. It becomes their money first ^[5a]^[5b]. A divided board voted four to three to do it ^[5].

In November the finance board stated the consequence in one sentence, as a matter of course, in its own meeting: moving the school’s money into the town fund moves the authority to spend it ^[6].

The upper lot stayed closed to buses, parents, staff and student drop-off for the school year ^[2]. In October, at a meeting of all three boards, a moderator asked the Board of Education point blank whether the town had ever interfered with its function. The board answered with this ^[7].

Two things need saying before anyone quotes this.

The First Selectman did not personally deny the permit, and this account does not say he did. What the record shows about him specifically is the position he had already stated, at the school’s own table, two months earlier: that the parking lot should go to CIP, because the building is a town asset ^[1]. His own account of the episode, given the following year, is that the school tried to pave a driveway without going to planning and zoning and without going to public works, and was trying to bypass everybody ^[8]. That is his framing. The record of that summer does not support it, and two town bodies said their approval was not needed at all.

And by 2024 the picture had changed, which the town said so at the time and which is fair. The money for the lot was set aside and the work could have been scheduled, and by then the school had put the failed bathrooms ahead of it ^[9]. The school itself pulled back a check it had written for the paving ^[10]. Those things are true about 2024.

They are not true about the summer of 2023, which is when a school with a documented safety hazard, its own appropriation, and its own contractor spent four months trying to get a permit to pave its own parking lot, and closed it instead.

A permit for its own lot, on its own money

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