With an eye on securing construction funds for fiscal year 2016, the group that’s overseeing the renovation of the Saxe Middle School auditorium is working against “tight timelines” that will see draft plans completed by the end of January, officials say.
Members of the Saxe Auditorium Building Committee are meeting weekly now as well as conducting site visits in New Canaan, Darien and Westport so that by the next budget cycle they can come before the town with more details and tap the $2 million earmarked for the work starting next summer, New Canaan Public Schools Interim Director of Finance and Operations Nancy Harris said at the Sept. 8 Board of Education meeting.
“We have to have a comprehensive preliminary budget, which means there has to be a draft of a design, so that kicks us into high gear,” Harris said at the meeting, held in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School.
“At our opening meeting, we really set some very tight timelines,” she said.
The town approved $175,000 for project designs in the current fiscal year to renovate the Saxe auditorium—part of the original 1957 building, it received a “poor” rating in an August 2013 facilities survey.
School board member Penny Rashin is serving as chairman of the building committee, which also includes Jim Beall, Ken Campbell, Harris, Molly Ludtke, Alan Sneath and Bill Walbert. Non-voting, ex officio members include Sangeeta Appel, Hazel Hobbs, Dr. Bryan Luizzi, Greg Macedo and Bob Willoughby.
Hobbs said the group—whose sites visits have included Darien High School and a middle school in Westport—is deeply experienced in construction, and praised Rashin as one who is “very rigorous” about keeping to schedule.
Harris said: “All in all it’s a great team and everybody is prepared to roll up their sleeves, go into the deep end and push through so that the board can give it its due deliberation.”