A screen shot from last week's Derby Capital Plan Commission meeting.
DERBY – Mayor Rich Dziekan’s chief of staff said a board of education member’s letter to the editor published last week was purely political.
“Quite frankly I don’t appreciate Mongillo politicizing the whole thing. She took a situation that was relayed to her and tried to use it for political purposes. I think using children and their education, or their safety, to accomplish your own political agenda is disgusting,” Walt Mayhew, the mayor’s chief of staff, said.
Mayhew was responding to a letter published Sept. 20 written by Melissa Mongillo, a Democrat serving her first term on the Derby Board of Education.
In the letter, Mongillo said the Dziekan administration blocked school security spending from being added to the agenda of the Sept. 8 meeting of the Derby Board of Aldermen & Alderwomen. The mayor’s office sets the agenda for the meeting, a practice that started in January and has been a source of controversy between the mayor and the board’s Democratic majority.
Click here, here, here and here for previous stories on the power struggle between the mayor and the Democrats on the Board of Aldermen & Alderwomen.
Derby Public Schools Superintendent Matthew Conway had sent a proposed resolution to Mayhew on Sept. 2 that was meant to reach the desk of the Derby Board of Aldermen & Alderwomen.
The proposed resolution asked voters to consider borrowing $1.4 million for security updates to school facilities. The security updates would best be characterized as “target hardening:” infrastructure improvements and repairs, all connected to a safety audit.
However, in her letter, Mongillo said the Dziekan administration did not want to talk about the potential for additional borrowing because the administration wants all attention on a $3 million bond to pave roads.
“With much surprise, we were told by the Dziekan administration that we could not talk to the Board of Alders about our safety and security initiatives because they did not want these topics to get confused with the road paving package they were trying to get through to referendum so they could have paving in place prior to Rich Dziekan‘s next election,” Mongillo said.
In November, Derby voters will be asked to approve or reject $3 million in road repairs and paving. Click here to read a previous story.
Mayhew said Mongillo was twisting his words.
Mayhew told The Valley Indy it is too late to consider any of the school district’s capital projects for the November referendum.
“Number one, we spent months working with the bond attorney to draft all the documents, resolutions, wording, yada yada yada, to go in front of the various boards and commission to be approved. There’s no time to do that between now and the date that we’re under to get it on the ballot,” Mayhew said.
However, Jim Gildea, the chairman of the Derby Board of Education, said the school superintendent made the Dziekan administration aware of the potential borrowing request over the summer, in a verbal communication, and had asked to speak on the subject during the August Aldermanic meeting.
“I will just tell you that this narrative saying we only told the administration about our security initiative in September is just not true,” Gildea said. “The superintendent tried to bring it up months earlier, when they were talking about the road bond.”
In an email to The Valley Indy, Conway said that he had talked to the mayor before the August Aldermanic meeting, and that the mayor was supposed to call on him to introduce the subject matter to the elected officials. However, the mayor forgot to call on him during the meeting and later apologized, Conway said.
Mayor Dziekan said he did not recall that conversation.
“Only time I recall about referendum was right before we started to do it. I don’t remember anything over the summer talking about this,” he said.
Mayhew said he creates the meeting agenda for the Aldermen/Alderwomen meeting. The first he heard about the district’s hope to get something to voters was just prior to the September meeting.
Mayhew said the school district has a long, multi-million list of capital improvements. He said that putting too many borrowing items in front of voters would end badly.
“I said I cannot put it on the ballot for the road bond. In addition, I said look at what you’re asking for. I think there’s a $14 million proposal for air conditioning? I said that it should really be voted upon up and down on its own, not incorporated with anything like the road bond because, quite frankly, at some point people say ‘this is just too much money’ and they vote everything down,” Mayhew said.
The chief of staff said the school district’s request should go to the Derby Capital Planning Commission. Capital plans refer to big-ticket expenses, such as renovation projects and purchasing equipment such as fire trucks.
“There’s been no investigation into the need for this. The board of education did not reach out prior and offer any hint that there was capital they were considering for a referendum. You don’t do that two days before a meeting,” Mayhew said. “There is a process, and I redirected them to go through the process. Go use the capital plan as the first step, get everything outlined, then we can get it vetted in terms of feasibility and costs and all that type of stuff. And then if it’s deemed something the city wants to pursue, there are avenues to pursue it.”
School officials pointed out the city was provided with detailed paperwork about the district’s capital needs, including specific security upgrades and repairs.
The Derby Capital Planning Commission met on Sept. 22. It was the commission’s first meeting since January 2021.
The commission faces a long list of requests, including police cars, a fire truck, and an ambulance. That’s along with the school district items, which, in addition to security, includes replacing the HVAC system at the high school (the school’s opening was delayed last year thanks to mold) and replacing plumbing at the Bradley School (a busted sewage pipe briefly closed the school last year).
However, the commission could not take action on any of the items last week because the meeting lacked a quorum.
The commission members are:
Richard Dziekan — Mayor (Republican)
Sarah Widomski — President of the BOA/A (Democrat)
Vacant — Chair of BOAT (a recent resignation, was a Republican)
James Gildea — Chairman of BOE (ran with the Republicans)
Gino DiGiovanni — Additional Alderman (Republican)
Charles Sampson — Additional Alderman (Republican)
Bhamini Patel — Additional BOAT Member (Democrat)
Only Dziekan, DiGiovanni and Sampson attended the meeting.
Derby Fire Department Chief David Lenart called the lack of attendance at the meeting “disgraceful.”
Derby Town/City Clerk Marc Garofalo pointed out the meeting had only been scheduled a few days prior, and that some members could not attend. Sampson pointed out a Google Doc had been transmitted to the elected officials, and that the date was agreed upon.
In an interview on Tuesday (Sept. 27) Gildea said the school board still hopes to get the security items in front of the Board of Aldermen/Alderwomen for review. The district is pursuing other options for funding. Many of the items requested by the school district are eligible to be reimbursed by the federal or state government, and others are eligible for grant funding.
