New Haven Register - News - 03/22/2007 - Saybrook will vote on center, radio

03/22/2007

Saybrook will vote on center, radio

Michael Gannon , Register Staff

OLD SAYBROOK — A town meeting has given residents one last look at proposals for an arts center and a new radio communications system that would cost a total of about $4.7 million. Residents will have the final say in a bond referendum March 29.

The ballot will have two questions. One would authorize the town to sell up to $2.98 million in bonds to help offset the roughly $4 million cost of turning the old Town Hall into the Katharine Hepburn Center for the Arts. The other is asking for $1.78 million to replace the town’s 35-year-old emergency radio system. A new system would tie in the police, fire and ambulance services to one another and eventually, their counterparts in surrounding towns.

"We laid out our business plan for the (arts center)," said First Selectman Michael Pace. "My intent is to keep it off budget. We’ll establish an arts council and an endowment."

The bonds would be for 20 years. Those for the radio system, if apoproved, would be for 15, "because that is about the life expectancy of the system," Pace said.

Pace acknowledged that there are questions from the public about the radio system. But he said police, fire, ambulance and public works personnel have documented the need. Police officials have said at recent hearings that parts for the current system — installed during the Nixon adminsitration — are no longer manufactured. Many of the hand-held radios used by the town are between 10 and 18 years old. The town already has set aside more than $900,000 for the radio project.

The voting will be held noon to 8 p.m. at the middle school, 60 Sheffield St. Residents who are registered voters, and any U.S. citizen who owns property in town valued at more than $1,000, are eligible to vote.

Pace said that the new debt incurred by the bonds would not go on the books until fiscal 2008-09, but that it would not represent an increase in spending, as more than $440,000 in debt is scheduled to be paid off in 2007-08. "With this new bonding, $138,000 would still come off the books. No new taxes would be needed," he said.

If theater supporters are able to exceed their goal of $1.5 million in private fund raising, that amount would never have to be bonded. The town also would save about $13,000 a year in rent by moving its judge of probate office to the theater basement.