Letter: Another misstep with Lewis house

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To the editor,

The saga of the Tracy Lewis House continues. Another misstep and delay. Our town leaders proposed a survey on the ballot for Election Day asking the electorate their opinion on the project and on one of three building proposals but not mentioning the talked about price of $6 million.

How gullible do they think the taxpayers are? Haven’t they ever heard of the old saying, “Don’t buy a pig in a poke.”  But the bait-and-switch scheme didn’t work. State officials said questions on the ballot must ask residents to approve a specific dollar amount.

They elected to say nothing about the Tracy Lewis House on Election Day. They refuse to sell this unused town property and return the funds to the town treasury so as to reduce taxes. Mark my words, they’ll be back with another proposal to raise your taxes.

James Woodward

Beacon Falls

1 COMMENT

  1. Mr Woodward is another resident that is joining the growing list of taxpayers that are suggesting that the Town get out of the real estate business and sell the Wolfe Ave – Tracy S Lewis House property. Mr Woodward’s letter is correct, but does not mention is why we were going to promote a survey. The Board of Finance is mandating that to move forward with any type of building project that we validate if there is an interest from the Legislative Body/Taxpayers for such a project.

    There is much debate related to how to distribute the survey and what questions to ask. I have been adamant that we need to mention a “proposed” cost in the description of the request in support of the survey questions. The truth, since we do not have a building design, we do not have the square footage from which a cost can be derived. What I can tell you is that we now have several proposals in front of us and that the simple math is square footage times $400 and you have a “estimate” of the cost.

    For example we have been discussing the total square footage as being 15,000 SqFt. That calculates to be a $6,000,000 project. If it is 12,000 sqft it might be $4,800,000. Several residents have suggested that we renovate the house and add a 5,000 sqft Media Center estimated with an added elevator at $2,500,000.

    So, there is no bait & switch, we just do not know what we are building and therefore there is no dollar cost.

    Again, our intention was to offer several questions, but the main question in front of us: Do you the residents of Beacon Falls want to move forward with a building project on the Wolfe Ave property and as such are you willing to support the Board of Finance authorizing up to $60,000 for the Building committee to conceptualize a design that will have a project cost to then go to a referendum on actually building whatever.