Huge Crowd With Powerful Comments At Town Meeting For New School

It was a debate of historic significance when several hundred Clinton residents turned out at a March 28 on opposite sides of the fence regarding a proposed $64.7 million new Morgan School.

A prodigious showing with emotional comments for and against the project, voters said everything from "I'm leaving town if this doesn't pass," to "I want better for my child than what I had," to "a great deal of people in this town are unemployed and cannot afford this new school." 

First Selectman Willie Fritz, who served as moderator, explained to the crowd that due to state statutes, the Special Town Meeting is held as a "formality to adjourn to a referendum."

Comments were allowed, but no vote or action was taken at the meeting.

The referendum vote will be held Wednesday, April 11 from 6am to 8pm at

The Morgan Building Committee will hold their for residents which includes a tour of the high school, on Tuesday, April 3 at the . The tour will begin at 6:30pm; the presentation and Q&A at 7pm.

If you missed the town meeting, here's what a few speakers had to say:

Bruce Farmer said he's read all of the data available and finds that there is no side-by-side analysis of a build new vs. renovate including alternates to each proposal.

"I plead with the town, the Morgan Building Committee, the Board of Finance and Board of Selectmen to come up with an analysis prior to the April 11 referendum," said Farmer.

Clinton resident Alicia Sturgis explained that she works in another school district that voted to renovate their high school rather than build new. She said the price difference between new vs. renovate was $5 million, which has now dropped to $4 million due to the $1 million cost of temporary classrooms that will be discarded after the renovation. She quoted a laundry-list of problems including the noise of drilling, banging, blasting and beeping; the mess of concrete and sheetrock dust; interruption of their phone, internet and alarm systems; forced early closings; re-routing of emergency exits; no books as the library collection is in storage; dimly-lit halls; no gymnasium or locker rooms; loss of playing fields; loss of parking spaces; interruption to the middle school and loss of cafeteria services, to name a few.

Len Fried said that if he were moving to a new town and looking at the quality of the school system, he'd look first at test scores, college acceptance rates and the colleges the seniors got into before looking at the actual school building.

"This is not affordable," said Fried. "We have the highest tax rate on the shoreline. It will be 31 mils at some point. It will further discourage people and businesses from moving here."

Dan Remmes said he and his family moved to town six years ago from the city for a suburban lifestyle.

"If this referendum doesn't pass, we are leaving," said Remmes.

Clinton has a perception problem, Remmes said, one that says "we won't invest in education."

Clinton Taxpayers Association (CTA) president Pamela Fritz said the Morgan Building Committee has "not done their due diligence" and that the CTA, 250 members strong, has found lots of holes in the data and has many unanswered questions.

"We are still in a recession, seniors feel that they are not being listened to, houses are not selling, people are unemployed, gas and food prices are high," she said. "This is not the time to build a new school."

Jane Scully Welch described her life growing up with five siblings in a small house.

"My parents didn't pay much in taxes, so somebody paid for me to go to school," she said. "Nothing is more important in this town and our world than our children."

David Russo said he was born and raised in Clinton and his son attends the Morgan School.

"The school is exactly the same as when I was there," he said, which was not a good thing.

Russo said he'd rather invest his money in a new, state-of-the art facility rather than waste money remodeling the old one.

"Now is the time," said Russo. "Let's regain our sense of pride. Let's put Clinton back on the map where people want to live and raise their children."