Republican mayoral contender Ken Johnson said he strongly supports the construction of new schools. He said it’s too late to talk about renovating some of the city’s older buildings.
Johnson said that he thinks the proposed Forestville school site, at the former Crowley dealership beside Greene-Hills School, is “on the right track.”
He said that a kindergarten to eighth grade school there would make it possible to stop busing Forestville middle schoolers downtown.
“This brings them back home,” Johnson said. “I think that’s good news.”
But the situation in the western part of Bristol is “not so clear,” Johnson said.
He said he’s “very glad that the Roberts property did not bubble to the top of the list” for a school site. He said he hopes that “we can retain that parcel for passive recreation for years to come.”
“Beyond that,” Johnson said, “I choose to let process unfold. I commend the team working on it.”
“They’ve studied it much more closely than I have” and done their homework, he said.
As for the proposed school site at the Scalia pit off Barlow Street, “we’ll see if it passes muster as it moves forward,” Johnson said.
“I do have to wonder about the selection of privately owned properties, particularly where we’re honing in on two privately owned properties even before we’ve begun negotiating on price,” Johnson said about both sites.
He said he’ll be “watching closely to ensure we don’t overpay as we did with mall.”
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Copyright 2007. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com
9 comments:
To Ken Johnson,
I want to thank you and the entire Bristol First team for standing up in vocal support of open space for the Roberts Property. The city needs leaders like you.
We are steadfast supporters !
One the most fundamental characteristics of a leader is paying attention to the details. A characteristic that many of our current council members lack. The Mall is a great example of not looking beyond the purchase. So too is this school scenario. All of the candidates (especially the new ones) are in such an all fired hurry to endorse the sites and say all the politically correct things that they are missing the biggest detail of all. If this proposal by the BOE proceeds and allows for the construction of two mega K - 8 schools we (Bristol) will have a bifurcated educational system. Half of the city will be K - 8 and the other half will be K - 5 & middle school. So imagine a married couple with school age children moving to Connecticut for a new job, let’s say ESPN. One would hope that they would look at Bristol as a primary residential option. First on their list of priorities will be education. If they consider a purchase in the Northeast section then their children will have a K - 5, middle school program. If they buy in Forestville they will have a K - 8 program. I guarantee you that they will write Bristol off ASAP. Test scores are a challenge enough who needs a town with a schizophrenic school system. The devil is in the detail people. Let's resolve the system structure issue first and then we figure where we place new schools or how we renovate older ones. Will some one please pay attention?!
Ken thanks for looking out for property owners and taxpayers. you have our votes.
Does Ken Johnson even know where the Roberts property is?
Ken , you just lost my vote. You sold the rest of Bristol and its children out to protect the privleged class that resides on Chippens Hill. The k-8 idea is just plain insane. I thought a smart guy like you would have figured that out.
Privledged class? Sorry for working hard and earning a living! Politics aside, your behavior is not helping anyone.
If it bothers you that much, would you suggest that Chippens Hill become its own community. We could build a giant fence around it and keep the well-to-do, hardworking people from infesting the rest of the Bristol. I'm all for secession if the rest of the town demands it!
Sounds good. After all its Bristol that can't survive without our taxbase not the other way around.
Can any of you look past your pocketbooks to see that it's time we did something right for a change? There are reams and reams of documents, if you take the time to look, that support the k-8 system. People seem to forget that most of the money will be coming from the state, but it's obviously easier to make it seem as if we're shelling out all the money for it than to be honest and remind people that the funding exists without our taxes going up. Our taxes went up this year, because every ten years is the revaluation of property ... EVERY TEN YEARS!!! It just happened to hit at a bad time when EVERYTHING is going up. That's no fault of the city officials. That's the law! If You don't like it, speak to your legislators at the state capitol. Two of them live right here in Bristol, Nicastro and Burns.
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