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Community Corner

Council Fast Tracks High School Emergency Access

On Monday, the Common Council voted unanimously to waive the bid process for the project.

A new emergency access road at Middletown High School could be put in place as early as this summer according to the school’s building committee.

On Monday the Common Council voted unanimously to waive the bid process for the project meaning construction can begin sooner rather than later.

In total, the Council approved up to $155,000 to be spent on the project. This was slightly higher than the $129,000 it is expected to cost to construct the access road in order to provide additional money if necessary for any additional costs, supervision or to meet any other unforeseen occurrences that might arise while the project is underway.

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The high school building committee had asked the Council for a bid waiver in order to allow for the project to be completed this summer in time for the beginning of school next fall.

The bid process could have taken anywhere from two to three months to complete which would have most likely prohibited the project from being completed before the start of the next school year if a bid waiver was not granted.

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The project will be performed by Derita Construction.

Minority Leader Philip Pessina said he brought the absence of an emergency access road to the attention of his fellow members of the Council a year ago.

“I could not understand right after we opened the school [why] the road was not constructed,” explained Pessina.

According to the minority leader, he kept asking himself what if something happened at the high school and emergency responders could not get where they needed to go.

Middletown Mayor Sebastian Giuliano recalled the first graduation ceremony at the new high school when Route 3 was backed up for blocks and some students were forced to abandon their cars and walk to the graduation.

“Had we needed to get an ambulance to that site, we couldn’t have been able to do it,” he explained.

This new access road will provide emergency vehicles the ability to get to the school in the case of an emergency.

According to Giuliano, the new access road is an important addition to the school. “I’m glad it is getting done,” he remarked.

Majority Leader Thomas Serra indicated that members of the building committee and the Council didn’t have much of a choice when it came to the road. “We had to do this,” he explained Monday night.

The money to pay for the access road will come from available project funds associated with constructing the high school, according to Serra.

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