Selectmen to meet on Schlumberger, budget

Written by Macklin Reid, Press Staff
Thursday, 22 March 2012 12:38

A potential lease-purchase agreement with an art collector for a portion of the Schlumberger property, and three-year budget projections will be discussed by the selectmen early next week.

The Board of Selectmen has called a special meeting on Monday, March 26, at noon in town hall for public review of the three-year budget projections, followed by a closed-door executive session discussion of the possible Schlumberger sale.

The selectmen will discuss the three-year budget projections in anticipation of making them part of their presentation at Monday night’s the Board of Finance hearing. That hearing is at 7:30 Monday night in East Ridge Middle School.

As a pending contract, the Schlumberger agreement would qualify exception to freedom of information laws and may legally be discussed behind closed doors.

But First Selectman Rudy Marconi said at Wednesday night’s selectmen’s meeting that the deal to be discussed Monday is one that has been mentioned before with a Ridgefielder interested in using portions of the Schlumberger property to store an extensive private art collection.

There are buildings on the site that lend themselves to providing at reasonable cost the kind of climate-controlled environment needed for long term storage of valuable art.

Mr. Marconi has said previously that owing to the environmental clean-up that Schlumberger must do on the site, and the art collector’s eagerness to occupy the property, any deal would probably begin with a rental of portions of the site, to become a sale after the environmental clean-up is completed and approved by the state.