Montville Fire Marshal Warns About Unanticipated Costs

Fire Marshal Ray Occhialini delivered, in his words, some bad news to the Public Safety Building Commission Thursday night.

The cost of moving fiber-optic and 911 cables could add up to as much as $37,000 that was not anticipated, Occhialini said.

Lt. Leonard Bunnell said this morning that the financing for the project took into account the fact that unanticipated costs would arise.

"We knew we would experience increases," Bunnell sad. "We have prepared for that."

Right now, fiber-optic cable for high-speed computers ends at Gallivan Lane, Occhialini said. The state ran it to there, for free – but the cost of running it from Gallivan Lane to the new public safety building, across the street from the prison, would be anywhere from $20,000 to $30,000, he said.

“If we knew everything was going to move,” Occhialini said, “we’d have said not to put it in.”

Bunnell echoed Occhialini, saying that he thought the state should do the work for the town for free.

"But," he said, "these are the cards we're dealt."

In addition, the state is going to implement a new 911 system, but the bids on the new system came in very high, Occhialini said, and so the state has decided to go out  for a new round of bids.

This will delay the new 911 system until sometime between January and March 2012. Occhalini said that since the new public safety building is slated to be finished before that time, that means the town would have to shoulder the cost of moving ns the current 911 system from the existing police station to the new public service building, at a cost of roughly $7,000.

“So that’s the bad news I have tonight,” Occhialini said.