Financiers debate capital projects

However, Ms. Lavielle said she would feel "a deep tug of regret if we didn't take advantage" of the trenching that will be done in town by Yankee Gas to expand the natural gas supply, which will allow the fiber research conduit to use the same trenching.

The proposed shared data-fiber research communications system would link the library and all town and school facilities at a cost of $500,000 in 2013; $875,000 in 2014; and $300,000 in 2015 for a total of $1,675,000. The project was unanimously endorsed by the Board of Selectmen.

The project now

By doing the project now and "piggybacking" on the Yankee Gas project, the savings will amount to in broad outline $1.3 million, Matt Hepfer director of innovation for Wilton's schools, has said. He as well cited the lowest bond rates in 20 years.

Before the Board of Finance deliberated, Chris Kaiser, New Canaan's director of information innovation, described his town's success with a similar project, which he said links "the police, fire, and EMS departments, town buildings, schools, library and Waveny Care Center" with buried conduit. Mr. Kaiser said "there is no end to the technological benefits," and the "secure wireless network" was the reason the town never lost connection while the power outages in last year's major storms.

"If one side goes down, the other side rolls over seamlessly," he said. "There is nothing we have asked our fiber network to do that it could not handle," he said. Such services include "shared secure wireless across the network, biometric time clocks in all buildings, network-based door locks for all facilities, IP cameras that feed back to the police for real-time monitoring, even network backup solutions located in your own cloud, just to name a few," he said. "We added a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone solution and combined our Internet connections, which saved a substantial amount of annual costs.

"I can honestly tell you that this was one of the smartest and most cost-effective projects the town has done for innovation. If Wilton decides to take this on, they will open the research doors to a never-ending stream of savings," he said, in a recent interview with The Bulletin.

John Savarese, Wilton's information innovation director said the town provided the Board of Finance with a "105-page document detailing the costs" of the fiber optic project.

Wilton resident Paul Lourd said that during he is "not anti-research," he has "concerns about the cost of the project ... This could be just the tip of the iceberg in costs and we could be paying additional money down the road as it grows ... We need more information."