Sherman Connecticut News

A Tale of Two Snowstorms

Transparency, Steel, and Sherman’s Missing Construction Logs

A Tale of Two Snowstorms

In the Town of Sherman, winter weather appears to possess a highly selective, almost bureaucratic severity. Depending on the audience, a single snowstorm can either be a minor inconvenience easily conquered by municipal contractors, or a crippling event that suspends the rule of law.

If you read First Selectman Don Lowe’s weekly column in the Town Tribune, the narrative is one of architectural triumph. Updating the public on his recent meetings with Neufeld Construction regarding the $42.8 million Sherman School renovation, Lowe paints a picture of unstoppable progress. He writes proudly that “despite the challenges brought by the recent weather, that the work is on schedule,” noting explicitly that crews are currently “finishing the concrete work” and “starting steel framing.”

It is a reassuring message for taxpayers financing the largest capital project in town history: heavy machinery, pouring concrete, and raising structural steel against the winter chill.

Yet, in the quiet corridors of Town Hall, that very same weather has induced a state of administrative paralysis.

The Hartford Paradox

Currently, the Town of Sherman is facing a formal complaint before the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission (FOIC) in Hartford. The complaint centers on the administration's failure to produce the daily construction logs for the school project—basic public records that track exactly how, when, and where that $42.8 million is being spent.

When pressed by the State of Connecticut as to why his office has failed to comply with statutory transparency laws, the First Selectman did not cite complex legal redactions or extensive archival searches. He offered a more meteorological defense.

In a February 26th email to the FOIC, Lowe claimed that fulfilling the public records request was complicated by the health of his assistant and “a snowstorm that we are still digging out of.”

The Logistics of Accountability

The duality is impossible to reconcile. The First Selectman cannot use the local press to boast that town contractors are effortlessly pouring concrete and erecting structural steel through the winter snow, while simultaneously telling the State of Connecticut that he is too snowbound to forward a PDF containing the daily logs of that exact same work.

Snowstorms Stop Office Work, Not Outdoor Construction...

Furthermore, the physical reality of commercial construction dictates that you cannot manage a $42.8 million steel-and-concrete operation without maintaining daily construction logs. If the contractors are on-site and hitting milestones, the logs exist. They are active, digitized, and readily available to project managers.

Which leaves taxpayers with a lingering, uncomfortable question: If the weather isn't actually stopping the heavy machinery, what is stopping the First Selectman from handing over the documents?

The State of Connecticut has acknowledged receipt of the complaint, and the FOIC will soon require the town to answer that question on the record. Until then, Sherman remains a town where the snow is apparently light enough to build a school, but far too heavy to allow the public to see the receipts.