When Al Barbarotta, the governor's close friend and manager of his private Stamford property, was approached by the Malloy administration in December to coordinate the relocation of school equipment from the shattered remains of Sandy Hook Elementary School, he said he would be happy to help, free of charge.
But Newtown officials say Barbarotta made a sales pitch to them during that traumatic move from Newtown to Chalk Hill School in Monroe. Additionally, he later sent them a sales brochure that state officials say improperly used the logo of a government agency.
"Here you are in the midst of a tragedy, and this guy is trying to sell you stuff," said one Newtown official, who asked not to be identified because he is not an authorized spokesman. "He really upset a lot of people."
Barbarotta's firm, Conveo Energy, works out of the same Bridgeport address as AFB Construction Management of Trumbull, Inc., his company that manages school facilities throughout the state as well as public works and parks in Stamford, where Gov. Dannel P. Malloy was mayor for 14 years.
Barbarotta on Thursday acknowledged that he handed out Conveo literature at Chalk Hill that featured a Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection symbol and logo on the top of a page, with Conveo's addresses and phone numbers on the bottom.
Officials from DEEP on Thursday called it a misuse of its logo and said Barbarotta will be asked to stop. He said he will.
Ron Bienkowski, the school district's business director, said Barbarotta's sales pitch for Conveo's services was heavy-handed, warning Newtown that it could be fined if it didn't comply with DEEP air-quality mandates.
"I didn't like their marketing style, because they were very threatening," he said.
Barbarotta, whose handling of Malloy's million-dollar property in Stamford set off an investigation this month into the use of city equipment by a landscape contractor there, said his company has given about 40 school districts in the state similar literature.
In an interview, Barbarotta said that during a break in the activity at Chalk Hill, which has been renamed Sandy Hook, he shared what he said was information on a free service that can save schools money while they can comply with new DEEP energy-efficiency regulations for school furnaces and lighting.
`We don't see it as sales'
Conveo makes its money -- and profits -- in the back end of such conservation projects, taking a 25 percent cut of any school system savings. "We don't see it as sales," Barbarotta said of the work his company does to help schools meet state standards that have been in effect since February.
In Stamford, AFB provided gas, oil and electricity conservation management to the Board of Education since 2010. The arrangement has netted the company more than $100,000 in incentive bonuses over the last three years.
AFB performs the energy efficiency work under the umbrella of its Systems Analyst Services, for which it charges the city a $92,000 fee included in its one-year, $508,000 contract with the school district.
Schools Superintendent Winifred Hamilton said Stamford schools are getting a deal on the energy savings program because the management service is included in AFB's contract.
"Without a doubt, it's been a major savings to the city and to my operating budget," she said. "In the long run, it's a savings that then allows us to do other things in the way of upgrading buildings and using that money toward more academic purchases like books, supplies, computers."
`By what authority?'
The origin of Barbarotta's participation and ultimate role in the relocation of Sandy Hook to Chalk Hill remains murky.
Six months after the shootings, Barbarotta said Malloy had called him personally to get involved in shifting the usable Sandy Hook resources to Chalk Hill.
"In the days after Sandy Hook, I got a call from the governor asking if I would help out and oversee the moving of all the desks and everything from Sandy Hook School to Monroe," Barbarotta said in a June interview. "We moved things and put things exactly in the place they were in from one building to the school in Monroe. It was a complicated move. There were things we saw in there that were hard to look at. We had to promise to lock our cellphones in our cars. The State Police didn't want anybody taking any crime-scene pictures and posting them anywhere."
In an interview, Salemi said he wanted Barbarotta's expertise as a school facilities manager to help figure out where the Sandy Hook students could go.
"Al helped me find Chalk Hill School," Salemi said, recalling a Dec. 15, phone call from the state Department of Education, which first explored the possibility of erecting temporary classrooms on the school grounds.
Salemi said he's not sure what Barbarotta's work entailed, but he was attached to Newtown officials and attempted to gather invoices and other records to get a handle on the value of materials, work and services performed.
Bienkowski on Thursday questioned Barbarotta's authority and role in moving equipment from Newtown to Monroe, as state and local officials hurried to turn a vacant middle school into a new, safe home where the Sandy Hook School children could resume classes after the Dec. 14 killings of 20 first-graders and six educators.
In a directive to "All Venders, Friends, Companies" and others who had contributed to the relocation, Barbarotta instructed them to submit all invoices or donation information to his company.
Bienkowski said that Barbarotta "was insisting that he wanted copies of all this stuff. I said, `What for? By what authority?'"
Bienkowski said he declined to provide the materials to Barbarotta, whom he said never circled back with an answer or with the proper authorization.
Robert Tait, the finance director for Newtown, said in an email obtained by Hearst Connecticut Newspapers that the town's education building manager, who was overseeing the Chalk Hill relocation, paid no attention to the letter from Barbarotta directing contractors to submit their invoices to him.
"Basically he (the building manager) and his subcontractors ignored the letter (threw them out)," Tait wrote.
`He was a player'
Newtown First Selectman Patricia Llodra and the Monroe schools chief said they were comfortable with Barbarotta's role.
James Agostine, Monroe's superintendent of schools, said Barbarotta gave him regular updates on the status of the move to Chalk Hill Elementary, including the arrival of furniture so teachers could set up classrooms.
"I know that he was a pivotal person in terms of coordinating," Agostine said. "Quite honestly, I think he was a player."
Agostine was not familiar with Conveo and said Barbarotta didn't make any pitches for business in Monroe.
Llodra said she wasn't involved in the matter and had no concerns with Barbarotta's role.
"I don't have an issue here," Llodra said.
Barbarotta described his two weeks of work on the move from Sandy Hook School as "one of the most horrendous things in my life" as he looked to see what could be salvaged from the crime scene. He said his volunteer work has been "twisted around against me" and that he sought receipts only to get a ballpark estimate of the value of the overall move.
"This is something I never intended on promoting there with my brother and my company," Barbarotta said. "We did amazing things to prepare Chalk Hill for those kids. If I had stuff there, working on it in a folder in a slow time, I could have handed workers something. I was sharing information. We were working for free. How many of their people were working for free? I don't understand why it's a bad thing."
Staff writer MariAn Gail Brown contributed to this report.