Last modified: Friday, January 11, 2008 12:58 AM EST Value of Foxboro deal questioned BY FRANK MORTIMER SUN CHRONICLE STAFF FOXBORO - You won't see a neon sign atop town hall blinking the words "We told you so" in busted-budget red lettering. Nor will you hear town Finance Director Randy Scollins, a self-described team player, flinging the words at his bosses on the board of selectmen. But asked his views on the value of a Patriot Place mitigation package the town officials sealed with The Kraft Group just two hours before an annual town meeting vote last May, Scollins is candid. "I was passionate about my opposition to it, but that's the way it happened," Scollins said in an interview. Scollins said the Kraft organization greatly overvalued the mitigation deal, putting as little as $3 million in actual mitigations into an $18 million pitch that dazzled the town. Now some of the concerns which Scollins, school board Chairman Larry Harrington and three dissenters on the advisory committee expressed last May are looming as realities. And town officials - with hat in hand - may at some point be asking Kraft to renegotiate the package. Up to $7.5 million of a purported $18 million mitigation package is headed down the drain as water and sewer officials consider solving the town's sewer problems by expanding Mansfield's treatment plant instead of - or in addition to - tying into a future expansion of the Gillette Stadium plant, Scollins said. Scollins does not oppose the Mansfield sewer option. But he wanted voters to first decide if they want the sewer offer before voting their support for the 12 new liquor licenses for Patriot Place at the town meeting. Paul Mortenson, then chairman of the advisory committee, and members Lorraine Brue and H. Hardie issued a minority report likewise opposed to voting for the mitigations package without knowing whether homeowners actually want sewers. At a subsequent town meeting in June, voters narrowly defeated a $25 million sewer expansion plan involving the Kraft option after being told that new sewer users would face bills of $20,000 to $25,000 for betterment and connection fees. The commissioners are currently working up another proposal to bring to a town meeting in the near future. Regardless of whether the town expands its sewer system, Selectman Robert Hickey, who led the town's Patriot Place negotiating team, said he stands behind the deal and sees criticism of the agreement as unhelpful Monday morning quarterbacking. "I think it's a huge win," Hickey said. "I think $17.688 million value was a well derived value to the town. Even if the town decides the plants aren't wanted, at least we have the option." On May 14, on the recommendation of selectmen and an advisory committee majority, the annual town meeting took action related to the Patriot Place project. One of the articles allowed selectmen to ask the Legislature to create 12 liquor licenses for Patriot Place. Harrington said those doing the negotiation should have asked the Patriots to place cash equal to the cost of constructing a sewer plant in an account while the town determined the most appropriate options. Both Harrington and Scollins said a new deal needs to be negotiated with the Kraft Group - but that the town has already signed away best leverage: support for the 12 new liquor licenses for Patriot Place and allowing additional sewer flow capacity vital to the future developement of other Kraft property along Route 1. "The Patriots Place people have everything they needed," Harrington said. "Who will negotiate for our benefit this time?" In an April 27 presentation to the advisory committee, Kraft attorney John Twohig presented a water and sewer proposal valued by Kraft at $7.5 million. Under that proposal, Kraft would build and give to the town a new sewer plant, water lines, leaching fields and connecting pipes, and the town would take over the plant in 2010 or before. Twohig's mitigation report also included: $2 million in roadway and sidewalk work. Scollins said he does not consider this a mitigation, because the improvements are conditions of the planning board's site plan approval of the project. $2.8 million in public safety contributions. Scollins said the public safety money is one of the few substantive gains for the town, and even that money is to be paid to the town over 12 years. $2.3 million "excess" town permit costs. Scollins said it's almost unheard of for a developer to go after a municipality for the difference between the permit charges and the actual cost to the town or city, and was "disingenuous" for Twohig to list this as a mitigation. Hickey noted that Patriot Place, as zoned, could be built by right. He said failure to create the liquor licenses would have meant the north plaza of the two-section Patriot Place mall would not have been built, and the town would lose that property tax revenue.