Preston — The Preston Redevelopment Agency had planned to downsize once the former Norwich Hospital property is transferred to the Mohegan tribe, but with the final environmental cleanup delayed and recent vacancies, residents will be asked next week to shrink the agency from 10 to five members.

The PRA is governed by town ordinance. A town meeting will be held at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 10, at the Preston Plains Middle School to vote on the proposal to amend the ordinance to shrink the agency and on five appointments — all incumbents — recommended by the Board of Selectmen.

Selectmen are recommending appointing Merrill Gerber to a one-year term, Joseph Biber for two years, William Legler for three years, James Bell for four years and current Chairman Sean Nugent for five years.

Nugent said Friday that when member John Harris was elected to the Mohegan Tribal Council and resigned from the PRA, it brought the PRA down to six members, the minimum needed for a quorum. And longtime member Linda Riegel has indicated she wishes to resign, so shrinking to five members would not displace any current members, Nugent said.

If approved, the ordinance amendments would take place 15 days after the vote. To ensure continuity, the current members will be asked to submit letters of resignation that would take effect once their new appointments become valid. That would erase their old terms and start the new ones. Otherwise, Nugent said, there'd be a time when the town would have no PRA.

The PRA was formed when residents voted in 2009 to take ownership of the former Norwich Hospital property, oversee the massive environmental cleanup and demolition of the decaying buildings, and market the property.

While most redevelopment agencies in the state have five members, Preston decided to create a 10-member agency to allow some members of the former Norwich Hospital Advisory Committee and some new members.

In all, 17 people have served on the panel over the past 10 years. First Selectman Robert Congdon, an ex-officio member, praised the collective body of work by the all-volunteer agency throughout its existence.

“It’s been an incredible effort by all 17 people who have participated,” Congdon said Friday. “I think we’ve had the right people at the right time. Now, the breadth of work for the committee is less, so I think it makes sense to go to a five-member committee.”

With only six active members, there would be no flexibility for anyone to be absent, which forced the change now rather than when the property is transferred to Mohegan Gaming & Entertainment.

In the agreement signed by the town and the tribe in April 2017 for the tribe's proposed major development at the site, the final cleanup and transfer was anticipated to take a year.

But the PRA ran into the worst-case scenario members had hoped to avoid when environmental testing engineers discovered that the state had used coal ash from an on-site power plant as the subsurface in roadbeds that snake throughout the main campus.

The discovery added an estimated $2 million to the final cleanup costs, and the town is seeking additional funding from the state to complete the work. With funding from previous grants exhausted and the PRA deciding to hold off using the contingency $2 million loan secured from the state, the cleanup operation temporarily has been suspended.

“I think we’re at a point where we need to hear sooner rather than later,” Congdon said of the request for additional state funding. “But it’s out of our control. We’ve been in contact with the tribe. They’re in the same boat. They want to see this happen, but it’s going to take three parties to make it happen.”

c.bessette@theday.com