DANBURY — As city leaders take the next step to put Danbury’s most blighted and contaminated industrial site on the market, a suggestion to halt the sale and instead to build an elementary school on the property raised eyebrows this week.

“I have looked at this property and I have looked at all the problems that are over there — it’s an absolute mess,” state Rep. Kenneth Gucker told the City Council this week, referring to the arsenic-laden former Amphenol factory behind police headquarters. “But either way the site has to be cleaned (and) the idea that we cannot build on remediated sites is not true.”