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EAST LONGMEADOW – The East Longmeadow Town Council met for a regularly scheduled meeting on April 14 for a public hearing, to accept a donation of an ambulance from Palmer Ambulance Service, and to reduce the town election’s polling hours.
In her regular report Town Manager Mary McNally said that she had little to discuss since the town’s biggest goal currently is to fight the coronavirus. She said, “I’m writing a book that has the same chapter after chapter, in as much as we’re just dealing with COVID-19 issues daily. There doesn’t seem to be much room in the day for really anything else.”
Fire Chief Paul Morrissette explained that it has been difficult in some situations to get regular ambulance services as other communities in the mutual aid agreement have been dealing with their own COVID-19 related issues. “They [Palmer Ambulance Service] wanted to help out an agency that was either starting up or just needed a second ambulance. This is a great ambulance for us, even in the future we can use it as our mechanical backup when the second one comes in. I’m looking forward to putting it in service,” he said.
The council unanimously approved the request to accept the ambulance.
The next issue at the meeting was a discussion around limiting the polling hours for the local election on June 2 from 2:30 to 8 p.m. as opposed to the regular 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. hours as a result of the current social distancing guidelines. Councilor Patrick Henry was in favor of the shorter voting hours despite the potential for people crowding in to the polling location and said, “I would go for 3 to 8 rather than an earlier time. Only 750 people voted at the last election and that includes all of the absentee ballots, so I’m not really concerned about people being too crowded in a four or five hour time frame.”
Town Clerk Jeanne Quaglietti explained that one of the main reasons in limiting voting hours was to protect the election workers’ health. “I’m trying to have the election workers in a safe environment and have different people coming and going, this way the election workers are only sharing one mealtime and we’d have to do shifts so they’re not together, assuming we’re still distancing at that point,” she said.
The council unanimously approved to change the hours for the June 2 town election to 3 p.m. to 8 p.m.
The next order of business at the meeting was a public hearing for an application from Zain’s Smoke Shop for a wine and malt beverages off premises liquor license. While some members of the council were concerned about not having enough information to approve the license, Quaglietti said the applicants had checked every box along the way. “I did run this by the Police, Fire, Health, and Building departments and there was no concerns. They have been working closely with Donna and Amy to establish their smoke shop, so the Health Department is very familiar with Zain’s Smoke Shop,” she said.
Ultimately, the Council unanimously approved the liquor license.
The final order of business at the meeting was the FY 20 third quarter update, but Finance Director Sara Menard was not in attendance at the meeting so McNally gave a quick run through of some of the items that could be over budget, but the full report will be available at the next meeting. McNally explained that six different departments are currently over budget without including the expected overages for the Town Manager budget, the Town Council budget, and the Police and Fire overtime budget.
The East Longmeadow Town Council next meets on April 28.