LONGMEADOW – The Longmeadow Select Board met for a regularly scheduled meeting for its annual Tax Classification hearing, two liquor license violation hearings, and to approve the creation of a new Senior Housing Task Force.

To open the meeting, the Select Board quickly approved several issues before jumping into the main topics of the night including two liquor license violation hearings and the town’s Tax Classification hearing. During this portion of the meeting, the board approved minutes from its last four meetings, approved the town’s common victualler licenses and continued the discussion about a proposed Senior Housing Task force.

Vice Chair Richard Foster once again took the floor to discuss the Senior Housing task force. He explained that it would be a nine–member task force, filled by four citizens, the chair of the Council on Aging (COA), one member of the COA, someone from the police or fire department, and a veteran agent or outreach coordinator along with two select board members and a representative from JGS who would be nonvoters on the task force.

Foster clarified that the committee’s job would be to research problems and not necessarily take action. “This is kind of exploratory and what the citizens need. Right now we’re trying to see people who deal with the senior community and what their problems are,” he said. The board then approved to create the task force and applications are now open for the committee.

With the quicker issues out of the way, Town Manager Lyn Simmons than ran through her report for the meeting. She announced that she had submitted the fiscal year 2020 and five year capital plans recommendations to the Capital Planning Committee. She added that the planning board currently has a vacancy and applications are open before closing her report and reminding residents that there will be a trash amnesty from Dec. 30 to Jan. 10.

The board then jumped ahead into its first liquor license hearing with Ume Asian Bistro. Longmeadow Officer Lombardi came forward to read the report to the board in lieu of Officer Matt Chaplain who originally conducted the liquor license tests back on Nov. 20. Haian Lin then came forward to represent the restaurant at the meeting. This was Ume’s second violation since 2013 and Foster explained that the penalty for that is a two to five day liquor license suspension. Ultimately the board elected to suspend Ume’s liquor license for two days on Dec. 18 and 19, with two days in advance over the next two years if they violate the license again in that timeframe.

The board then moved into the second liquor license violation hearing for the Meeting House which also occurred on Nov. 20. Robert Schmidt from the Meeting House came forward to represent the restaurant. Schmidt provided the board with two written apologies from the two bartenders in question from the incident. Because this was the Meeting House’s first liquor license violation, the board elected to give the restaurant a warning.

With the license hearings out of the way, the select board quickly interviewed new members for the Council on Aging, the Energy and Sustainability Committee, the Cable Advisory Committee and the Capital Planning Committee. The board will vote on the new members for each committee at their next meeting on Jan. 6.

The next order of business was a discussion about cyber security and how municipalities have become a big target for hackers. “What we’ve seen from our own experience is that municipalities have become the targets for these cyber security attacks. Previously it had been banks and financial institutions but now it’s us,” said Nick George, a member of the town’s IT department.

George added that one of the biggest threats currently is phishing emails that try to get people to open links in their emails that contain viruses and malware among other things. He said that they are currently trying to train school and town staff to be able to discern what these emails look like.

One part of the training is that the IT department will be sending out a fake phishing email to gauge where the town is at in terms of cyber security awareness after applying for and receiving an EOTTS grant. George said, “The state will be working with us along with a commercial provider to send out a phishing campaign of fake phishing emails. The intent isn’t to get people in trouble it’s just to get a temperature we are now in regards to how resilient we are to those kinds of emails.”

The board then jumped into the night’s main event, the town’s Tax Classification hearing. For the hearing town treasurer Paul Pasterczyk, the town’s principal assessor, Jessica Gara, and a member of the Board of the Assessors, Michael Zeller all took the floor. As part of the hearing, Gara gave a PowerPoint presentation and said, “The purpose of the presentation is to show you how we arrive at the tax levy under proposition 2.5, show how the tax rate is calculated, and discuss how the tax levy can be distributed by different tax rates.”

During the presentation board member Mark Gold chimed in to voice his support for a split tax rate. “I believe that commercial properties become undervalued in this town relative to their commercial actual value because they go up much slower than the residential values with a single tax rate,” he explained.

After the presentation, the board closed the hearing and voted on the Town’s Tax Classification for the next year. Once again Gold said that they should adopt a split tax rate but the board ultimately voted to maintain a single tax rate.

With the hearing out of the way Eric Weiss, with the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission, stepped forward to discuss the potential water tower property development in town near Academy Drive. One of the ideas discussed was developing that area into smaller housing for seniors that would like to stay in town and downsize at the same time. “We know that people that people in town are trying to down size and stay in town. They like the town, they get great services and it’s a lovely place to live but they don’t want the big homes anymore,” he said.

Weiss explained that converting this land to smaller homes for seniors could be a big benefit to the town. He said, “The more potential over 55 units put on the site, the more significant the tax revenue can be and the more people you can attract to the home.” Ultimately the discussion was tabled for a later date to determine the logistics of a potential motion that may have to go to the Town Meeting in the spring.

The meeting closed with a discussion about proposed changes to Longmeadow’s Tree Manual. David Marinelli, the town’s tree warden came forward to discuss the changes to the manual because he explained that any changes have to go directly through the select board. He added that he was looking to change the definition of a tree that starts on public property but grows enough that the trunk crosses the line into private property. The board voted to pass the changes to the tree manual.

The Longmeadow Select Board will next meet on Jan. 6.