Select Board updates Senior and Veteran Abatement policy

Nov. 13, 2019 | Dennis Hackett

LONGMEADOW – The Longmeadow Select Board met for a regularly scheduled meeting on Nov. 4 to discuss several issues including updating the current Senior and Veteran Abatement policy.

One of the major orders of business for the select board was to update the town’s current policy regarding the Senior and Veteran Abatement policy. One measure that Select Board Chair Marie Angelides brought up was to raise the hourly rate to minimum wage. Along with raising the payment to minimum wage, Vice Chair Mark Gold also put forward a motion to raise the hours per person to 125 hours. The final motion raised, also by Gold, was to use a lottery system to give any remaining funds to veterans and seniors to make up for the seven open spots for the volunteers.

Board Member Thomas Lachiusa voiced his support to help out the Veterans and Seniors get a more competitive abatement policy. He said, “If we have to put more money into it, maybe we can take it from some other budget line item. I would rather see $15,000 go into this program then having someone look at our roads and tell us we have problems with our roads.”

The select board unanimously approved all three motions to update the current Senior and Veteran Abatement policy.

The meeting also included some discussion about the town’s current calendar year fees, which are essentially just closing the books on the year for each department as town treasurer Paul Pasterczyk explained. He said that they will likely receive a big report for the recycling fees. “The one is the looked most closely at annually is the recycling fees. I would expect some type of report from them. Whether they are increasing them or not they usually have some type of report,” he explained.

He added that he most likely would not have the report for the calendar year fees until the first week of December.

The Nov. 4 meeting also included discussion of a potential debt exception for $1.3 million for the work on the DPW’s new headquarters from the Department of Revenue. Pasterczyk explained that if the inflation of the project, in this case caused by the environmental issues with the site, landed in certain guidelines they would be granted the exception, otherwise the money would have to come out of the operating budget. At the time of the meeting he said that he had not heard either way from the DOR.

The select board also voted to put up signs for the First Church Christmas fair from Nov. 30 to Dec. 7, as well as signs for the church’s breakfast with Santa event from Dec. 8 to Dec. 14.

The meeting agenda concluded with some discussion of the final review for the 2021 fiscal year budget assumptions after the joint meeting at the last select board meeting to see if the board wanted to make any new changes, but ultimately they chose to leave it as is. Pasterzcyk also explained that they were still waiting for the Education Reform Act legislature, but the plan is to have that ready by the time fiscal year 2021 rolls around, but it should be a net positive.

However, he also explained the town’s new growth has come in a bit higher than expected. “The new growth is coming back very favorably. We’re getting new growth that we would normally not get until the fiscal years 2023 and 2024. It’s about $100,000 more than we were expecting,” he said.

The meeting closed with the Select Board thanking interim Town Manager James Moynihan for all of his work since stepping into the role, as Lyn Simmons will be taking over as the new town manager on Nov. 12.

The Longmeadow Select Board will meet next on Nov. 18.

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