EAST LONGMEADOW – The East Longmeadow Town Council met for a brief remote meeting on April 28 to accept a donation from the Rotary Club and to accept the resignation of the town’s finance director.

The council opened the meeting with Town Manager Mary McNally’s regular report. During her report she said that the town’s staff is steadily adjusting to the new challenges of working during the pandemic. “I think the staff is sort of getting used to our new routine. We’re now into week seven of our social distancing and adjustments continue to be made and I continue to thank the department heads and our employees for the efforts they’re making.”

She added that the town has already put the ambulance that was donated from Palmer into service after accepting it at the April 14 meeting.

McNally also announced that Town Finance Director Sara Menard had submitted her resignation and that Olga Bones was made the interim director. “That puts a little bit of an impingement on our budget preparations and so I’m going to ask for the council to be patient,” she said,  “I have appointed Olga Bones in the interim and I will be meeting with her daily to become apprised of projects that they are working on and what progress we can expect to make with budget revisions.”

The first order of financial matters at the meeting was to accept the donation of a Victory Innovations MG 200 Ultrastatic Sprayer from the Rotary Club to be used by the police and fire departments. Police Chief Jeff Dalessio explained the Rotary Club came to the departments and asked if there was anything they needed, and he and Fire Chief Paul Morissette came up with the idea for the sprayer. “We put our heads together and we thought that would be the best use for money moving forward and would have a long-term use after COVID-19 has run its course,” he said, “They graciously accepted what we considered for the gift and they came through and donated the money so we are really, really appreciative.”

The council unanimously accepted the donation.

The second and final order of financial matters at the meeting was supposed to be a third quarter FY 2020 budget update but because of the finance director’s resignation, the report was not ready for the meeting. McNally said they would have it for the next meeting.

The East Longmeadow Town Council next meets on May 12.