EAST LONGMEADOW – The East Longmeadow Town Council hosted a regularly scheduled meeting on Sept. 8 for a continued public hearing over a liquor license transfer, and to join a coalition of communities in favor of reforming the Holyoke Soldier’s Home.

During the meeting, the council unanimously approved a resolution to join a coalition of communities voicing their support to make changes and improvements at the Holyoke Soldier’s Home after its COVID outbreak earlier this year.

“The soldier’s home is too small of a facility, there’s three or four people in one room, they have to go down the hall to share a bathroom. These resident veterans deserve to be cared for with honor and dignity, and to me the way it is laid out right now, that is not the case,” Ann Haskell, the resident who brought forward the resolution, said.

The other communities in the coalition include Ludlow, Granby, Monson, Holyoke, Wilbraham, along with several others.

Councilor R. Patrick Henry said that renovating the soldier’s home was long overdue.

“For as long as I’ve been in Massachusetts, I’ve heard horror stories about the soldier’s home between bad leadership and a lack of funding. I would support completely a renovation of this place once and for all because it has been going on a long time,” he said.

The council also continued a public hearing from its Aug. 8 meeting over a liquor license transfer from the Beer Shop to Heritage Plaza Liquors after the council was concerned over doing both transfers simultaneously.

The attorney representing Heritage Plaza Liquors, Matthew Porter, said that if the license were to be approved, the buildout process would take just a few weeks after Olympia Sports’ lease ends.

“The timeline with the ABCC is about four to six weeks, maybe a little bit longer, as far as the buildout goes, Olympia Sports’ lease is up on Jan.1 and the landlord is in talks with them to vacate sooner. It may be three to four weeks for a buildout,” he said.

Councilor Henry said he was in favor of the transfer because even though it was two separate transfers, all the paperwork was in order for both.

“We agreed that if the two transactions were uncoupled, we would approve them. We agreed that if we had all of the information needed to approve the transfer and the move, we would approve them. We heard from both Jeanie and the proponent’s counsel that the ABCC had no concerns over the transaction,” he said. “I believe it’s time to approve this transfer without further cost and delay.”

The council unanimously approved the license transfer and change of location transfer.

As the meeting’s final order of business, Town Manager Mary McNally gave an update on the town’s current plan for reopening town hall and said it would be a long time before it opened.

“I’m not inclined to consider it yet, to be totally candid, I don’t think we will be realistically close to the reopening of the building until Jan. 1 if that. All things considered, it’s not feasible and I don’t think its prudent at this point, I feel a distinct obligation to protect the wellbeing of our town employees,” she said.

Along with the safety of town employees, McNally said that any type of infection in town hall could sideline entire departments.

“We have departments that have two or three people in them. So if somebody comes in there with that infection, we could lose the services of the entire department for two weeks and I personally don’t think that that’s prudent for the town of East Longmeadow,” she said.

The East Longmeadow Town Council next meets on Sept. 22.