EAST LONGMEADOW – The East Longmeadow Town Council met for a regularly scheduled meeting on June 23 to discuss the proposed shared health agreement with Longmeadow and to announce the hiring of the new finance director.

During her regular report, town manager Mary McNally announced that she hired Stephen Lonergan, the former treasurer for the City of Springfield, as the town’s new finance director starting on July 6. She said, “I’m very confident in his ability to assist our other department heads to be a great influence on the assistant town accountant, the treasurer, and the assessor. He has a great background in all areas of municipal finance.”

One of the first orders of business at the meeting was a request to approve an appropriation of $34,083 from the Ambulance Receipts Reserved for Appropriation Fund to cover short falls in the fire department’s budget. Fire Chief Paul Morrissette jumped into the call to explain some of the department’s extra expenses. “Our first ambulance is actually over 15,000 miles and out of warranty. We had a brake job done in February and we had a major overhaul of the air conditioning system. My fuel charge and medical supply costs have gone up as a result of the extra runs we’ve done,” he said.

The council unanimously approved the appropriation.

After the Longmeadow Select Board approved the two-year shared health agreement at its June 15 meeting,  East Longmeadow also discussed entering the agreement at its meeting. McNally simplified the pros of the agreement and said, “The goal is to improve services and the theory is that happens by economy of scale, sharing of resources, and increased level of attention to the mission statements the Commonwealth has.”

Health Director Aimee Petrosky explained that one of the biggest benefits to the agreement is increasing nursing services, the only place the town is not meeting its essential service requirement. She said, “That is the primary benefit that East Longmeadow is going to get by signing the agreement. With the loss of our senior nurse, this service becomes even more imperative. Some of the things they would do are diabetes testing, blood pressure testing, tuberculosis testing and connecting our residents to other health services.”

Council President Kathy Hill expressed her concerns over approving the agreement because the council is asking other departments make cuts while the health department would be expanding. “The pandemic has taken all financial matters and tossed them into the air and there is significant uncertainty about the funding in East Longmeadow and Longmeadow,” she said. “The finance committee has taken a hard stand that you can’t add personnel, we‘ve returned some budgets and told them to cut more. I’m personally struggling with how I can balance this request and convey this information to other departments.”

While each member of the council had their own concerns over the funding for the budget, McNally wanted to know if she should continue pursuing the agreement. She said, “I fully appreciate the concerns over financial constraints, there’s still a question over the funding source and that concerns me as well. I just want to know if you want us to keep moving forward or pull the plug. It’s been in the works for three and a half years with no culmination and I’d just like to know where we’re going.”

Hill summed up the council’s thoughts on the agreement and said, “I don’t think it’s the intent of the council to put it onto the back burner and walk away, we just want a little more breathing room.”

While the council did not approve the agreement, it unanimously approved a motion to table the discussion for its Aug. 11 meeting.

As the meeting’s final order of business, the council did a first reading of a proposed bylaw for a moratorium on ground mounted photovoltaic systems through Oct. 22. Hill said that the council will have to vote to extend the date on the moratorium and to add a preface to the bylaw for the Attorney General, before the second reading, which includes the public hearing.

Ultimately the council approved a motion to schedule the public hearing for its July 14 meeting with the intention to extend it to the July 28 meeting.

The East Longmeadow Town Council next meets on July 14.