EAST LONGMEADOW – The East Longmeadow Town Council met for a regularly scheduled meeting on Jan. 14 for two public hearings for two proposed bylaws and discussion about several issues including East Longmeadow potentially becoming a community to potentially house refugees.

The meeting jumped right into old business to discuss the logistics of East Longmeadow becoming a welcoming community for refugees. Maxine J. Stine, the President and CEO of Jewish Family Service of Western Massachusetts, said that East Longmeadow likely wouldn’t see too many refugees. She said, “The reality of it is in East Longmeadow is that I don’t know if we’d be resettling too many people here. More importantly we are trying to establish a welcoming county where people don’t have to be worried about not being accepted or liked.”

Ultimately the council decided to table the discussion for a later date and Council Chair Kathleen Hill said, “I would recommend that at the present we take it under advisement so that we can look at this information and take in resident comments before we address this matter again.”

Town Manager Mary McNally then jumped into her Town Manager’s report for the Jan. 14 meeting. She explained that she was looking through the initial operational budgets for each department for the New Year and said that they would finish their first review by the end of the week. McNally added that the town is starting union negotiations with three unions before all of the labor contracts set to expire on June 30.

With McNally’s report out of the way, the next order of business for the meeting was to discuss correspondences from residents. The first of which, was a proposal to create an ordinance to prevent residents from feeding predatory animals after a resident complained that her neighbor was feeding animals on her property. Hill explained that this type of ordinance would be difficult to pass and said, “The town is not able to take any action because the view from the state level is that the wildlife in the Commonwealth belongs to the Commonwealth and not any town or municipality.”

Council Member Marilyn Richards added, “I understand the fascination of seeing wild animals but I am concerned about the safety of pets and even small children. I would hate to have to deal with this again if something happened.”

Ultimately the council voted to make a public service announcement about feeding predatory animals, and to send a letter to the resident that was reported as feeding the animals.

The council then moved into its two public hearings for the evening, the first of which was the first reading of a proposed bylaw addressing liquor license rules and regulations. Hill quickly read through the bylaw before moving into the public hearing.

Council Member Patrick Henry jumped in to explain that the proposed bylaw was a change in wording and “not anything substantive.” He said, “The language rewrites is just a change from informal language to a language that’s easier for lawyers to understand. It says about the same thing, there’s nothing substantively different about what’s written here.”

The council motioned to host the second reading for the bylaw on Jan. 28.

 The second public hearing was the second reading of a bylaw for the establishment of a Charter Review Committee. Hill once again read through the proposed bylaw. After little discussion about the bylaw, the council unanimously passed the new bylaw.

With the hearings out of the way, the next order of business was to review a one-day liquor license for St. Michael’s Parish for Feb. 8, which the council unanimously approved.

The final order of business was to discuss an update on the Town Council Bylaw Review Commission. Henry explained that the Bylaw Review Committee looked at suggestions from the department heads when thinking about ways to improve the Town’s Bylaws. “Our initial charge was to update the general bylaws, but when the town clerk contracted with general code it was to include all bylaws, including zoning bylaws, which proved to be more difficult,” he said.

He added that while many of the changes revolved around wording changes, there were others that needed more work and more significant alterations. He said, “Many department heads updated their bylaws with more significant changes such as increases to fees and penalties. These must each be identified in enough detail for the council to approve the changes and bring to public hearing,” he said.

In order to prevent this issue from being tabled for another year, Henry asked if the council could vote to suspend the approval on the bylaw changes at the Jan. 28 Town Council meeting, which the council agreed to.

The East Longmeadow Town Council will next meet on Jan. 28.