LONGMEADOW – Five Community Preservation Act (CPA) projects will appear on the May 10 Town Meeting warrant, one of which calls for $157,000 for repairs to the Greenwood Park pool.

Community Preservation Committee (CPC) Chair Steven Weiss told Reminder Publications the pool, which was installed in the 1950s, has received minor improvements over the years. If funding is approved, the article would be the first major renovation of the structure.

“It’s leaking,” he added. “It just needs to be renovated. In the same way that the [Blinn] Tennis Courts had to be renovated ... this is the same sort of thing. There’s a lot of people that use it. It’s used during the summer camp so we thought that it was a pretty good project.”

Town Manager Stephen Crane said the Greenwood pool project has been discussed for several years.

“We have spent a lot of time with the Parks [& Recreation] Department analyzing the utilization of Greenwood pool [and] it’s need,” he explained. “We have determined that it’s a core part of our summer camp program ... and it is used heavily by the people on that side of the town. We do support the renovation of Greenwood pool.”

Article 17 calls for funding the Longmeadow History Finding Aid project for $35,700, which would create a web-based database and finding aid that would allow anyone interested in locating historic town documents to make use of the site.

Weiss said most of the community’s historic documents aren’t located in town. There are thousands of historic documents related to Longmeadow.      

“Some of the records are in Town Hall, but some of them are in the Storrs House,” he added. “Some of them are in Springfield. Some of them are in Deerfield. Some of them are in East Longmeadow because East Longmeadow used to be part of Longmeadow and some of them are in other places.”

Another major project can be found under Article 20. The article calls for replacing the Center Elementary School terrace and balustrade for $136,000.  

“That’s an historic building, obviously,” Weiss said. “They’re deteriorating and that area needs to be restored.”

He added there are two portions of Center School. One was built in 1921 and the second in 1928.

“Over the years we’ve provided some funding for other renovations at the schools and other historic buildings in town,” he said.

Article 19 calls for establishing a Residential Home Modification Fund for $125,000, which would provide low income seniors with funds to repair or modify their homes.

“They need to have adjustments or modifications to their homes so they can stay in the house,” Weiss said. “That might be a handicap access ramp or a handicap access bathroom ... It’s income-based or needs-based. People have to be under certain levels of income in order to be eligible for it.”

Weiss said Article 18 calls for a preservation of town personnel and payroll records for $60,000.

“Town personnel and payroll records have to be preserved under Massachusetts law and they have to be accessible at the same time,” he noted. “Basically it allows for the microfilming and storage of these records ... and once these records are preserved in some sort of digital format then the paper records can be destroyed.”

Article 16 calls for an appropriation of $8,000 for administration costs for the CPC. The committee spends $3,000 annually. Any funds not used during the fiscal year would be returned to the Community Preservation Undesignated Fund.

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