LONGMEADOW – Parks and Recreation Director Bari Jarvis presented an updated open space and recreation plan to the Longmeadow Select Board at its meeting Oct. 19. The plan is designed to run seven years between updates but has not been reviewed since 2011. This version, designed by members of the community, town government and the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission, will expire in 2027.

The community was widely interested in the plan, with 425 residents responding to a survey about how open spaces are used and challenges that exist.

At over 100 pages in length, the plan spells out goals that community has for its open spaces. First, to ensure town-owned parks and conservation areas are used for their intended and allowed purposes and safe for all users.

The second goal is that the recreation needs of all Longmeadow residents are met by expanding opportunities and upgrading conditions of existing facilities. This includes a sufficient number of sport-appropriate fields, organized and informal team and individual sports for youth and adults, appropriate space for dog owners and pets.

The third goal involved maintaining and managing local parks, and conservation areas are well cared for, by ensuring sufficient funding mechanisms, promoting community pride, sustain a healthy town-wide tree belt, and engaging the community to support maintenance efforts.

The Connecticut River and its floodplain are protected as a wildlife corridor and used for passive recreation. Goal four provides public access, secures permanent protection for the area and reduces or eliminates illegal dumping in the “the meadows.”

Finally, the plan seeks to strengthen Longmeadow’s climate change resilience through park and open space design and preservation. It will protect existing open space from development in perpetuity, prioritize new investments in parks and land conservation where climate change impacts can be mitigated, enhance the capacity of natural systems to handle storms and increase park access for neighborhoods vulnerable to climate change.

Both the select board and the planning board need to sign off on the plan before it can be enacted. Select Board Member Mark Gold asked Jarvis about the logistics of putting the plan into action and who is responsible for making sure the plan is carried out.

"I don’t know that there’s one responsible,” Bari said, noting that members of various departments were a part of drafting the document. “I think we’re all responsible for this plan and making sure the initiatives, within the next five to seven years, as many as possible don’t get carried over but actually get accomplished.”

Gold countered, “They say when everyone is responsible, no one is.” He suggested putting one person in charge.

To Gold’s point, Select Board Member Richard Foster said that progress on this type of project is usually tracked with a “performance package” for accountability. Jarvis responded that the accountability comes in the form of the number of different community members who worked on the plan.

Select Board Member Steve Marantz asked how individual projects such as the skatepark and dog park fit into the plan. Jarvis said that the plan is an overview and acknowledged that the skatepark isn’t spelled out in it, but said an allowance for the dog park is.

The board approved the plan.

Gold had proposed a policy that would require any party who cuts into a road, such as utility services, to repair the damage with an 8-foot-wide patch to avoid bumps in the pavement.

“I just don’t understand why, with all the money we’re putting into the streets, we just don’t require that the repair be big enough and stands up so we don’t have cars bouncing all over the place,” Gold said in his introduction of the policy.

Mario Mazza of the Department of Public Works said that the size of a patch depends on the type of repair that was done to the road. If it’s a water main repair in the center of a street, he said, the patch will be wider and deeper than a minor repair.

Mazza informed the board that there is already a moratorium on non-emergency road repair projects on streets that have been paved within the past five years. While not impossible to get a permit approved in that window, there are different standards that must be met and it requires a patch that runs the width of the street.

Select Board Chair Tom Lachuisa asked if there are situations in which a resident may have to pay for the proposed wider patch, which Mazza said will be significantly more expensive. Mazza explained that homeowners own their water and sewer pipes until they intersect with a main, so if that portion of the street needed to be accessed to repair those pipes the resident would be responsible for the cost of the patch.

The policy was continued until the board’s next meeting to allow for more time to consider the issue.

Michelle Marantz, chair of the Longmeadow Pipeline Awareness Group, asked the board to sign a letter to Eversource that had been signed by 80 other municipal and politicians and community organizations. The letter asks Eversource to transition away from the natural gas portion of their business, including the recently acquired Columbia Gas holdings in the Longmeadow area.

“For me, this is about climate change.” Select Board Vice Chair Marc Strange said. “The only way to get where we need to be is for utility companies to start changing the ratio of their capital improvement from traditional natural gas to renewables.”

Gold suggested that signing a letter with so many other parties would “dilute” the power of their voices and instead said the board could send its own letter to Eversource. Marantz told him that they could do both.

Gold also said that he wanted the letter to go through the town attorney to make sure there were no legal consequences to signing it. The board agreed to sign the letter on the condition that the town attorney approved it by the time it was to be sent out on Oct. 23.

The board debated the need for Article 11 of the upcoming Special Town Meeting, originally slated for Oct. 20, but postponed due to the pandemic. Finance Director Paul Pasterczyk explained that the town is on track to meet its goal of staying $311,000 under the levy limit and expects $290,000 for the MGM Springfield surrounding community agreement.

Article 11 considers whether to use $300,000 of free cash to balance the tax rate. Pasterczyk said that if Longmeadow expects that income on time, there is no need to ask the town for the money, but if there was any doubt about the funds from MGM, article 11 was necessary.

After a discussion the board agreed to keep Article 11 on the warrant, however, the question may have been moot since the meeting was postponed and will likely not be conducted before the tax rate is set in December.

Lachiusa said that the board of health had voted to cancel trick-or-treating this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They will have to recast their votes, however, since a quorum was not present at the time. He also noted that the board of health is looking for another member as one of the current members has moved out of Longmeadow.

Town Administrator Lyn Simmons reported that there were three active cases of COVID-19 in the town, but that there would likely be an uptick in cases, based on the increasing numbers in surrounding towns. “I implore you to stay vigilant,” she said to the community.

Simmons also reported that early voting would be ongoing from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. until Oct. 30. She said that so far 800 residents had voted early and as of Oct. 16, 5,700 mail-in ballots had been sent out to residents who had requested them. Mail-in ballots can also be dropped into the secure ballot box outside of the town hall. She reminded everyone that instead of the standard polling place, Election Day voting would be conducted at the Greenwood Center on Maple Street.

The Wolf Swamp Fields project was awarded to R.A.D. Sports. The groundbreaking is expected during the week of October 26. Simmons said the project is slated to be mostly completed in May 2021.

The Storrs Library is now open to the public by appointment on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Appointments can be made at longmeadowlibrary.org.