Longmeadow Select Board approves polling location change, discusses open meeting law

Aug. 12, 2020 | Dennis Hackett
dennis@thereminder.com

LONGMEADOW – The Longmeadow Select Board met for a regularly scheduled meeting on Aug. 3 for a COVID-19 update, to further discuss changing the polling location for the fall elections, and Open Meeting Law violations.

To start the meeting Fire Chief John Dearborn gave his regular COVID-19 update. As of the meeting, he reported that there were seven active cases in Longmeadow.

He said that most of the cases are from people traveling outside of Massachusetts. “Our community spread numbers are very, very low. It’s hard to equate anything to in-town activities. We are looking at a few cases that may be related to New England travel and activities, but we’re still working on some of those,” he said.

Dearborn added that the town is already preparing in case of a resurgence of the virus in the fall. He said, “We’ve been working hard on stockpiling personal protective equipment through various sources and the state has been generous with PPE. We feel like we’re in a very good posture to provide PPE for town operations.”

Under old business, the Select Board also further discussed changing the polling location for the upcoming fall elections to the Greenwood Center after a discussion at the July 20 meeting. Town Manager Lyn Simmons explained that in order to officially change the location, the town needed to do a survey about the new location.

Board member Mark Gold asked why the motion had to brought forward at a second meeting and Simmons said, “We didn’t have clear guidelines by the time you met on July 20, but we did get them on July 22. We got a copy of West Springfield’s report and modified that based on our needs here. We also completed the survey required anytime you change a polling location just to make sure there is American Disability Act access.”

The board unanimously approved the change.

As the final order of business at the meeting, the Select Board discussed the current Open Meeting Law after an issue where an email was addressed to multiple members of the board and not during a public meeting, which could be considered deliberation.

Gold said he would rather have the board police themselves rather than other people. He said, “The issue of Open Meeting Laws is very important. But I’m not the Open Meeting Law Police, that’s the Attorney General’s job. So, I’ll police myself, I ask everybody else to police themselves, but if we start policing others, that’s a really slippery slope.”

Ultimately the Board decided to continue to monitor its communications and discuss the Open Meeting Law at a future meeting.

The Longmeadow Select Board next meets on Aug. 17.

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