LONGMEADOW – Richard Foster, a nine-year veteran of the Longmeadow Select Board has decided not to run for re-election in the spring. Reminder Publishing reached out to Foster to talk about his time as an elected official.

Reminder Publishing (RP): What made you first want to get involved in the town? What made you keep running?

Richard Foster (RF): When I moved to Longmeadow, I was a recent retiree from the National Park Service where I served as a chief of maintenance. I liked being involved in programmatic activities and seeing things be accomplished. I like troubleshooting problems and finding equitable solutions. Since I was retired, I was able to devote time to working on long-range solutions to current day problems in the town. A three-year term can slip by surprisingly quickly. Institutionalizing change takes time. The more ideas you have for improvements to our community the longer period of time you are likely going to serve on the Select Board.

RP: Have you served on any other boards or committees?

RF: I served on the Capital Planning Committee for two years prior to serving on the Select Board. “In my prior life I have served on local, regional and national task forces and committees.”

RP: Why is now the time to vacate your seat?

RF: I have long believed in the value of term limits and after serving nine years, it is time to step aside. As you can imagine even at the local level, it is difficult for a new person to defeat an incumbent, especially if that incumbent is doing a good job for their community. New people running for the Select Board don’t realize how much of your time will be required to devote to issues if you are truly serving the community. The time requirement, if you are truly performing your duties as envisioned, are far more involved than just attending meetings.

RP: What are the issues you are proud of having tackled in your time on the board?

RF: There are numerous issues which stand out to accent the time I have spent on the Select Board. I recommended and supported funding to eliminate two long-standing roadway drainage problems that over the years had flooded two of our residents’ homes. These repairs were very expensive and it took a lot of lobbying with my fellow board members to get buy-in to have the issue placed on the warrant. Another major accomplishment was the approval and construction of the new DPW complex. This project sat dormant for 35 years. As the chair I placed this project before the board as a yearly goal and lobbied for support. The funding and approval process took over two years which culminated with a victory vote at our town election. This effort was supported by a host of our citizens working on the site selection committee and building committee along with constant reinforcement and support from our town manager. I have always promoted preventative and programmatic maintenance efforts.

When I first came on the board, we were devoting $5,000 yearly from our tax budget for the repair and maintenance of our sidewalks and zero dollars out of our Capital Improvement Program for the repair and renovation of our roadways. Today, we are allocating $400,000 yearly for our sidewalks and $500,000 for our roadways. Although this seems like a lot of money, we could triple that amount for our roadways and still have reactive repairs being made.

RP: What's next for you?

RF: Beside being a Select Board member for the past nine years, I have for that same period of time taken care of the Longmeadow Community Gardens, which I will continue to do. Prior to my retirement from the National Park Service, I was performing a lot of training for maintenance professionals on how to evaluate and develop programmatic, preventive and routine maintenance programs which I may look to starting up again to stay active along with offering consulting for the evaluation of existing maintenance programs with guidelines for improvements.