LONGMEADOW –  At the Longmeadow Select Board meeting on April 17 the board discussed briefly concerns by some residents regarding the town manager’s relationship with the Brewer Young Mansion developers as well as PVTA (Pioneer Valley Transit Authority) funding.

Select Board Chair Person Thomas Lachiusa mentioned that he has a report regarding complaints about Town Manager Stephen Crane’s relationship with the developers of the Brewer Young Mansion.  Select Board member Richard Foster then explained that they’ve had to postpone this discussion on several occasions due to absences at meetings, however it will be discussed at the next meeting.

“I can assure everyone that we did look at this in fairly decent detail and I can explain what we found but we did not find any evidence that there had been anything done wrong by our Town Manager. People could certainly question some of the motives or question snippets of emails that were extracted to try to demonstrate that there was something gong on, but when you get to the bottom line there really wasn’t substance that hit the threshold of saying, ‘Hey, you did something really wrong ethics-wise or professional-wise,’” Foster explained.  He stated that at the next meeting the group will further discuss the topic, and Crane would be in attendance to address it as well should he see fit.

“I hope that folks in the viewing audience know that if anything if we feel the Town Manager was doing inappropriate and that relationship with the developers of that property for the young mansion that we would have acted on it very quickly and put things out there, probably prior to any kind of voting took place,” Lachiusa added.

As the meeting continued, Vice Chair Mark Gold shared that he is on the PVTA Board of Trustees. He explained that the PVTA is suffering a shortfall in their budget: a shortfall of $3.5 million. In an effort to make up for it, fares have been raised 20 percent.  Gold said that there may be a reduction in service, and this could severely affect Longmeadow. Currently, Longmeadow has one bus route that only travels into town twice a day.

“Even that service might be in some serious trouble if they do further service cuts,” Gold said. “One thing that can resolve the service cut is an increase of funding from the state. The state funds PVTA pretty considerably, about $26 million a year and they’ve level funded them now for two years. The PVTA is asking for, if you will, an increase in that funding equivalent to their two percent increase which would be about a $600,000 increase, but that would stave off any service cuts.”

Gold indicated that there is hope that the state may increase the PVTA’s funding although the governors budget did not appear to indicate it.  Nonetheless, the PVTA did not cut back service immediately.

Gold shared that they have been asking all participating towns in the community to approve a resolution calling on the Legislature to approve an increase of funding.

“It does have potential impact on the town of Longmeadow,” Gold said.