WESTFIELD – The Westfield City Council met for a regularly scheduled meeting on May 21 to reappoint Council on Aging Executive Director Christine Gorman, to discuss a Special Purpose Stabilization Fund for Westfield Schools, among its regular business.

To begin the meeting the council ran through a list of seven Communications from the Mayor and approved each one unanimously. Among the list of action items the Council approved to transfer over $16,000 from Free Cash to the Emergency Management part-time salary account, submitting the reappointment of Christine Gorman as the executive director of the Council on Aging through July 7, 2023.

Councilor Cindy Harris then talked about how caring Gorman has been toward the members of the Senior Center, especially during the pandemic. She said, “She’s so sensitive to the needs and quickly realized many were desperate for human contact. She set up a caring phone contact system so the staff checks members to be sure they are safe, and counseling of all sorts is still available by phone.”

After the Council approved the resolutions from the mayor, it then jumped into 11 motions from committees, including a $5,356,644 2020 depreciation appropriation for the Gas and Electric Department and an approval for an agreement between the city and MassDOT for the Traffic Signal Improvement Project on Route 20.

The council then discussed a motion to establish a Special Purpose Schools of Westfield Stabilization Fund. Councilor James Adams explained that the motion had to be left in committee because there isn’t a specific reason to use the money.

He said, “You should have a title and a purpose of what the money is going to be used for. Right now it’s kind of open ended and we didn’t have a reason to put the money in there, it really has to be put in for a special reason and we don’t have that.”

Adams then explained that Superintendent Stefan Czaporowski said there may not be a need for the fund. “I will say from the Superintendent and Chris Caputo, their feeling was that they were fine with how everything works now. Nobody felt that there was a need to do this so we certainly weren’t in any rush to pass something,” he said.

Councilor Dave Flaherty explained that the purpose of the fund would be a mechanism to transfer money from one fiscal year to another. He said, “You can ear mark it for any purpose you want, it doesn’t have to be specific, it can be worded as any capital need of the school system. We can do a lot of things but I don’t mind leaving it in committee.”

The council unanimously voted to keep the motion in committee at this time.

With the motions from the Committees portion out of the way, the Council wrapped up by voting on three orders, including one to approve an Artworks of Westfield project to paint a mural on the Taylor Street overpass on the Columbia Rail Trail.

The Westfield City Council next meets on June 4.