As someone who has served on the Select Board for the last three years, I can say there was some information presented at the recent DPW forum that was not entirely correct or was incomplete.  First, it was suggested that there was an “overwhelming” vote in favor of funding design work at the fall 2015 Town Meeting.

While “overwhelming” is obviously in the eye of the beholder, please bear in mind that the presentation made at Town Meeting said that “the opportunity is there” for expanding field space behind the Wolf Swamp Fields. The town manager also assured residents that making sure that the town does not lose field space is a “core part of the project.”  The vote at Town Meeting was made with those assurances in mind, and whatever the basis for those statements were at the time, it is clear now that expansion behind the Wolf Swamp fields is not possible.

Second, it was suggested at the forum that “no sane person” would spend money on a DPW facility at the current location, and the town manager said as a steward he would “never agree to spend taxpayer money” at this site.  In fact, the town manager’s FY 2015 budget proposed spending $1 million for capital improvements at the existing site. At our March 13, 2014 Select Board meeting, the town manager suggested using the $1 million as a way to “make do with what we have,” and he spoke of using the money for a salt shed, a maintenance bay, fuel pumps, and above ground storage bays.

Third, it was said at the forum that the “DPW cannot provide the current services in the near future.”  There has been no study presented to the Select Board stating that there is an imminent threat to resident services. In fact, this issue, as everyone knows, is longstanding, and not a crisis. Moreover, there has been no study identifying how, in specific terms, services to residents would increase with a state of the art facility.
I continue to believe it is necessary to put all of our capital needs on the table together, including the DPW facility, the senior center, and the middle schools.  We need to figure out what we are willing to pay for and put together a capital funding plan for all of these projects. Part of that process should be a consideration of more modest measures to address the most pressing problems at our facilities, including DPW.


Alex Grant
Longmeadow