Use this search box to find articles that have run in our newspapers over the last several years.
Date: 10/9/2015
CHICOPEE – The Chicopee City Council approved a tax hike proposed by Mayor Richard Kos to strengthen public safety efforts in the city, but councilors insisted taxpayers would not feel the increase of $700,000.
Adam Lamontagne was the only councilor to vote against the increase of $500,000 that would create a separate fund for public safety expenses and then $200,000 to purchase surveillance cameras for the downtown area at the council’s Oct. 6 meeting.
Councilors would have to approve any expenditure proposed to be made from the $500,000 fund.
Lamontagne said he wasn’t against additional public safety funding, but he believed the measures should be sent to the Finance Committee in order to hear more details about how the money would be spent. He also said he wanted to understand how the camera system that would start in downtown would eventually spread to other neighborhoods.
“Public safety is important no doubt about it, but so is increasing taxes,” Lamontagne said.
In a letter to the council Kos wrote about the $500,000 increase, “if approved this account will be a source for which appropriations can me made for additional cameras, additional manpower, additional equipment, overtime and such other public safety needs, which may occur in the coming months.
“The current FY2016 levy is below last year’s levy by $1.7 million. With the approval of this $500,000 appropriation and the accompany $2000,000 appropriation for cameras the remaining levy will still be $1 million less than the previous fiscal year.”
Councilor Shane Brooks said that even with the increase in the tax levy there would be property tax relief this year. He noted the original proposal to add cameras downtown came in 2008-09 but was not passed by the council.
Councilor Robert Zygarowksi said that while he wouldn’t mind sending the proposal to the Finance Committee, he would rather see passage of it that evening.
Referring to the uptick of criminal activity in the downtown, he said, “If we don’t address these issues now, we’ll have more crime than we can handle.”
Councilor James Tillotson said the city was in a “unique position” this year with the tax levy lower than the previous year.
“I think there’s a time you have to say to the taxpayer this is the right thing to do,” he said.
Pounding his desk with every word, Councilor Timothy McLellan asked, “How can we put a price on public safety?” He then described the $500,000 as “peanuts.”
State Sen. Eric Lesser also gave the councilors an update on the activities of the Senate at the meeting. He said he had four key areas of interest in which he was concentrating, the first being manufacturing.
Lesser has taken his fellow members of the Legislature’s Manufacturing Caucus on a tour of Western Massachusetts businesses that day, including Menck Window in Chicopee. He said to attract more manufacturers and to keep the ones the region has the skills gaps must be closed.
The opioid addiction issue is also one of his priorities. Lesser said overdoses are currently killing more people in the Commonwealth than guns and cars combined. He discussed legislation aimed at closing prescription loopholes and to supply the overdose drug Narcan to municipalities at an affordable price.
Lesser also discussed the efforts to link Springfield and the region to Boston through rail.
“It is within our reach,” he said. Lesser added the political will to undertake adding service from Springfield to Worcester where commuters could take trains to Boston must be built up.
The final priority has been to seek additional state investment in cultural and tourism attractions that can stimulate economic development.