Voters to decide on petition for field lighting upgrades

Date: 1/9/2012

Jan. 9, 2012

By Chris Maza

Reminder Assistant Editor

EAST LONGMEADOW — School Committee member Joseph Cabrera will have his opportunity to ask the town to approve spending $115,000 to make necessary upgrades to the high school athletic fields lighting system at a Special Town Meeting on Feb. 1.

The meeting was originally scheduled for Feb. 2, but due to scheduling conflicts, needed to be moved up a day.

Cabrera recently submitted petitions — one for the Special Town Meeting and another for the warrant article — with a total of more than 500 signatures.

“[Cabrera was] able to work with [Town Administrator James] Sheils, [Town Attorney James] Donahue and [Thomas] Florence, our clerk, and everything was done appropriately,” Selectman Jack Villamaino said. “All the signatures were properly submitted and everything was certified, so there are no issues with the clerk’s office on this petition.”

Cabrera’s warrant article was also approved by the appropriations committee.

By law, the town is required to schedule the meeting within 45 days of receiving the petition. Feb. 2 is the last possible day to legally host the meeting.

The selectmen agreed that the later date would allow for more petitioned warrant articles to be brought forward and approved.

“I did have someone ask if there would be the ability to submit signatures for a second warrant article and they wanted to know if we could allow for as much time as possible or as big a window as we can with the 45-day limit so they could get the signatures together,” Villamaino said.

Petitioned warrant articles must be submitted to the Board of Selectmen’s office by 4 p.m. on Jan. 12. Those submitted articles will be reviewed at the Board of Selectmen’s meeting scheduled for 7 p.m. that evening. The warrant for the Special Town Meeting will be published in The Reminder on Jan. 16.

Driscoll also said the later date will allow more time for other avenues for solving the lighting problems to be pursued.

“I would like to give people as much time as possible, including the possibility of a resolution prior to that, too,” he said.

School Committee Chair Gregory Thompson, who was in attendance at the meeting, confirmed to the board that while the petition was submitted by a member, it was not sponsored by the School Committee.

The School Committee voted at its Dec. 5 meeting to add the lighting project to the School Capital Plan, a list of 12 capital projects, which was submitted to the Capital Planning Commission.