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Date: 7/11/2023
HADLEY — Plans for the new DPW building and garage facility topped the agenda for the July 6 Select Board meeting, where the site location and expected designed costs were confirmed.
Outreach and education were also among the main topics discussed between board members and DPW Building Committee Chair Jim Maksimoski.
A new facility would replace the current structure, located at 230 Middle St. and built in 1970.
“We want to put in the fall Town Meeting warrant the request for the design, and to do that we need to do a lot of education of the townspeople as far as like we talked about last meeting on why and what we want to do and to probably have some kind of open houses, meet and greets at the old garage,” Maksimoski said.
Observing that the date for the fall Town Meeting had been set for Oct. 26, Board Member Joyce Chunglo made note of potential time constraints in getting the information out to the public.
“That doesn’t give us a whole lot of time for people to come back into town after summer vacations and things like that to get a lot of interest unless we had a couple of different things that we could offer them towards August and September before our Town Meeting,” she said.
Following up on the planned site location for the new facility, Chunglo asked Maksimoski if the current site would be utilized.
“Yes, the same parcel,” Maksimoski said. “It will be built at the south end of the parcel where the salt shed is and it will be put at the southern end of the property.”
Maksimoski also said the engineering firm Weston and Samson, which worked on the feasibility study, would produce footprint layouts in order to facilitate visual references for members of the community.
“I think this is excellent if we do something like this for Hadley,” said board member Jane Nevinsmith.
An architectural firm for the final project has not yet been secured, Maksimoski said.
“The money that will be requested at Town Meeting, very similar to what we had to the school and the safety complex design, you now get the money and now you go for full design,” he said. “Then we’ll be selecting an architect, it could be the company we’re using [Weston and Samson] or it could be somebody different.”
The design costs were estimated by Maksimoski and Town Administrator Carolyn Brennan at approximately $3 million.
Maksimoski also indicated the team members currently working on the new facility project are expected to remain with the effort.
“Everybody on the feasibility committee has expressed an interest to stay on for the whole design committee,” he said.
Board member Molly Keegan raised the importance of getting information out to the community.
“Once word starts getting out, oftentimes there’s a lot of misinformation that fills that gap, yet we’re talking about Town Meeting and a lot of people who are going to be at Town Meeting [and] voting don’t necessarily pay much attention until it gets really close to Town Meeting, but I think it would be worthwhile whether it’s the flyer or something to start trickling information out because that also gives us a pretty good sense of what the objections are going to be,” she said.
Keegan added that it would be important to acknowledge the potential pushback from residents over the cost of another new building.
“One of them, of course, is just going to be ‘we can’t afford it, we already got the three new buildings, just you know, forget it.’ but there may be other ones that come up and then it gives us time and your committee time to anticipate that,” she said.
It was agreed discussions would go back on the board agenda in August.