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Date: 3/22/2022
NORTHAMPTON – During a meeting on March 17, the Northampton City Council unanimously approved a resolution for the five-year, $91 million Capital Improvement Program (CIP), which includes upgrades to school buildings and new purchases of hybrid and electric vehicles.
Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra unveiled her first CIP plan as mayor to the City Council during their March 3 meeting and delivered a brief breakdown of some major community projects that will be on the horizon between the fiscal years 2023 and 2027. According to Sciarra, the city charter requires Northampton to submit a five-year “road map” of the potential needs and improvements across all facets of the community.
The CIP is reviewed and updated each year by the mayor in consultation with the city’s finance director, who in this case is Charlene Nardi. In each of these years, the mayor asks department heads to list their project priorities in order of importance. The mayor’s office and finance director then rank the requests from these departments and determines which ones should be addressed throughout the five years.
“The mayor and the finance director worked to put together the funding of the projects based on the program submissions from the departments, recommendations of the [Ad-Hoc] committee, and the availability of funding,” said Sciarra.
The goal of this plan, according to Sciarra, was to push the city further into the threshold of carbon neutrality by focusing on environmentally conscious replacements and improvements. “I’m quite proud of the leaps this plan makes towards those goals,” said Sciarra.
Within this plan, the city has $21.7 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds from the federal government for COVID-19 recovery that must be used over the next two years. According to Sciarra, the ARPA funds will be used for things like public health emergencies, to replace lost revenue, as well as investments in water, sewer, and broadband infrastructure.
According to the CIP, which is administered as a 405-page breakdown of the five years, a myriad of important projects that will dictate the future of the city and the departments that reside in it. For example, the Department of Public Works is slated for a $7.5 million street resurfacing project for five years, as well as $24.7 million for the wastewater treatment plant and pump station.
Overall, the projects for fiscal year 2023 (FY23) total $15.4 million, according to Sciarra, who added that the city was able to bring the full plan in front of the council two weeks before deadline.
The plan also addresses necessities throughout the two public school districts in Northampton, including funding to finish an ongoing net zero planning study of every school and government building. Central Services, which is responsible for maintenance within the school, will have $8.5 million allocated for projects at the schools, including a $3.5 million project between fiscal years 2026 and 2027 for the replacement of the JFK school’s roof, and over $1.5 million for ventilation and greenhouse gas emission upgrades at multiple schools.
Additionally, the district is looking to add a hybrid or electric eight-passenger van for $200,000 in FY25, and $125,000 for a 30-passenger wheelchair bus in that same year.
Money is also appropriated for kitchen replacement at multiple schools, including the high school; and Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School is receiving money for sidewalk and window replacement and repair, as well as for ventilation upgrades. According to Sciarra, around $10.1 million in total is allocated to the two public school districts for capital projects.
Smith College also donated $500,000 in December 2021 for Sciarra to use at her discretion. Sciarra said a third of this money will be used to fund the district’s 21st Century Classroom Technology project next fiscal year to help modernize classroom equipment.
“It has been a practice of the city to often use gifts from Smith to further our own educational goals within the Northampton Public Schools,” said Sciarra. “I’m quite thankful to my alma mater for that gift.”
Another notable aspect of the plan is the fact that the Police Department will have to buy four hybrid cruisers, an unmarked SUV, and a car for animal control officers to begin replacement of inoperable or irreparable vehicles. According to Sciarra, funding for these vehicles have been nonexistent over the past two years, even though four cruisers are inoperable, and two others are over 10 years old and almost at that point.
“Now, we’re at a place of significant deferred maintenance of that fleet and I feel like the severity of it has really necessitated making them a capital expenditure,” said Sciarra. According to Police Chief Jody Kasper, the department has primary and secondary fleets. The primary fleet vehicles have an average of 65,000 miles on them.
“We put a lot of mileage on our cars,” said Kasper, adding that the majority of the primary fleet will have 100,000 miles driven within the next year. “Our fleet is in pretty tough shape right now.”
Overall, the council’s reaction to the CIP was overwhelmingly positive, with only a few questions and comments raised during the March 17 meeting.
“We’ve all spent a lot of time going on tours [and] meeting with directors of different departments,” said Council President Jim Nash, in reference to the overall plan. “In my assessment, there’s a very sound plan that is behind this document, and that all of the recommended improvements are needed or timely for those particular departments.”
A full list of the CIP can be viewed at https://northamptonma.gov/DocumentCenter/View/19152/Capital-Improvement-Program-FY2023-FY2027-PDF.