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Date: 7/7/2021
HAMPDEN – Hampden’s summer camp has been moved to Green Meadows School after repeated vandalism to bathrooms at the Memorial Park spray park.
“Someone’s getting in there before we lock it up at night,” said Dave Turcotte of the Parks Commission of the bathroom vandalism, which involves sabotage of toilets. He said that there hasn’t been trouble in the past. The weekly summer camp has twice the children enrolled this year than in an average year.
Board of Selectmen member John Flynn thanked Superintendent Albert Ganem for allowing the school to be used on short notice. He also said that the Parks Commission had made the right decision to close the park.
Turcotte said that the commission needs a full-time director. Volunteers have had to leave their full-time day jobs to see to park issues, he said, adding that he left work in the middle of a meeting recently to attend to Parks Commission problems.
A full-time police officer was approved by the Board of Selectmen, but the individual is not new to Hampden. Officer Jeffry Wojcik has been working as a reserve officer in town for nine years. The Chicopee resident was one of 14 applicants for the position. In addition to working for the Hampden Police Department and the Amherst College Police Department, Wojcik has passed all certifications and training required under state law.
An on-call firefighter was added to the ranks at the Hampden Fire Department. Chris Patrick is a Hampden resident and graduate of Minnechaug Regional High School. He is also a member of the Air National Guard out of Westfield.
“He’s just starting his career so we’re happy to appoint him and mold him into the kind of firefighter we’ve been turning out,” said Deputy Chief Patrick Farrow.
After the completion of the crosswalk project being funded with a grant from the Massachusetts Gaming Commission grant, Town Administrator Bob Markel said the agency will have more grant money available for roads projects. He identified the installation of a sidewalk near the Centennial Commons elder housing complex and a redesign of the intersection of Somers Road and East Longmeadow Road as possible projects.
The possibility of installing an electric vehicle (EV) charging station behind the town hall was broached again. Previously, Markel had told the board that Eversource would install the charging station at no cost to the town. Instead, the people who use the station pay with credit cards. Board of Selectmen member Craig Rivest noted that the town could make money from the equipment by charging more than the 8.4 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) that Eversource would collect.