Longmeadow Select Board volleys Blinn Tennis Courts article

Date: 10/30/2014

LONGMEADOW – The Select Board approved 17 articles for the warrant of the upcoming Special Town Meeting at its Oct. 21 meeting. However, one article allocating $200,000 for the Blinn Tennis Courts reconstruction project was not added to the warrant.

The board decided by a 3 to 2 vote not to include the article.  Selectmen Alex Grant, Paul Santaniello, and Select Board Chair Richard Foster voted against the article.

Prior to the vote, the board discussed the legal language of the town’s Community Preservation Committee (CPC) bylaws, which sparked opposing interpretations by board members.

Grant said the usage of language in the town’s bylaw 2-808, Section B, Subsection 2 does not explicitly state that the board has to approve the articles.

The bylaw states that the CPC “shall make recommendations to the Town Meeting” for items related to open space, historic preservation, recreational use, and community housing. The bylaw makes no specific reference to the board approving CPC articles.

“It’s possible to read that as ‘shall make recommendations when those things are on the warrant,’” Grant explained. “I mean, it doesn’t say one way or the other and that reading gives that language force.”

The Select Board voted 3 to 2 to not follow the legal opinion of Town Counsel David Martel, who stated that the board does not have the power to not vote on an article. Foster, Grant, and Santaniello did not vote in favor.

“This whole issue of what goes on the warrant, what must be on the warrant, where is the Select Board’s discretion; I certainly don’t know,” added Town Manager Stephen Crane. “And to be perfectly honest, after 300 years of Town Meetings I’m surprised that these issues aren’t more solidly defined.”

Foster said the board could likely have a definitive answer for the issue by its Nov. 3 meeting, the deadline to sign and post the warrant.

The article related to the Blinn Tennis Courts project could be revisited based on the answers pertaining to the bylaws issue, he added.

“Because if you can’t vote against it, you shouldn’t be voting for it,” Santaniello said. “Because if it’s a submission by [the] CPC and if it’s the same thing with the Planning Board articles, [when] you’re voting on something, you’re endorsing the articles in other words.”

The Blinn Tennis Courts project was approved at the 2014 Annual Town Meeting in May for $375,000. The total funds for the project were $675,000, which included $180,000 from the General Fund.

The project received two bids in August and the lowest bid exceeded the available funding by $217,000.

Crane said based on feedback from the town’s consulting engineer the project’s costs increased due to an aggressive timeline for construction and a lack of competition in the bidding process.

“I think it was a failure on the part of our town government to send the bids out so late such that the cost escalated, and as told by our town manager, a number of bidders simply didn’t not bid because they did not believe it could be done on time,” Grant said. 

He noted that in his opinion the project should go out to bid again to determine if the roughly $200,000 appropriation of funds from the Community Preservation Undesignated Fund Balance is justified.

“Hopefully it will come in at the original price,” Grant added. “And if it at that point it doesn’t, I would support next spring adding whatever money is necessary to complete the project.”

Crane said the bids were opened near the end of July and the project was slated for completion in the fall. The option of the building during this spring was difficult due to the Longmeadow High School tennis team using the courts.

“[The project going over estimated costs] was due to unavailable information about the cost of the lighting and putting in a conduit, and some materials cost that were higher than we thought they would be based on market competition,” Crane said.

“So, we thought that the courts were going to cost us a certain amount and it turns out through the bidding process we found out it was a different level of project,” he continued. “It’s not a failure on timelines or anything else.”

In other business, a citizen’s petition article authorizing the purchase of a Quint fire truck, an aerial firefighting apparatus with ladder capabilities for $752,000, was added to the warrant.

Select Board member Marie Angelides submitted the petitioned article, according to Crane.

The Special Town Meeting is scheduled for Nov. 18.