Voters will have full slate at Special Town Meeting

Date: 11/4/2011

Oct. 31, 2011

By Chris Maza

Reminder Assistant Editor

LONGMEADOW — Residents of Longmeadow will have a full slate of items to vote upon at the Nov. 8 Special Town Meeting.

The warrant contains 25 articles requiring action at the meeting, which will take place at 7 p.m. in the Longmeadow High School gymnasium.

Among the topics to be discussed and voted upon are funding for collective bargaining agreements, bonding interest payments and information technology (IT) expenditures.

Article 3 calls for the town to appropriate $171,106 to pay interest costs associated with the bonding for the Longmeadow High School building project.

Longmeadow recently sold more than $17 million in bonds in order to complete the financing for the town’s part of the spending on the project.

“In order to save the town money, we borrowed the money now in order to take advantage of low interest rates,” Select Board Chair Mark Gold said. “But because of when we sold the bonds, the interest was not included in this fiscal year’s budget. This article gives us the authority to pay the interest we will owe over the next six months.”

Article 4 asks the town to approve the consolidation of several town utility expenses, including the electric, gas and water, for the library, the Department of Public Works (DPW) and the School Department.

“It removes the responsibility of dealing with energy costs from the different departments. If the price of oil goes up, those departments shouldn’t be responsible for those costs,” Gold said. “It’s similar to what we do with benefits for town employees. If the cost of health insurance were to go up, we wouldn’t tell the departments they have to be responsible for that.”

All told, the motion would transfer more than $1.9 million from these departments into the town’s general fund.

“We’re not spending any more and we’re not spending any less through this,” Gold said.

Three articles ask for the town to transfer a total of $66,252 from various funds in order to finance collective bargaining agreements for police, fire and the town’s non-union employees.

Article 7 requests that $7,100 be transferred from the Ambulance Fund in order to fund the 1/2 percent raise in fiscal year 2012 (FY12), in accordance with their collective bargaining agreement.

Article 9 calls for the transfer of $12,000 from available funds in the treasury in order to fully fund a 1 percent wage increase in FY12 for the patrol officers in the Police Department.

Article 10 requires transfers from four different sources to fund the wage adjustments relating to collective bargaining agreements for town employees not associated with the schools, police or fire personnel’s agreements. A total of $39,699 would be transferred from free cash, while $3,424 would come from water retained earnings, $3,481 from sewer retained earnings and $548 from waste recycling retained earnings.

“All of these collective bargaining agreements have already been negotiated and now we have to fund them,” Gold said.

Articles 21 and 22 will ask the town to fund IT expenditures that were originally deferred from the Annual Town Meeting in May.

While not recommended by the Finance Committee, Article 21 will ask residents to approve the spending of $50,000 in order to purchase new computer hardware and software in order to continue the town’s IT upgrade project.

Article 22 calls for an additional $15,000 to be spent in order to continue providing wireless Internet capabilities in town and school buildings as part of the same project.

Three money transfers from the Capital Stabilization Fund on the warrant will require a two-thirds majority vote in order to pass.

Articles 15 and 16 call for the spending of $230,000 from the fund in order to replace DPW fleet vehicles. Of the total expenditure, $169,00 would be used to purchase a new full-size dump truck, which would include a hydraulic system and snow plow. The remaining $61,000 would go toward the purchase of a one-ton dump truck, which would also include a plow. Both current vehicles are in poor condition.

Article 17 asks that the town transfer $59,000 from the stabilization fund in order to complete the improvements of the Reynolds Pool, which includes piping, drain installation and the addition of stairs and a hydraulic chair lift in order for the pool to be in compliance with Americans with Disabilities Act mandates.

Article 24, which requests a $940,405 transfer to the Operational Stabilization Fund and Article 25, which asks that $313,446 be transferred to the Employee Benefits Stabilization Fund, also require a two-thirds majority vote.