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Date: 11/21/2023
BLANDFORD — Town Administrator Christopher Dunne will be leaving in the beginning of December for a new position as a planning and economic development person in Deerfield, a job that will involve a lot of grant work, he said.
Dunne started as Blandford’s chief administrator in March 2022, and admits that he’s leaving a little sooner than he had planned. He said he applied for the job in Deerfield just to check it out.
“They were very enthusiastic about my candidacy,” he said.
His new job is only 20 minutes up Interstate 91 from his home in Northampton, and with a four-month-old son, Arthur, at home, that makes a difference, he said.
Dunne said in his tenure in Blandford, he feels that he has followed through on “a bunch” of big grant projects started by his predecessor Joshua Garcia, now the mayor of Holyoke. Among them was an economic development grant for public places, used to pave the playground at Town Hall and create a patio in front of the Porter Memorial Library. He said he’s also helped lead the town toward Americans with Disabilities Act compliance, with a plan in place that qualifies the town for grants to make buildings more accessible.
A lot of the work that he has focused on in Blandford is financial.
“I contributed to improving the overall budget planning process, and will pass on an annotated copy of our budget, so when they sit down they will know what every line item is and what the method of funding it is,” Dunne said, adding the town also established a capital improvement plan.
Although Blandford had already received its allocation for the American Recovery Plan Act while Garcia was still there and one-half had already been allocated, Dunne helped to set up the rest of its dispersal to local businesses and town departments. He said, for example, a lot of the work needed by the Water Department was funded through ARPA.
He said the town now has a long-term vision for a backup power supply for Town Hall, because the generator there currently only powers the water sprinkler system.
Blandford has started to advertise for a town administrator and has had preliminary interviews with a screening committee. Meanwhile, an interim arrangement is being discussed with Ira Brezinsky, a special projects assistant for the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission, who will likely serve as interim town administrator, according to Dunne. After Garcia left, the town went six months without a permanent replacement.
He said he feels that having an administrator as a steady presence in Town Hall makes a difference. He’s been spending a lot of time working on a “job aid” that will give the next person in the position information on specific tasks expected of the administrator and who the contacts and the vendors are for each project, “so whoever is next can hit the ground running.”
There are some big unfinished projects facing the next administrator, the largest being new facilities for the fire and highway departments. At the last annual Town Meeting, the residents voted to approve $245,000 to go forward on a schematic design for a new facility that would house the equipment in both departments.
“It’s still a challenge — every small town is in the same boat. It will take time for the new reality about the cost to settle in,” Dunne said.
He said there is good news about the preferred site for a combined facility in the salt shed yard on Chester Road, where town officials have discovered an 8-inch water line that extends all the way up to the site, making it buildable. However, Dunne said the project remains very expensive and there is some trepidation about being too remote — the salt shed is 2 miles from the center of town.
Dunne said Blandford did not get the rural and small town development grant of $400,000 it was seeking to design the project. He said the town is planning to sit down for a debrief on the grant with MassDevelopment. The design team at Wesson & Sampson is also looking for ways to shave dollars off the overall construction cost, which is estimated to be in the millions of dollars, by using alternative materials.
Dunne said at some point, once the schematic design phase is finished, the plan is to go back to voters for additional funding for design development. He said the funding source is always the issue.
Blandford has also signed on to a bill currently in the Legislature that would create a state public safety building authority, similar to the Massachusetts School Building Authority, which reimburses local governments for part of the cost of building schools. Another bill still in the works would provide recreational access to Cobble Mountain Road, which has been closed since 2001.
“Rep. [Nicholas] Boldyga and Sen. [Paul] Mark have been great in their support of that,” he said.
Dunne said since he’s been town administrator, he’s spent a lot of time working with Springfield Water & Sewer, which owns the reservoir on Cobble Mountain, to find areas of collaboration, including discussions about having the utility company contribute to the funding of a new brush truck for the Fire Department.
All in all, Dunne is leaving with fond memories of the town.
“People have been great here. It’s great how many volunteers we have when we have a town event, like Memorial Day or trunk-or-treat. People really turn out — it’s phenomenal. People want more of that,” he said.