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Date: 3/17/2021
WESTFIELD – After closing City Hall down to the public a year ago, Westfield Mayor Don Humason announced on Facebook that he was working toward reopening the building in early April.
With other municipalities and businesses beginning to reopen, Humason said now was the right time to open City Hall again.
“I’m looking around seeing a lot of other places in our community and in the state open up, including a number of banks, a number of businesses have posted they are reopening their showrooms, and it’s been a year, so I think it is time,” he said.
Humason said currently he is shooting for an April 1 reopening date for City Hall.
“I’m still shooting for the beginning of April, hopefully the first day. That’s my goal and Robert Bishop, our personnel director, is making that clear to the folks in meetings with him about the plans for reopening. I’ve spoken to our facilities person Tom Curran, and he said he is ready, and he wants to make sure people feel comfortable coming in because it has been sanitized,” he said.
Along with City Hall opening, Humason said there will still be strict social distancing and capacity limits in the building.
“We are also going to continue to ask people to social distance, stand on the circles on the ground, and wear their masks. We are also going to limit the number of people in each office and ask people to limit their time in the building,” he said.
Humason said a task force led by Bishop is currently working on hammering out the details for reopening City Hall.
“There is a task force here at City Hall that has been meeting under the leadership of our personnel director to make sure everybody understands what is expected of them, and what we are going to be able to do to keep City Hall staff and the public feeling comfortable and safe in the building,” he said.
While City Hall will be opening, Humason said residents can still use the drop boxes at the building or pay their bills online if they feel uncomfortable entering the building.
“We hope that people will continue to take advantage of the drop box and not feel like they need to come in, we hope they will pay bills online, we hope that they will be able to do the same things they did this past year,” he said.
He added that one of the challenges of reopening is striking a balance between offering services created as a result of COVID-19 and services inside City Hall.
“We are trying to find a nice balance between reopening the building and making sure people know they can come in if they want to, but they do not have to if they do not want to. That’s good for the as well as being good for the public who may not feel as comfortable coming in,” Humason said.
One of the biggest changes Humason said he and other city officials are looking forward to is the reopening of City Council Chambers for meetings.
“It will also be good to have our City Council Chambers open again for City Council meetings, School Committee meetings, Planning Board meetings, and stuff like that because that has not happened in almost a year. We think it’s better to hold these meetings face to face rather than on a screen, Brady Bunch style on Zoom,” he said.
While he said everyone is looking forward to putting COVID-19 behind them, Humason said the city will open up everything as safely as possible.
“It is a return to normalcy or the new normal for the time being. We would like nothing more than to put the last 12 months behind us in a safe way. As people receive the vaccine, as the pandemic restrictions are loosened at the federal and state level, we are going to try to do our part at the city level in Westfield,” he said.
Humason added that he was proud of the city’s employees and everyone that helped the city make it through the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It has been a challenging year but one that I think our city handled very well. I am proud of the staff here in the city of Westfield, whether they are at City Hall, the police station, the fire station, or our schools. I think people have tried their best to keep the public safe, children safe, and their co-workers safe. Now I think it is time for us to reopen and reevaluate,” he said.