DCAMM’s process needs revamp

Date: 2/18/2016

One of the most controversial actions any element of government can take is to put some sort of facility in a residential neighborhood.

Largely the reason these actions are controversial is because the residents close to whatever facility frequently have little to say about it.

Now for those of you who live in a suburb, you may not have had too much experience with group homes or similar institutions. If you live in an urban neighborhood as I do, you know that thanks to the state law called the Dover Amendment a group home or halfway house can locate almost anywhere because it offers an education component.

My neighborhood in Springfield has the largest number of such facilities in the City of Homes.

Now here is the reality I know: group homes may not cause too many problems, but the perception is people are fearful of them. This is undoubtedly unfair.

And people earnestly believe a group home diminishes the property of the residences near it, despite the fact that irresponsible neighbors are probably a far more important issue.

Inner city neighborhoods are frequently considered for these kinds of programs because there are large old houses available at reasonable prices. There is a huge divide, however, into what inevitably goes into a working class urban neighborhood and what goes into a solidly middle class suburb.

Could you imagine the state placing an addiction treatment center in East Longmeadow or Longmeadow? Agawam? South Hadley? Nope.

In my neighborhood a battle is raging over the placement of the Western Massachusetts Correctional Addiction Center – the program that had a 30-year run at the former YWCA building on Howard Street in the South End. Folks in that neighborhood were sorry to see the program evicted by MGM and the state was forced to find it a new home.

After an attempt last year to relocate it to a North End neighborhood, the Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance (DCAMM), the state agency in charge of acquiring property for state programs, decided to give put it in a former nursing home on Mill Street in my neighborhood.

There is no public participation in the DCAMM process.

There is no municipal participation in the DCAMM process. No special permits are required. The state can put something damn well where the state wants.

I believe this is wrong.

If that condition wasn’t enough of an issue to bring up with the legislative delegation and if the concerns of the abutters weren’t enough of an issue to be addressed by both the property owner and Sheriff Michael Ashe Jr., we now have politics rearing its all so familiar and unwelcome head.

Governor’s Councilor Michael Albano has announced that if he were elected sheriff he would move the program from Mill Street. This statement now politicizes this already controversial issue. It’s unnecessary grandstanding from the former mayor of Springfield.

It’s also unclear if whomever is sheriff could actually do that. I’m checking into that.    

I’m in favor of the center being located in the abandoned nursing home building DCAMM selected based on its record in the South End, but I also fully understand of the apprehension the closest residential abutters have to the center.

Here is what I hope happens in the near future: the state and the sheriff work together to address the concerns of the abutters and the Legislature should examine just how DCAMM does its business and why municipal participation isn’t part of the process.

Agree? Disagree? Drop me a line at news@thereminder.com or at 280 N. Main St., East Longmeadow, MA 01028. As always, this column represents the opinion of its author and not the publishers or advertisers of this newspaper.