Happy Easter and Happy Passover wishes to everyone!
This weekend is all about faith, belief, sacrifice, and freedom from oppression. I hope that everyone gets to spend some wonderful time with their family and friends. I also hope that everyone takes a few moments to not only reflect on the history and religious significance of this weekend, but also take time for some self-reflection. What are your important beliefs and values? Where can you sacrifice to serve others? What can you do to improve our community, nation, or world for the next generations?
We have an amazingly talented population in Westfield, and we have lots of fantastic public servants and volunteers. There’s always room for more. If you’d like to help the city government and your neighbors, maybe you could run for an elected office, or volunteer to serve on a board or committee? If you don’t want to commit to long-term service, maybe you could help on one of the campaign committees? If you’re interested in sports, there are youth programs that would love help with coaching, field prep, administration, refereeing, and fundraising. If you’re interested in education, the school system is always looking for help in the classroom, on field trips, or as a member of the PTO. If you’ve got a business background, the Junior Achievement program needs volunteers to run programs
in the school systems. If you’d like to help with community events, the Westfield on Weekends team would love some help. If you have the time to help a child, Big Brother Big Sisters is always looking for caring adult friends and role models. If you have a passion for helping the needy, the food banks and
kitchens are always looking for help and donations. The Senior Center, senior housing, and nursing homes always need a hand. The social service agencies and non-profits would love more help with program, events, and fundraising. The Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts are always looking for volunteer adults
to help with local troops, special events, special training programs, participation on a board, and fundraising. I get around a bit, and I see many of the same people volunteering for multiple programs and causes. They all do it because they have a calling to help, and they are willing to make the small
sacrifices necessary to make a difference. Please join them. If you don’t know who to call or where to look, please blast me an email ([email protected]) and I’ll help you find something that is right for you.
This is a busy time of year for the City Council. We have a lot of issues before us that affect the quality of life in Westfield, and shortly we’ll be in budget mode which will affect the pocketbooks of everyone in town.
On Thursday night, the City Council approved a new ordinance related to property maintenance. I support to concept of everyone properly maintaining their property, but I voted against the ordinance as written because I don’t feel it would, or could, be equally enforced. The law says that you could be
ordered to fix chipped paint, long-grass, standing water, and a host of other things. If you don’t fix the problem within a short amount of time, you could be fined $100 per day for each violation. Again, I like the goal of having well-maintained nice-looking property, but I don’t think there is any way to enforce this in a fair way. I’ve been keeping my eyes open as I drove around for the last couple of weeks. Easily over ten percent of homes and businesses are not compliant with this new law. Yes, in a perfect world, many of these properties should be cleaned up. But, the owners don’t always have the money to do the work. For many homes and businesses these are major expenses – maybe tens of thousands of dollars.
They just can’t do it. To have the city come along and demand that it be fixed in a short amount of time, and then to charge the owner $100 per day for non-compliance doesn’t seem to make sense to me. Maybe the city can come up with a way to help these people fix their properties? Maybe they could have conduits to volunteers, non-profits, or grant funding to help lower-income residents and businesses clean-up the properties. Maybe Community Development Block Grant funds can be used to clean-up some of the urban blight?
Also on Thursday, the City Council approved the creation of a department that combines: DPW, Water, Sewer, and Parks & Rec. You’ve probably seen a few newspaper articles about this, and probably heard some chatter that certain councilors were “roadblocks”. I’m usually associated with that “certain councilor” brand. I voted for this. I’m not wicked excited about it, but I did vote for it. I think there could be some problems, and I agree with the councilors who talked about the autonomy of boards and commissions, and the distribution of authority in government. I also have budgetary concerns. I think that if we’re consolidating departments, we should be reducing costs – not increasing costs. That’s not going to happen right now. However, there is potential for long-term savings, and there will be some economies of scale and workforce flexibility that will make a difference in the long-term. Therefore, I figured we might as well go for it. If it saves us money and makes the departments more efficient and responsive over time, that will be a good thing.
All reports are that the single-stream recycling program is working well. Kudos to former City Councilor Gerry Tracy for being an advocate for this years ago. Trash volume is down – which should save us some money on the disposal fees. Total net cost hasn’t been released, but the City Council will be hearing from the Health Department in June. I’m hopeful that the total net cost will be lower (after taking into account the trucks, bins, labor, disposal, and all other associated costs and incomes). Most people have found that the two bins are working fine. However, a few folks need more space. The City will be addressing that in the coming weeks.
On the new school front, there’s been a lot of recent activity and diatribe. First, let me say that I support the concept of a new school. New facilities would offer kids a nicer learning experience and would help improve the perceived value of a Westfield education, which may help keep home values up. However, I’m not a fan of the Cross and Ashley Street location, nor the process that was used to jam the school into that site. I don’t work in the schools on a regular basis, but I do visit occasionally, and I do volunteer for Junior Achievement at several schools in western Massachusetts. I also volunteer for Boy Scouts and interact with families and kids who attend a broad variety of schools. I talk with lots of kids. Given my experiences, I don’t think it’s fair to say a child who attends an older school is getting a sub-standard education, and I don’t think it’s fair to imply that if we don’t build a new mega school that we’re sacrificing our kids. This just isn’t true. Many families love their neighborhood schools and the education their kids are receiving. The buildings don’t teach. We have great teachers and many involved parents at some of our older schools. The kids are getting a decent education. I’d certainly like to see improvements, and I’d like to ensure that all of our kids get a world-class education. However, a new building is not the silver bullet. Active caring parents, values, great teachers, great curriculum, best practices, and motivated hard-working students are keys to success. I sympathize with the families of kids who are moving from Juniper Park to Russell. I know it’s a big change and a cause for major stress. I can’t fix that. There is a long (muddied) history with Juniper, and though some want to point fingers at the City Council for “causing” the problem, this just isn’t true. We can’t dwell on the past. We have to address the now, and plan for the future. I think all of the elected public servants want to do that. However, there is great disagreement on “how”. There are groups of very concerned, very active, and very intelligent citizens addressing this problem from all sides. I’m sure a satisfactory solution can be reached. However, I’d encourage all sides to stop the insults and hate speech. It really is not helpful, and it sets a bad example for our kids. As I mentioned above, we all want what’s best.
On the budget front… I’m still concerned. The city is deficit spending this year to cover operating expenses (taking money from free cash). The city is also deferring about $20 million in employee benefit liabilities. Our total unfunded liability for this is rapidly approaching $300 million. There is an OPEB working group discussing options, but the suggestions that I’ve seen are nowhere near substantial enough to fix the problem (we have a $20+ million per year problem, and that can’t be fixed with hundreds of thousands of dollars in changes). The recent labor contracts call for 3 percent raises next year. The state aid numbers (Cherry Sheet) for next year do not look very good. For example, the school aid only went up by $111,000 on a $33+ million number – that’s only about 3/10th of 1 percent. State aid covers about 60 percent of our school budget. If that 60 percent is only going up $111,000, the city is going to have great challenges trying to cover the rest. It’s going to be a tough budget year, and the long-term budgets do not look good at all.
The new senior center is looking great. Big kudos to our local builder: Forish Construction. I’m thrilled for the seniors. In a few months they will have a wonderful new home. The Friends of the Westfield Senior Center are still looking for donations to furnish the facility. Please visit: http://www.westfieldseniors.org to make a donation if you can.
Have a great early Spring weekend. Happy Easter and Happy Passover,
Dave Flaherty City Councilor [email protected]
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not the staff, editor, or publisher of this publication.
