WESTFIELD – At-large Councilor Brian Sullivan said Monday, following his election as City Council President, that he did not plan to make wholesale changes to the memberships of committees which have been in place for the past year.
Those committee memberships were significant following the Nov. 2013 election which put six new members into City Council seats and challenged then Council President Brent B. Bean II, who chose not to seek reelection as president this year, to balance committee membership with both newly elected and veteran councilors.
Incoming City Council presidents typically poll the council members as to their preference re: committees and try to accommodate those preferences.
Sullivan said that he moved several veteran councilors from committees on which they have served for several years to avoid “burnout” and that new committee assignments bring new challenges for those councilors.
Sullivan, who served the last year as chairman of the powerful Legislative & Ordinance Committee, had to remove his name and insert Bean’s name for committee assignments.
Sullivan assigned the L&O chairmanship to Ward 2 Councilor Ralph Figy, who will be joined by Ward 1 Councilor Christopher Keefe and At-large Councilor Matthew VanHeynigen.
VanHeynigen will serve as chairman of the Government Relations Committee with Councilors Hoose and O’Connell.
Figy will continue to serve on the council’s Personnel Action Committee, but will yield chairmanship of that committee to At-large Councilor Cindy Harris who was also a member for the past year. Joining Harris and Figy will be At-large Councilor James R. Adams.
Sullivan named Bean as chairman of the Finance Committee, but also kept Ward 5 Councilor Robert A. Paul, Sr., and Ward 6 Councilor Christopher Crean, who both served on that committee under then Chairman Keefe.
Sullivan said that he assigned Keefe to be chairman of the Zoning, Planning and Development Committee because of the number of projects in Wards 1 and 6, the city’s Northside. At-large Councilors Adams and David A. Flaherty will also serve on the ZP&D Committee.
Ward 4 Councilor Mary O’Connell will serve as the chairwoman of two committees: the Natural Resources Committee and the Charter & Rules Committee. O’Connell will also serve on the Public Health & Safety Committee and the Government Relations Committee.
O’Connell is joined by Councilors Harris and Paul on the Natural Resource Committee and by Harris and VanHeynigen on the Charter & Rules Committee.
Crean will also have two committee chairmanships, the License Committee and the Business Development Committee. Crean will be joined by At-large Councilor Dan Allie and Ward 3 Councilor Brian Hoose on the License Committee and both Allie and Flaherty are on the Business Development Committee.
Allie will serve as chairman of the Public Health & Safety Committee with Councilors Figy and O’Connell, while Hoose will serve as chairman of the City Property Committee with Bean and Adams.
Flaherty will serve as chairman of the Long Range Financial Overview (LRFO) Committee with Keefe and Paul. Paul has argued that the city needs to incorporate a capital expenditures bond program for both future planning and to control departmental spending, a concept that the LRFO committee could play a major role in incorporating.
