The City Council’s Legislative & Ordinance Committee unanimously voted Thursday to support a lease of a city building to the agency now administering the Head Start program.
Mayor Daniel M. Knapik has requested the City Council to authorize a resolution allowing the city to enter into a lease agreement with the social service agency now acting as the grantee of the Head Start program.
The L&O will give a positive recommendation to Knapik’s request at the April 19 City Council session.
Community Action! of Franklin, Hampshire and North Quabbin Regions was selected to administer the regional Head Start program based out of Westfield.
The Greenfield-based social service agency assumed administration of the Westfield Head Start program in January.
The agency, which currently services populations in Franklin and Hampshire counties, will expand into Hampden Country, when it takes over the Head Start program currently serving Westfield, West Springfield, Agawam and Southwick.
The Westfield School Committee had administered the program, which was initially based solely in the city, since 1985. Last year the committee voted to “discharge” the federal and state grants funding the program. Westfield was one of only two municipally administered Head Start programs in the state, the other being Worcester.
One of the primary issues that led the School Committee to seek an alternate administrator for the Head Start program was the financial liability exposure to the city, which was responsible for funding deficits, even if that liability was incurred in another community.
Community Action! is led by Executive Director Clare Higgins, and is governed by a twenty-four member Board of Directors. Higgins, 56, resigned in September as the mayor of Northampton to take over as head of the Community Action! agency.
The city and Community Action! had been discussing a timeline on that transfer process since late October. Part of that discussion pertained to the lease for the city-owned Southampton Road building where the program has been located in Westfield.
Shanna Reed of the Law Department said Community Action! was capable of assuming administration of the federally funded program only if it was given favorable lease terms by the city.
“The only way this group was take the program was with a reduced rate of the lease,” Reed said. “The city took the building in 1987 for the alternative school and never made any money on it and is not making money now, but is providing a service to the community.”
Reed said the Community Action! administers a preschool and family service program for the children of low-income families in the city. The Head Start program promotes the school readiness of children, ages three to five, by enhancing the children’s cognitive, social and emotional development.
The term of the lease is for an annual payment of a dollar over the 10-year span of the agreement. The city will continue to plow the access and parking areas, will continue to pay for utilities and will fund 50 percent of any capital improvements required during the life of the lease.
