Red Cross withdraws City Hall lease request
By DAN MORIARTY
Staff Writer
WESTFIELD – A City Council committee will withdraw the Westfield Red Cross lease petition without action tomorrow night.
The Legislative & Ordinance Committee discussed the lease proposal Monday night, voting to remove it from committee without action.
Mayor Daniel M. Knapik sought the City Council authorization of a four-year lease agreement with the Westfield Red Cross Chapter, submitting a resolution to the City Council at the Jan. 19 meeting authorizing a lease with the American Red Cross “for the use of certain rooms in city hall” that would provide office and program space while the local Red Cross Chapter looked for another suitable location for those administrative and programming functions.
The national Red Cross is reorganizing and folding small local chapters into larger regional organizations.
“My understanding is that there is a significant concern at the national level to cut expenses” by closing and consolidating smaller chapters, Knapik said, prior to the Jan. 19 council meeting “We had to find a cost-effective way to keep the local chapter in Westfield. The long and short of it is that we don’t want this to be gone from Westfield.”
The city was working to accommodate the local chapter because it is a valuable resource for the greater Westfield community, Knapik said, assisting residents in emergency response situations, such as house fires, natural disasters, as well as providing numerous educational and professional training programs.
The L&O was originally slated to address the proposed lease on Jan. 30, but deferred that discussion at the request of the Red Cross.
Ward 2 Councilor James E. Brown Jr., chairman of the L&O, said he removed the issued from the Jan. 30 L&O agenda item at the request of the local chapter.
“They’re still reviewing the proposed lease at the national level in Washington, D.C., so we’re putting it on hold until the national organization has given its blessing,” Brown said at that time. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense to put time in reviewing a document that may be the wrong version. The national Red Cross may decide it doesn’t want to do this.”
Brown said Monday night that Knapik will send late communication tomorrow notifying the council members “that the Red Cross is no longer pursuing” a lease agreement with the city.
“The Red Cross national agency reviewed (the proposed agreement) and decided that the city could not meet some of their requirements,” Brown said.
Ward 4 Councilor Mary O’Connell said Monday that the withdrawal of the lease petition will avoid a heated debate on the council floor, where several councilors expressed concerns with leasing office and meeting space to a private agency, space that is very limited in the 100-year-old municipal building. Meeting room space at city hall, space that the Red Cross would have used for both day and evening programs, has become limited as several city departments, including the Council on Aging and School Department, have moved personnel into the building. The Council on Aging personnel are returning to their Main Street facility on Monday, however.
Dan Moriarty can be reached at [email protected]
