WESTFIELD – The Finance Committee will present three funding requests to the City Council at its April 5, 2012 session, two with a positive recommendation and the third with no recommendation.
The Finance Committee discussed the three funding requests, submitted by Mayor Daniel M. Knapik, including appropriations for the Police Department and for the City Hall renovation project, as well as a grant for improvements to a flood control pump station.
The committee approved, by a 2-0 vote, the request to appropriate $42,234.56 to the Police Department to hire three additional dispatchers and a supervisor for the recently created emergency dispatch department, which will be located at the Technology Center at Barnes Regional Airport.
The 2013 fiscal year budget, which goes into effect on July 1, 2012, will reflect the creation of the new department with its own line items specific to salaries, equipment, capital improvement and maintenance.
The ordinance establishing the department also contained the job description for the supervisor of that department which will be submitted by the Personnel Action Committee at the April 5 council session.
The ordinance also establishes a board to oversee the operation and policies of the new department. That board includes the sitting police and fire chiefs, the technology center supervisor, and two members nominated by the mayor and confirmed by the council.
The finding will allow the hiring of additional personnel, who will receive further medical emergency dispatch training through grant funds now in the Police Department budget.
Captain Hipolito Nunez said a “critical aspect” of moving toward an independent emergency dispatch department is to have the new personnel trained before the center opens.
“The training grant runs out on June 30, so the new dispatchers have to be trained and ready when the center opens at the end of June or early July,” Nunez said.
The committee also voted to give the $74,029 hazardous mitigation grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to make improvements to the Williams Riding Way flood control pump station, located just off Meadow Street. That facility was constructed in 1955-56 and the present pumping equipment is 57 years old.
The FEMA funding, passing through the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, was made available to communities after the September flooding in the wake of tropical storm Irene.
The grant will be used to install remote monitoring and controls of the pump station, similar to what the city has at the Wastewater Treatment Plant, sewer pump station and drinking water facilities throughout the city.
The Finance Committee will also present a request to appropriate $400,000 from the Community Preservation Act reserve account to the City Hall renovation account.
The Community Preservation Committee voted on May 26, 2011 to approve the funding request for the City Hall repair work that is projected to cost a total of $3.4 million. Emergency repair work was done to two areas of the City Hall roof this winter, to prevent water leaks that were damaging records in the Engineering and City Clerk departments.
At-large Councilor David Flaherty made the motion to give a positive recommendation, as a courtesy to Finance Chairman Richard E. Onofrey Jr., the Ward 5 Councilor, because the third member of the committee, Ward 6 Councilor Christopher Crean, was attending the first meeting of the Special Dog Park Committee recently established by Council President Christopher Keefe, who also named Crean to serve as the chairman of that special committee.
Flaherty then voted against his own motion.
“I don’t want to take CPA money to fix City Hall, that money should be coming from a maintenance account,” Flaherty said. “I want CPA funds to go to parks.”
Onofrey said that preservation of historic buildings is one of the primary uses of CPA funding and that City Hall, which was constructed more than a century ago, is listed on the National Register of Historic Buildings.
