Westfield

Judge halts school project

A Hampden Superior Court judge has issued a temporary restraining order to block the construction of a new $36 million elementary school on Ashley Street in Westfield. (Photo by chief photographer Frederick Gore)

WESTFIELD – Local officials are trying to determine if an injunction handed down by the Hampden Superior Court judge yesterday afternoon will delay the start of construction on the city’s $36 million elementary school project.
Mayor Daniel M. Knapik said that city officials will conduct the ground breaking ceremony as scheduled. That event is slated for tomorrow at 1 p.m. on the site of the school construction project, which is now occupied by the Ashley Street School.
Superior Court Judge Tina Page issued the temporary restraining order yesterday after a motion filed by several residents of Ashley and Cross streets contended that the city is violating state and federal law by using part of the Cross Street playground for the $36 million school project. The residents filed the suit earlier this year, charging that the city is violating Article 97 of the Massachusetts General Law which sets preservation protection for land.
Knapik said this morning that the city is waiting for a copy of Page’s order to determine the scope of the injunction.
“It’s a temporary restraining order,” Knapik said. “This is an action routinely filed. The judge saw that we already had a hearing scheduled for (Wednesday) Sept. 12, so she issued the order.”
“This is a temporary setback,” Knapik said. “We’ll go ahead with the ground breaking (tomorrow).”
Knapik submitted an order to the City Council in June seeking to petition the state legislature to authorize transfer of the Cross Street municipal field from a park designation to general municipal purposes.
The Council sent the request to its Legislative & Ordinance Committee for further review.
Ward 2 Councilor James E. Brown Jr., who resigned this week, said in June that Cross Street was one of nine park facilities upgraded through a federal Department of the Interior conservation grant. Approximately 2.7 acres of the nine-acre playground was improved through the federal grant, but records do not detail which area of the Cross Street facility was upgraded through the federal grant.
Pertinent language of Article 9 reads as follows:

“The people shall have the right to clean air and water, freedom from excessive and unnecessary noise, and the natural, scenic, historic, and esthetic qualities of their environment; and the protection of the people in their right to the conservation, development and utilization of the agricultural, mineral, forest, water, air and other natural resources is hereby declared to be a public purpose. The general court shall have the power to enact legislation necessary or expedient to protect such
rights.  In the furtherance of the foregoing powers, the general court shall have the power to provide for the taking, upon payment of just compensation therefore, or for the acquisition by purchase or otherwise, of lands and easements or such other interests therein as may be deemed necessary to accomplish these purposes.
Lands and easements taken or acquired for such purposes shall not be used for other purposes or otherwise disposed of except by laws enacted by a two thirds vote, taken by yeas and nays, of each branch of the general court.”

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