Editor’s Note: This story is the last in a week-long series regarding what residents should expect in their communities in 2020.
GREENFIELD — The new year is bringing new faces to city government, but they inherit the task of continuing the work of their predecessors, including budgeting and seeing through big-ticket infrastructure projects.
After residents approved the $19.5 million library by a vote of 3,294 to 2,108 during November’s general election, both former Mayor William Martin and new Mayor Roxann Wedegartner appointed members to the Library Building Committee, which will meet early this year.
“We’re going to be moving forward with design and construction of the new library, which I estimate will begin in late 2020,” Wedegartner said.
The plan is for a 26,800-square-foot library. By comparison, the current library, built as a private residence in 1797, is 15,000 square feet. The new library will be built on land the city owns on Main Street, between the current library and post office.
In regards to the current library building, which has been the subject of safety and accessibility concerns, Wedegartner said the hope is to continue moving forward with the feasibility study proposed by Martin in December.
“Nothing has changed in my mind. We know that fixes will need to happen regardless of the new use of the building — whether it’s kept a town building or put out for sale,” she said. “We need to be mindful of the financial threshold and we need to know what will need to happen and then decide how to proceed.”
Wedegartner said the city will seek a waiver from the Massachusetts Architectural Access Board and the Massachusetts Office of Disability for the current library until the new one is built.
Constructing a new library, however, will displace the Greenfield Fire Station. Wedegartner said she and Martin worked together to appoint members to the Public Safety Building Committee, which will consider next steps for creating a public safety complex, currently planned at the corner of Beacon and Riddell streets.
In addition to the library and public safety complex, other projects for 2020 include the anaerobic digester and the Leyden Woods pump station.
“I’ve said it before, but infrastructure is essential to how we grow,” Wedegartner said. “As well as public health and safety. It’s one of my priorities for 2020.”
In early 2019, the City Council unanimously gave the go-ahead for Greenfield to pursue building an anaerobic digester, agreeing to budget $4.1 million for the project that will be spearheaded by the Department of Public Works.
The city is “starting to move forward with negotiations with Tighe & Bond (the project manager) to get the project going,” said Greenfield Department of Public Works Director Marlo Warner.
Additionally, the replacement of the Leyden Woods pump station was put out to bid for construction, Warner said. He anticipates the project will begin in early spring.
Meanwhile, about 5,000 water meters need to be replaced, and bids have been put out for the work, Warner said.
“It will take about two years to replace the water meters,” Warner said. “We’re going to work on the large commercial meters and go from there.”
Now that Wedegartner has taken office, she is also taking over the budgeting process from Martin.
“It’s a big focus of mine from day one,” she said. “It needs to get done in the first few months of 2020.”
Contract funding, particularly for the Greenfield public schools’ contracts for instructional assistants and teachers, has yet to be allotted. The City Council had planned a first reading of the proposed contract funding at its December meeting, but the meeting was canceled due to a snowstorm.
“I haven’t had a chance to catch up on where we are with all of them, but we are going to focus on the ones that end in 2020 first,” Wedegartner said of the contracts.
As far as the instructional assistants are concerned, she said, “it is time to have a contract, and I hope to work on it together.”
Martin previously said in October that when the contract stabilization fund began in 2012, its purpose was to “show all the collective bargaining units that we would have funds available for negotiations.” Annually, money was added to the fund; however, at the close of the 2019 fiscal year, that process did not occur.
“We brought to the council the financial orders necessary to refill/replenish the contract stabilization fund,” Martin said. “There was no quorum at the (special City Council meeting) July 15 and that process didn’t happen. The result of that deadline period was that a recap will have to take place because we don’t have the end-of-the-year closing and we didn’t transfer any money that we knew we had into different accounts.”
Wedegartner said the contract stabilization account transfers will be a “one-off.”
“We will rebuild the contract stabilization,” she said.
Another goal Wedegartner has is to market Greenfield.
“I’m going to begin making good on the plans to create a marketing plan for the city of Greenfield,” Wedegartner said. “This is an effort to grow the tax base.”
Community and Economic Development Director MJ Adams said the city became part of a vacant storefront district, which provides a tax incentive for businesses to lease buildings with vacant storefronts.
“We got the designation in 2019, and now we’re going to be working on outreach and letting people know about it,” Adams said.
The Sustainable Greenfield Implementation Committee will also be holding a forum to discuss the city’s master plan, according to Adams.
“The master plan is five years old and this forum is going to be about what to do with downtown Greenfield moving forward and get community engagement,” she said.
Looking forward in the new year, Adams said there is a lot going on in Greenfield.
“It’s a new day for Greenfield. It’s a time of change and we’re in a good spot,” she said. “It’s a new chapter and change brings excitement. We have a strong, growing advance manufacturing industry, there is a spirit of entrepreneurship and new property owners in downtown are bringing energy in. We’re in a good place.”
Reach Melina Bourdeau at mbourdeau@recorder.com or 413-772-0261, ext. 263.