NORTHFIELD — Annual Town Meeting voters will consider appropriating funds for a new hybrid police cruiser, an EMS response vehicle and Highway Department equipment, and adopting bylaws codifying the Finance Committee and Fire Department’s operations.
The Annual Town Meeting will kick off at 7 p.m. on Monday, May 4, inside the Pioneer Valley Regional School auditorium.
Big-ticket free cash transfers
Article 11 asks voters to consider moving $150,000 from free cash to replace an EMS response vehicle, with payments spread over three to five years.
Selectboard Chair Barbara “Bee” Jacque described the vehicle, which will carry equipment like heart monitors and medications, as a “supplement” to ambulances, allowing Northfield EMS to respond to emergencies in nearby towns with a smaller vehicle rather than an ambulance and accrue money by charging other areas for these paramedic services.
Voters also will decide on replacing a police cruiser with a hybrid cruiser using $88,000 of free cash. According to Jacque, this switch, proposed in Article 16, would mark the last police cruiser to be replaced by a hybrid, rounding out the town’s fleet of five hybrid cruisers. A hybrid cruiser would “last longer,” Jacque said, by shutting off when the vehicle is idling during traffic stops or while on patrol.
Articles 14 and 15 ask voters to consider Highway Department updates. In addition to replacing its 2012 roadside mower with $300,000 of free cash, the department is also looking to use $8,000 of free cash to purchase a new lift gate that attaches to a highway truck and moves heavy equipment in and out of the truck.
Other proposed free cash uses include $26,000 for heating and cooling improvements at the Town Hall and $10,000 to install cameras at the Transfer Station for “operational safety purposes,” according to the Annual Town Meeting warrant.
Town bylaw changes
Voters will consider adding a new bylaw in Article 25 outlining the Finance Committee’s membership, appointment and operations. According to the warrant, the bylaw “would clarify the committee’s membership and role.”
“What we’re doing is taking the way this committee has been set up and working for many decades and just writing it down,” Jacque explained. “For folks reading the bylaw, you’re not leaving it up to interpretation, you’re actually stating clearly, ‘Here are the ways in which the Finance Committee is constructed, here’s how the terms are laid out, here’s how they’re appointed.'”
If passed by voters, the bylaw would lead to two changes in the Finance Committee’s composition, formally reducing it from six to five members and preventing them from serving on the Finance Committee and other elected town boards or committees.
According to Jacque, if voters pass the bylaw article, this change will prompt Finance Committee and Selectboard member Dan Campbell to step away from the committee, cutting the membership down to five members.
Similarly, the town is also asking voters to consider formally establishing the existing Northfield Fire Department by accepting the provisions of Section 42A of Chapter 48 of Massachusetts General Laws. Under this change, the Selectboard would formally appoint Fire Chief Floyd “Skip” Dunnell III and a crew of officers.
Article 24 asks residents to consider adopting a bylaw authorizing the town clerk “to assign appropriate numbers to sections, subsections, paragraphs, and subparagraphs of town general and zoning bylaws, where none are approved by Town Meeting” and to “make non-substantive editorial revisions to the numbering.”
According to the warrant, this bylaw would improve the process of integrating new bylaws into the town’s codification system.
Other articles
Voters will also consider Northfield’s $83,000 share of capital projects at Pioneer Valley Regional School, including its portion of the $50,000 for parking lot repairs, $31,000 for an air conditioner in the server room, $16,000 for window shades, and $12,000 for a heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system in the Learning Center.
For Article 23, voters will also consider appropriating $6,000 from the Community Preservation Fund to purchase and install a mini-split heat pump in the History Room at Dickinson Memorial Library, a measure that would help preserve the library’s collection of historical documents, according to the warrant.
As another Community Preservation Committee project, Article 22 calls for the appropriation of $2,000 from the Community Preservation Fund to buy customized cemetery markers for the graves of Revolutionary War veterans buried in Center Cemetery. According to the warrant, the Historical Commission supports this project.
The full 27-article warrant can be viewed at tinyurl.com/NorthfieldATM2026.
