SOUTH DEERFIELD — With the future home of the South County Senior Center uncertain, the Deerfield Selectboard is considering leaving the Senior Center agreement between the town, Sunderland and Whately.
According to the agreement, Deerfield would need to decide by July 1 in order to leave the agreement, effective with the start of fiscal year 2028 on July 1, 2027. Whately and Sunderland’s town administrators have received draft letters from Deerfield Town Administrator Christopher Dunne, which would reflect the official document that would be sent if the decision to leave moves forward.
According to Whately Town Administrator Peter Kane, the letter states that Deerfield hopes to remain a part of the South County Senior Center if the three towns can agree on its next location once the lease for its current location at 22 Amherst Road in Sunderland ends next spring. The message presents the Deerfield Town Hall at 8 Conway St. as the “single ‘viable’ option” for the Senior Center, once renovations for the 1888 Building, which will become Deerfield’s municipal offices, are complete, according to Kane.
At Annual Town Meeting in May, Deerfield voters shot down the South County Senior Center Board of Oversight’s proposal to move to the office building at 112 Amherst Road in Sunderland. Before the vote, many attendees voiced a desire for the center to relocate to 8 Conway St., citing its location in South Deerfield and financial concerns over the 112 Amherst Road property.
Deerfield Selectboard Chair Blake Gilmore first floated the possibility of Deerfield leaving the agreement at the June 1 Selectboard meeting.
After mentioning conversations he had with residents about their preference for the Senior Center to be housed at 8 Conway St., Gilmore said sending a letter about leaving the agreement “gives us time to figure something out.”
However, Deerfield Selectboard and Senior Center Board of Oversight member Trevor McDaniel called Gilmore’s idea “short-sighted” and said he is not interested in Deerfield leaving the agreement.
“It’s not the right way to go,” McDaniel said. “We have to do this together. We’re regional — we work well with the other towns, we work well on many fronts.
“Politically, it’s a colossal mistake,” McDaniel added. “All that’s going to do is create animosity [toward] other towns. … I don’t see any reason why we can’t decide how we would use [8 Conway St.], get an estimate to figure out how much this would cost and move forward with it. There’s no urgency to pull out of working with two other towns.”
During the Whately Selectboard meeting on Wednesday, board Chair Fred Baron and Joyce Palmer-Fortune, who chairs the Senior Center Board of Oversight, mentioned several concerns with the draft letter.
Baron said the letter “might be considered somewhat hypocritical.”
“One of the arguments from Deerfield residents was, ‘Well, we don’t want to be giving money to someone to maintain and upgrade a building that we don’t own,” Baron said, referencing the Sunderland building proposal that failed to pass at Deerfield’s Town Meeting. “Well, that’s what Deerfield is asking Sunderland and Whately to do while not taking [8 Conway St.] on for themselves, improving their own building. The other two towns have to pay to improve the building that Deerfield owns.”
Baron and Palmer-Fortune discussed concerns with the Senior Center moving to 8 Conway St., including the Deerfield Police Station already operating in the same building, the limited parking and the cost of renovating the building to make it a suitable senior center.
The Board of Oversight and Deerfield Finance Committee members have disagreed on the price tag for renovations at 8 Conway St. At Deerfield’s Town Meeting, Finance Committee Chair Julie Chalfant claimed the move would cost $150,000 less than renting the 112 Amherst Road building in Sunderland, despite a feasibility study that found that the renovations to make 8 Conway St. into a suitable senior center would come to $5 million.
“They’re thinking about the Senior Center as if it were a building, and the Senior Center is really the people,” Palmer-Fortune said. “I would not relish having Deerfield break off from the three towns, because then, what about the [54%] of our members from Deerfield? Where are they going to go? Are they not going to feel welcome?”
Given that Deerfield is the current fiduciary for the South County Senior Center and covers 54% of its budget, Palmer-Fortune said “there’s no way” the Senior Center Board of Oversight could avoid cutting staff or a significant number of employees’ hours if Deerfield leaves the agreement.
Palmer-Fortune said she would consider moving to 8 Conway St. if the Senior Center were to become a consortium or district and own the building, an idea she proposed at the last Board of Oversight meeting.
“I just don’t know what all the options are, and we’re not going to know in the next week, and Deerfield wants to make this decision in a week,” Palmer-Fortune said. “I feel like they’re holding a gun to our head and I don’t want to make decisions like that.”
The Deerfield Selectboard plans to vote on whether to leave the agreement when the members meet next week, with meetings scheduled for Monday at 5 p.m. and Tuesday at 6 p.m. The Whately and Sunderland selectboards will hold a joint meeting on Monday at 6:30 p.m. with the intention of discussing a response to the Deerfield Selectboard’s decision and next steps for finding a new home for the Senior Center.
