Wakefield Town Council Notes -- March 25, 2024

Monday's Town Council meeting was another long, but consequential meeting. Here's what we covered:

• The Town Council approved Fiscal Year 2025 budgets for Veterans Services, Medicare, and Cable Television. Taken together, these budgets total $1.7 million, or 1.5% of Wakefield's total spending. We also deferred consideration of the Group Health Insurance/Human Resources budget pending questions from the Council on a new administrative position proposed for the Human Resources department. Review of this budget will continue at our April 8th meeting.

• The Council reviewed and approved Wakefield's proposed capital budget for Fiscal Year 2025. Totaling a little more than $2 million, the capital budget includes funding for two police patrol cars, a new fire rescue boat, elevator improvements at Town Hall, resurfacing of the Dobbins Tennis Courts, signal improvements at the North Avenue/Prospect Street intersection, garage repairs at the Public Works facility on North Avenue, playground surface improvements at the Doyle School, and repairs to the front steps at the Beebe Library.

• We reviewed and approved a proposal from the Wakefield Food Pantry to install storage container behind the Americal Civic Center. The container will be approximately 40 feet long by 8 feet wide, and will not be visible from the front of the building, It will help alleviate the Food Pantry's storage needs, enabling them to expand their mobile pantries and other school- and church-based programs. As visits to the Food Pantry have increased by 55% since 2021, these expanded programs are critical to helping meet the basic needs of many of our neighbors in Wakefield.

• The Town Council finalized spending plans for Wakefield's remaining $1.8 million of federal funds from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). The approved plans include $1 million to create a small business incubation fund for Wakefield, $40,000 to support the Wakefield Food Pantry's efforts to hire a part-time development director, $400,000 to renovate the upper floors of the Senior Center for public use, $250,000 for additional sidewalk repairs and extensions, $150,000 to improve pedestrian access paths on the west side of Lake Quannapowitt, and $200,000 for Wakefield's Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Of note, the small business incubation fund will provide grants and interest-free loans for façade enhancements, accessibility initiatives, and marketing promotion for new businesses and nonprofits that commit to locating in Wakefield. I believe that this initiative will add to the vibrancy of downtown Wakefield and our other commercial districts, while helping to build our commercial tax base.

• As part of our discussion of ARPA priorities, the Council also instructed the Town Administrator to prepare a warrant article for the fall Town Meeting to fund the installation on solar panels on the Galvin Middle School roof. The investment needed for this installation will be recouped in only 4-5 years due to the energy savings the solar panels would provide.

Our next meeting will be on Monday, April 8th on Wakefield Community Access Television and
Zoom. This likely will be another lengthy meeting, since we have several more Fiscal Year 2025 budgets to review before Town Meeting, including the Wakefield Public Schools and the Health and Human Services department. As such, I expect that we will start at 6:00 PM, an hour earlier than usual. Hopefully that means that we can finish up a little earlier as well!