HADLEY — Wednesday’s snowstorm caused the postponement of a Select Board meeting aimed at addressing concerns about how a new senior center might impact the American Legion’s overflow parking lot off Route 9.
The meeting will be rescheduled, though a date has not yet been determined, Select Board Chairwoman Molly Keegan said.
American Legion representatives and supporters have been critical of the senior center project because it will go onto what is known as the upper parking lot — town-owned land it has used since the 1950s.
Two citizen petitions related to the senior center project will be on the May 3 annual Town Meeting warrant, both of which were submitted by representatives from the American Legion.
The first petition seeks to relocate the new senior center from the 2.6-acre Hooker School parcel in Hadley center, where it would share the site with a new library, to a 9-acre North Hadley location on River Drive the town acquired last year.
The second petition asks to rescind the entire $7.1 million in funding that residents have backed four times, including most recently when 61 percent favored the expenditure at a ballot vote in November.
Town Administrator David Nixon told the Finance Committee Monday night that KP Law, which acts as town counsel, informed him that the first petition article has no legal weight, because Town Meeting can’t compel the Select Board to move the project from one lot to another lot.
The second article is also likely to be null and void, even if passed, as the town is already into hiring and spending money on the senior center, and Town Meeting, as Hadley’s legislature, can’t abrogate contracts the Select Board, as the executive branch, signs.
Nixon noted that both are preliminary advisories and he is awaiting the opinions in writing.
In addition to the postponed meeting, Richard Witkos, commander of Post 271, sent letters to Keegan and Select Board member Joyce Chunglo on Feb. 26 seeking to resolve some of these issues in advance of Town Meeting.
In the letter to Keegan, he notes the possibility that the petitions will be ruled legally unenforceable, and asks that he be directed by town counsel as to how to write it so both could be binding, if passed by Town Meeting.
“We don’t understand why the Board of Selectmen is trying so hard to stop these petitions from reaching Town Meeting floor,” Witkos writes
In the letter to Chunglo, Witkos requests that the Select Board consider donating the land used for the upper lot to the American Legion, as well as require repaving of both the upper lot and the main lot after they were damaged while used as staging areas for equipment during the reconstruction and widening of Route 9 in 2016.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
