Town Clerk and Clerk of the Council Jeanne Quaglietti stands with the East Longmeadow Town Council after announcing her retirement.
Reminder Publishing photo by Sarah Heinonen
EAST LONGMEADOW — The East Longmeadow Town Council voted on Oct. 28 to appropriate $1.34 million from the town’s free cash account to pay off debt for modular buildings at Mountain View Elementary, saving more than $500,000 along the way.
The funding of this project goes back to 2023, when the town borrowed $900,000 for the modulars.
After borrowing the funds, however, the town received just one $2.2 million bid on the project. A second round of bidding brought in a different vendor who bid $1.9 million. Based on this, the town took out a bond anticipation note, which is a form of short-term borrowing that provides money at the start of a project. The bond anticipation note is paid back within about a year, usually when the municipality takes on a larger amount of long-term debt to fund the entire project.
However, the use of long-term debt is not required if the debt can be paid off with other funds. Christensen proposed that the town use some of its $13.3 million in free cash to pay off the bond anticipation note.
“Either we borrow and pay that out over 20 years, or we pay for it out of free cash now,” Christensen said. He acknowledged that $1.3 million was “no small amount to appropriate” but said doing so would save the town $563,000 that it would otherwise have to pay in interest over the course of the loan.
O’Shea said, there was a “pretty healthy amount” of free cash available and said “it makes sense” to save the interest. He added that, if needed, the town could borrow for projects in the future.
“Borrowing at 3.5% would seem to make a lot of sense because the rate is so low, isn’t it?” asked Page. Finance Director Kimberly Collins agreed that the rate was attractive but said she and Christensen wanted to provide the free cash option as an alternative. She said that she expects the town will need to “dig into” its $1.6 million in excess levy capacity, which acts as a cushion between the about the town raises in taxes and the maximum it can raise in a given year. “We’re just always looking for ways to reduce the general fund budget if we can,” Collins said.
Page remarked that he had hoped to use a portion of the town’s free cash on road paving, and a “chunk” will be used toward the townwide fiber optic internet project. Similarly, Leydon said he was on board with spending the free cash but asked for a plan for paving and ideas about how it can be funded.
Referring to fiber and roads, Christensen agreed, “That is where we make our investment this year.” He said the DPW was creating a list of priority road projects. “If I had my way, a lot of that money is going to go to, say, half to fiber, half to roads,” he said.
Meanwhile, $100,000 in unspent funds was reappropriated from two finished sewer projects that cost less than expected to be used on another sewer project. The council also voted to appropriate $158,000 from the sewer enterprise fund to pay for a pump, meter modules, and inflow and infiltration projects.
The councilors turned their attention to the Town Center District Bylaw, a draft of which is finished. The next step in the process is to refer the document to the Planning Board for a public hearing, but Page asked that the council hold the draft until the Bylaw Review Committee finishes its work. He said that accepting a new bylaw while reviewing the town’s existing ones was too complicated. The Bylaw Review Committee is slated to be done with its work in March 2026.
Richards agreed and said the new bylaw deserves the council’s attention. Leydon also agreed. He said there was “a lot of cleanup” of conflicting language to undertake before the bylaw review can be finished.
O’Shea recognized the complex process of the bylaw review but said the Town Center District process has already taken substantial time. Torcia recalled that it took about a year to hammer out the mixed-use village district bylaw. He said there would likely be multiple public hearings over a couple months before the bylaw made it back to the council. Ultimately, the council tabled the bylaw referral until its first meeting in December.
The council ended its meeting by accepting notice of retirement for Town Clerk Jeanne Quaglietti, whose last day will be Dec. 26. She has worked in East Longmeadow for the past eight years and in municipal government for 20 years.
“I love my job. I love everyone I work with,” Quaglietti said. O’Shea thanked her for her years of service to the town and recognized that the dual role she serves as town clerk and clerk of the council can be particularly challenging. The position has since been advertised.
