AMHERST – With a $4 million project to upgrade the Centennial Water Treatment Plant in Pelham on hold, Town Meeting will be asked next month to reallocate this money for a series of water main improvements throughout Amherst.
The new plan for that money, which was endorsed by the Select Board Monday, is one of two spending articles coming before Town Meeting, beginning May 2, in which money previously appropriated for one use would be reallocated.
The other article, also recommended by the Select Board, would use $306,000 to buy breathing apparatus equipment for the Fire Department. That is a portion of $700,000 originally designated for renovations to the former East Street School.
Claire McGinnis, the town’s acting co-finance director, said the building money is no longer needed since the East Street School is not the new home for the Leisure Services and Supplemental Education department, which instead moved its offices last month to the Amherst Regional Middle School.
At the same time, Town Meeting will be asked to rescind $306,000 in borrowing for the breathing apparatuses approved in May 2015.
Interim Town Manager Peter Hechenbleikner said the water treatment plant project, authorized at the May 2011 Town Meeting, is not happening, for now, as the town evaluates other treatment options and how this water source is used in the town’s overall supply. Hechenbleikner said Tata & Howard engineers of Marlborough are handling this study.
Instead of spending the $4 million for the treatment plant, $2.1 million now would be used for water improvements on Shumway Street, Harris and Fisher streets, Dickinson Street and Pomeroy Lane.
An additional $60,500 would buy a one-ton dump truck for the Department of Public Works, with another $45,000 for a 3/4-ton plow pickup truck. Both would be used by the DPW for the next 10 to 12 years.
Meanwhile, the Select Board endorsed spending for the second phase of the sewer project in Amherst Woods.
The town would borrow $3 million, from the sewer enterprise fund, to pay for the work in the Amherst Woods neighborhoods, which will include repaving roads that are dug up at the end of the project.
Currently, 68 homes on a section of Wildflower Drive, as well as Alyssum Drive, Foxglove and Indian Pipe lanes and Trillium Way, continue to use septic systems, some of which are on the verge of failing.
A $4.2 million extension for Amherst Woods and Harkness Road was approved by Town Meeting in November 2011, with the project cost paid back through sewer fees collected for all users, rather than betterment fees, along with one-time connection fees for residents moving from private septic systems.
Hechenbleikner observed that Town Meeting will not be adding any new general fund debt and is actually reducing it by changing the funding for the breathing apparatuses.
“Whether the community can continue that pattern is unknown at this point,” Hechenbleikner said.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
