EASTHAMPTON – The City Council approved approximately $300,000 in three separate appropriations of Community Preservation Act funds on Wednesday night.
The largest of the spending requests was $261,000 for sedimentation basin work at Nashawannuck Pond. Maple Street School was awarded $21,651 for ADA compliant playground structures and Old Town Hall received $18,050 for safety netting and roof repairs.
Funds carved out for the Nashawannuck Pond are expected to remove built-up sediment at the Broad Brook and White Brook siltation projects, and for reconstructing a collapsed road that leads to the Broad Brook basin. Paul Nowak, chairman of the Nashawannuck Pond Steering Committee, said in a previous Gazette article that the updates were necessary since containment areas have never been emptied, leaving them full and overflowing.
The total cost of the dredging was $301,000, however, the pond committee committed $40,000 of its own money to the project.
District 5 Councilor and CPA Committee Chairman Daniel Rist said the Old Town Hall funds stemmed from a study funded by the committee which explored how much of the building’s facade was deteriorating.
“The study found a great deal of the deterioration, with debris falling from the building,” he said.
A long term fix of the problem will cost around $1 million, he said, noting that the money will go toward safety netting for use in the interim so the entrances can be used without fear of falling debris.
Rist said Judy Averill, the principal of Maple Street School along with Superintendent Allison LeClair presented the new playground structures to the city due to a lack of accessible equipment for special needs students.
“They found the students were not getting the same equitable ability to play,” he said.
If the Maple Street School is declared as surplus by the city when the new White Brook Elementary School is built, Rist said the new playground could be moved there.
City Clerk Barbara LaBombard said all three CPA appropriations passed unanimously, with eight councilors in attendance.
Michael Connors can be reached at mconnors@gazettenet.com.