SOUTH HADLEY — “March!”
On the instructor’s cue, 40 people march back to their chairs, ready for the next squat, row or aerobic move. As they work up a sweat in the Beginning Fitness class, staff at the Senior Center prepare a free lunch for 25 people nearby.
It’s a Tuesday morning at the center, and the place bustles with activity. Down the hall, Healthy Bones and Balance — the fitness class with the highest demand — challenges seniors through asymmetric holds and weighted lifts. Elsewhere, residents gather over crafts, rack up billiards games or chat over coffee in the cafe.
The sheer number of programs enticed Mary Labrie into becoming a regular at the center located on Dayton Street. She convinced her sister Cathy to join her at the Beginning Fitness class twice a week. It was not long before Labrie met her “soul sister” Nancy Kundl, and the trio now regularly work out and hang out together.
“The [YMCA] is nice, but it’s a gym,” Kundl said. “It doesn’t have the same sense of community.”
But the sense of community that draws residents like Labrie to the center may not be guaranteed much longer. With South Hadley facing a shaky fiscal future, it’s unclear whether the variety and availability of these programs will persist.
Since August 2025, cuts to town services — including many at the Senior Center — have been proposed, debated and feared. Senior Center hours, library accreditation and Department of Public Works staffing were on the chopping block after voters rejected $9 million and $11 million Proposition 2½ overrides in April. Since then, town officials have scrambled to close the budget gap, with some services still at risk.
On Tuesday, the Select Board agreed to use $1.5 million in reserves to restore potential school cuts, but opted not to fully fund the library’s budget.
“If we have to keep cutting, at some point in time, something has to give,” said Andy Rodgers, director of human services for the Senior Center.
Senior support
As of now, the Senior Center’s hours will not be impacted in fiscal year 2027, which begins July 1. However, Town Administrator Lisa Wong has repeatedly said that any changes to town services and staff remain on the table. Rodgers confirmed continued budget reductions will eventually result in early closures.
Even just talk of cuts has hurt the Senior Center. Rodgers said the social services coordinator left in March after learning the job would get eliminated next year. This position connected seniors with the Brown Bag program, fuel assistance, the Massachusetts Healthy Aging Fund and other various social programs to meet their health and comfort needs.
Senior services staff will handle some of these roles next year, Rodgers said, but whatever they cannot handle will be put on a larger organization with more cases and wait times.
“When staff are all helping to fill other roles and helping to do other things, then some responsibilities might not get done,” he said. “We will have to rely more on volunteers.”
Labrie usually comes to the Senior Center for recreation and socialization, but she has also used the center’s free tax service. Sometimes Kundl will take home lunch after a long workout. But for the most part, the friends take advantage of the variety of programs, from movie nights and concerts to the Travel Club trips.
“It’s a busy senior center. The offerings here are amazing,” Labrie said.
Library changes
Changes also may be coming to the town’s library system, which would affect people like Ebaghae Igbinomwanhia, who drives from Chicopee to the South Hadley Public Library in the Falls section of town at least twice a month so that her two children can play with toys, participate in programs and read children’s books not offered at the library closer to her home.
South Hadley resident Leah Bailey is impressed that the library offers free programs for children multiple times a week. She began bringing her daughter to infant story time at 4 months old, and 10 months later still comes to the library three days a week.
For both young mothers, the programs give their children a chance to get their endless energy out.
“Having access to this space has been really helpful, it would be really sad if anything had to change,” Bailey said.
Changes are likely coming next fiscal year as the library is facing a budget cut that will not only decrease hours and staff, but cause the library to lose state certification. State certification gives South Hadley residents access to a statewide network of items, federal grant money, capital grant money and state aid for operational costs.
The library received just under $65,000 from the state last year, which funds services at Gaylord Memorial Library.
“I think people wouldn’t realize what they had until it was gone,” said Katie Van Winkle, president of the Gaylord Memorial Library Association. “With the libraries, if they lost certification, people might think that they can just go to Granby Library. You can go there, but you couldn’t check anything out.”
According to statistics from Library Services Director Joe Rodio, South Hadley residents checked out 23,040 items from other libraries last year, a total value of $345,600. The total circulation was 209,189 items checked out over 142,568 visits to the library. The use of computers, library space for remote work and meeting rooms had all increased at between 10% to 15% over the previous year.
“The library is a busy place,” Rodio told the Select Board on May 5. “There are a lot of services that people, who may not be the vocal people, who may not be the visual people who use the library and depend on the library … those are the ones that are going to be disproportionately hurt by this.”
Gaylord Memorial Library
Gaylord’s hours and programming supplements the offerings at the main library, Winkle said. It ensures people who live by the Village Commons can check out a book or enjoy the pollinator garden without driving across town. The programming at Gaylord is also specifically tailored to its grounds, like the cozy story time for sensory-sensitive children and nights at the Mount Holyoke Observatory.
Without certification, all of this would disappear.
“I mean, technically, the building is ours, and we could still have it open,” Winkle said. “But I don’t know in what capacity it would exist.”
Gaylord and South Hadley libraries are two branches under one system. The Gaylord Memorial Library Association owns the land and cares for the grounds, but it’s the town Library Department that manages the circulation and librarians. Staff, programming and collections are combined. It’s unclear to Winkle which books belong to the main branch versus the Gaylord.
“It would be a huge untangling,” she continues. “It would be extremely painful. We wouldn’t really be able to operate as a library anymore.”
