HATFIELD — Saving farmland from a potential residential development and continuing to make handicapped accessible renovations to Memorial Town Hall will be considered by voters at a special Town Meeting Jan. 29.
The five-article warrant will be taken up by voters beginning at 7 p.m. at the Hatfield Elementary School auditorium.
Working with Kestrel Land Trust, the town’s Community Preservation Act Committee is seeking up to $120,000 from the CPA account that will be used to purchase and protect 23 acres of agricultural land on North Hatfield Road. Owned by the Sliwoski family, the land is being considered for sale, at a price tag of more than $400,000, to a developer for a future housing development.
But because the land has been actively farmed and is in the state’s chapter 61A program, which provides a property tax discount to its owner, the town has the right of first refusal to acquire the land or transfer that right to a land trust.
The Select Board is supporting Kestrel in the project.
“There’s a lot of concern with people in this town wanting to keep that land agricultural for farming,” Select Board Chairman Edmund Jaworski said at a recent meeting.
A corresponding $60,000 from the CPA account is being sought to create an affordable housing unit on the property that would qualify for the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development’s subsidized housing inventory. It’s possible the town will work with Habitat for Humanity on this project.
To raise the additional money needed for the acquisition, Kestrel might sell an additional housing lot on the property and some of the land to an interested farmer.
For the Town Hall project, $390,000 is needed to fund the second phase of the code compliance project that began several years ago, including installing an exterior ramp, an elevator and a fire suppression system.
“This has been going on for seven years to get this building handicapped accessible,” Jaworski said.
The town has obtained waivers from the State Architectural Access Board as it completes the work in phases.
An additional $253,000 is being sought for to pay for other improvements to the building. That would include the adding a second exterior ramp to the basement, expanding the kitchen used by the Council on Aging, and relocating the building inspector’s office.
These are add-on items, Jaworski said, and not part of getting the building up to code.
Board member Brian Moriarty said it is important to complete the project, observing that the state has given a summer 2020 deadline to finish the work.
Both expenditures, if approved, would be subject to a Feb. 26 ballot Proposition 2½ debt-exclusion vote.
A third article related to the memorial Town Hall project includes no new spending, but rather reauthorizing an appropriation and transfer of up to $380,000 from May 2015.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
