By Lisa Connell
CHESTERFIELD– Selectman Bob Recos announced that a couple of weeks ago the town decided to pullout of the Hampshire Council of Government’s (HCOG) recently troubled Hampshire Inspection Program. Because of this, letters just went out from HCOG to the remaining towns of Goshen and Middlefield saying the program has been cancelled entirely.
Recos said of Chesterfield is sticking with the other HCOG programs it belongs to, but as far as building inspections and zoning enforcement they’re going out on their own. The Selectboard has even voted to hire former HCOG building inspector Paul Tacy.
This has caused a little bit of an up-set with HCOG since HCOG has already requested the selectboard’s minutes, and any agreements the town has with Tacy.
Recos said the town has been with HCOG for about 16 years back when he was a County Commissioner. Matter of fact Recos was on the search committee for the building inspector, conducted the interviews and made the recommendations to the full board of the County Commissioners– that’s when they hired Tacy to be HCOG’s building inspector and zoning enforcement officer, “So he’s [Tacy] been with us all that time.”
However, recently things “have fallen apart,” with the inspection program because around the first part of October or middle of September, Tacy wasn’t getting enough hours, his assistant wasn’t getting enough hours, the program was just shrinking. Tacy couldn’t get all the things he needed to run the program, so he left and got a full-time job in Monson. Since then the Hampshire Inspection Program has declined.
They do have an interim person from Chesterfield but she works for Springfield and has been having the same difficulties as Tacy, including not even being able to get office supplies. “It got to the point where we got very fed up,” so Chesterfield withdrew from the program said Recos.
Chesterfield went back to Tacy and at their last Selectboard meeting decided to hire him to work for the town, “He’s going to be our building commissioner, zoning enforcement officer,” plus building inspector. He will also have the help of Bob Walden of Goshen to help him out. They will start working the Jan. 1 out of the Chesterfield town office building.
Recos said that the town will also be saving a lot of money. The figures vary but the Selectboard is very pleased with the savings. HCOG will officially leave Chesterfield on Dec. 31.
Since Chesterfield has pulled out of the Hampshire Inspection Program that left only Goshen and Middlefield in which is not enough towns. So HCOG has decided to terminate the program all together.
In a letter to the Goshen and Middlefield selectboards written by Diana Schindler, HCOG’s director of Regional Services and Planning, she writes, “We have concluded that the program, as it is currently structured, is unsustainable and does not reflect the level of value that our membership has come to expect from the Council. Therefore, it is with sincere regret that we will terminate the current program as of Dec. 31, 2011.”
As to what HCOG plans to do next, she writes that, “The Council will continue to provide local inspection services,” including office hours in the towns, zoning enforcement and administrative support.
Also, “the Council is developing a Community Innovation Challenge grant application to address land-use services county-wide,” and are going to try to develop a “comprehensive program” that will incorporate land-use services as well as a myriad of other things like building inspection, zoning enforcement, conservation agent, electrical and plumbing inspection, town planning, etc.
