Completion of the new Somerville High School athletic field has been pushed to early 2023, due to issues related to removal of asbestos in the field’s soil.

By Joe Creason

The City Council held a regular meeting on Thursday September, 23.

Upon the Mayor’s request, the ARPA Director and the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) were given an opportunity to provide the City Council with an overview of the American Rescue Plan Act. This piece of federal legislation was signed into law on March 11, 2021 in response to the economic and public health crisis brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“It is not very often that municipalities receive tens of millions of dollars to spend how they see fit, within certain parameters, and that is the situation we find ourselves in now,” said Somerville ARPA Director Austin Faison.

According to Faison, Somerville will be receiving $61,700,944 directly from the Federal Government and $15,803,026 from Middlesex County for a total of $77,503,970 in recovery funds. The state will be receiving $5.3 billion and local municipalities will be receiving $3.4 billion for a total of $8.7 billion in the Commonwealth.

“The important thing to note is that we have been encouraging the state to act quickly. The sooner they get those dollars out the door, the more certainty it will give cities and towns as they figure out how to spend or how to complement local investment with potential opportunities for state investment,” said MAPC Director of Government Affairs Lizzi Weyant.

According to Weyant, ARPA funding can be used for emergency public health expenses, infrastructure, and to pay for any services that governments have been unable to provide due to revenue loss. ARPA funding cannot be used to offset loss in taxes, pay pensions or service debt. “There are very robust reporting requirements that are included in the treasury guidelines,” Weyant said.

All ARPA funds must be allocated by December 31, 2024 and must be spent by December 21, 2026.

The community will have opportunities to engage in further information sessions and participate in decisions with regards to how this money will be spent, says MPAC Co-Director of Strategic Initiatives Emily Torres-Cullinane.

“We feel it is very important to develop a base of collective knowledge of learning about how the ARPA funding can be used in the community, we want to engage all stakeholders,” Torres-Cullinane said.

There were questions from the Council on this issue.

“This is a great presentation. We thank you for giving it and we are very excited to receive these funds. However, I see nothing about incentives for disenfranchised groups to participate in community engagement. Can someone speak to this?” Councilor At-Large Wilfred N. Mbah asked.

According to Torres-Cullinane, MPAC looks forward to addressing this, and has taken community engagement steps as well as held discussions around incentives for disenfranchised groups in other cities.

For more information on recovery funds, residents should visit somerville.gov/ARPA.

The contingency budget to build the new high school is down over $17 million dollars, among other issues with the new Central Hill construction site, says Councilor At-Large Mary Jo Rossetti. “We know there has been some asbestos in the soil samples around the ground they are removing for the new high school field. Unfortunately, in the recent testing, 75% of those samples have been recovered with asbestos in them,” Rossetti said.

The facility licensed to receive toxic materials like asbestos has reached its state mandated quota and closed on September 14. The facility will not be able to receive toxic materials for at least another three months. “The new completion date for the field is probably at the earliest January 2023,” Councilor Rossetti said.

In light of Senate Bill 8 passed by the Texas State Legislature, Councilor At-Large Kristen Strezo submitted a resolution calling on Congress to affirm reproductive freedom and pass the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA). “Laws like WHPA will help protect women from these vicious attacks on healthcare, we need a legislative safeguard against this barrage of attacks at the state level and to provide a bulwark against any supreme court action that would destabilize Roe v. Wade,” Strezo said.

The entire Council sponsored the resolution in support.

“One of the things that has been so horrifying and disturbing since the Supreme Court made this decision, has been the silence that we have seen from the political establishment in this country. I think it’s incredibly valuable for us to use the voice we have, which is resolutions like this,” said Ward 3 Councilor Ben Ewen-Campen.

In other news, Ewen-Campen submitted an order asking the Chief of Police to establish a policy to donate unclaimed bicycles to local non-profit organizations and/or auction them off to the public. “Thank you for bringing this forward, I would certainly like to have something more uniform and down in policy,” said Chief Charles Femino.

According to Femino, the Somerville Police Department does distribute bikes to the public for a minimum fee, however he has always wanted to have a day where Bikes Not Bombs repairs many of the accumulated bikes for the purpose of a rideshare program in the Mystic Area. “I welcome the conversation” Femino said.