Why I'm Running for Longmeadow Select Board - Walter Gunn

This information was submitted to the LongmeadowBuzz blog by Walter Gunn who is running as a candidate in the Preliminary Election on February 7 for the open Select Board seat. 

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Walter Gunn- Candidate for SB

To the residents of Longmeadow:

Our town government needs the proper representation our people deserve. A special town election is required when a seat on the Select Board is vacated, as it was in July of 2022, and must be filled in a timely manner. 

I am excited, not only as a resident of Longmeadow for sixty-one continuous years, but as someone who has worked for the community for twenty-two years, to be elected to the Select Board. Longmeadow thrives with excellent schools, public safety, public works, and resources for our seniors. Above all, we are a friendly and a great community dedicated to making this town the best in the Pioneer Valley.

I want to thank the Town of Longmeadow and its residents for putting their faith in me to serve the town. I also want to recognize and appreciate the support of the community members and town employees who get the hard work done day in and day out.

In my many years of service, I have chaired and clerked for the Planning Board. I was also appointed commissioner to the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission and today I am its chair, serving Longmeadow and the 43 communities within our region. I also serve as a voting member of the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), important in the process of distribution of federal transportation dollars to our region. In each of these positions I have advocated for Longmeadow and brought much needed support to the projects that keep our infrastructure and institutions working, and thus our town.

To detail some of my accomplishments: 

• Helped create the responsibilities of the Town Manager 
• Planning for parks, recreation, and conservation for Longmeadow 
• Hazard Mitigation to make Longmeadow proactive and resilient to climate change. 
• Complete streets making our roads safer for cars, bicyclists, and pedestrians 
• No Chandler Avenue development preventing unnecessary invasion of our historic past. 
• Action on commercial development in the interest of the for today and tomorrow. 
• Zoning By Law updates to continue protecting our Town’s Amenities. 
• Expedited the rebuild of Converse Street ahead of schedule, assured a new sidewalk and crossing at Bliss Road to Blueberry Hill School will be completed this year, that Converse Street and Longmeadow Street intersection will be upgraded and Longmeadow Street will be rebuilt.
  

As a Select Board member, I will: 

• Support the Charter and Town Meeting Form of Government. 
• Stop the Eversource pipeline from Longmeadow to Springfield forever and follow the state’s lead on clean energy implementation, including new solar energy power, to keep the promises we have made as a green community. 
• Preserve open space now and for generations to come. 
• Assure safety to pedestrians and bicyclists 
• Keep roads efficient, safe, and neighborhood friendly 
• Support our first responders assuring that Longmeadow continues to be safe for our residents. 
• Stop the East Longmeadow “warehouse,” a proposed project that will flood our town with trucks destroying roads and congesting traffic 
• Provide resources to the Middle School Building Committee to ensure the town gets a Middle School now, not later.
  (I’m Williams Middle School ’73) and make sure we have the resources to keep our 3 elementary schools modern and safe (I’m Converse Street School and Center School). I supported and helped the Town get a new high school (I’m Class of ’79). 
• Evaluate the proposed move of two town hall facilities to Greenwood Center. 
• Work to create more housing for our deserving seniors. 
• Repurpose former town property in new and innovative ways. 
• Ensure our fair share of state money for schools and roads.

As a Select Board member, my primary responsibilities will include supervising fiscally responsible annual budgets (as a former small business owner budgets are the difference between success and failure), performance-based appointments to committees and commissions, and timely revue of the town manager. 

 

Speaking of budgets: We have come and are perilously close to the “$25 per $1000” limit on taxation. With good fortune and good budget management we have kept under the threshold. This year’s budget, FY 2023 is no exception. Longmeadow is boxed in by this persistent problem. Regrettably, we have very little space to build out and generate new revenue within the town. Perhaps, we are not the only town of 351 in the Commonwealth to feel this pain. We will need to show leadership and engage our legislative representatives to help resolve this problem for the benefit of this community, when required. 

 

Finally, please vote for democracy in our Town’s primary, February 7th and the Special Election March 7th and preserve our form unique form of New England Town Government. 

 

Thank you for your support and belief in me to keep our community vibrant.

 

Why I'm Running for Longmeadow Select Board - Sanjiv Reejhsinghani

This information was submitted to the LongmeadowBuzz blog by Sanjiv Reejhsinghani who is running as a candidate in the Preliminary Election on February 7 for the open Select Board seat. 

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Sanjiv Reejhsinghani

First of all, I want to thank the editor of the LongmeadowBuzz blog for allowing all the candidates for the upcoming Select Board Special Town Election to post profiles on this very valuable site. Hopefully, these profiles will allow our townspeople to make as informed an opinion as possible while voting in the preliminary election on Tuesday, February 7, 2023. 

For those people that don’t know me, I have deep and long-lasting ties to the community of Longmeadow, MA. Although I originally spent my adolescence in the nearby community of Wilbraham, MA, my family moved to Longmeadow after I turned 15, and I spent three rewarding years at Longmeadow High School (LHS), where I served as editor of the high-school newspaper, The Jet Jotter, and participated on the varsity swim team, concert band, wind ensemble (thank you Michael Mucci and Peter Thomsen), National Honor Society, as well as captained the math and science teams.

Over the past 30 years, the bonds of friendship I forged with my LHS classmates have only strengthened with time. Many of these friends have now moved back to the area and have started their own families, and their children now attend schools within our elite Longmeadow public school system, which I believe to be the town’s greatest resource and attraction for other families hoping to move into Longmeadow so that their children can also share in the greatest educational opportunities possible.

My parents both emigrated from India in the 1960s, and my father, now retired, worked as a chemical engineer at a plant in the Indian Orchard section of Springfield, while my mother continues to work full-time as a solo pediatrician in her late 70s. Theirs is the American dream personified: my father was able to come to the United States in the 1960s by pursuing a doctorate degree, and my mother started her own successful medical practice when no commercial landlords would rent her office space to practice medicine in the early 1970s because she was both foreign-born, and a woman (back then, there were relatively few women enrolled in American medical schools).

After graduating from LHS, I enrolled in Emory College of Emory University in Atlanta, GA, where I graduated with a B.A. in English, then I finished up a dual Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.)/Master of Healthcare Administration (M.H.A.) graduate degrees at Georgia State University in Atlanta. I was also lucky enough to volunteer as a First Responder/medic both in college and at the Paralympic Games in Atlanta. In Atlanta, I worked in administration for the State of Georgia Health Planning Association and the Georgia Department of Medical Assistance.

After moving back to Longmeadow in early 2000, I worked as an outside sales consultant for several pharmaceutical companies, and I also helped my mother with back-office duties at her pediatric practice. I went to Western New England School of Law as a part-time evening student, where I served in the student government, was president of the Health Law Association, participated in the National Health Law Moot Court competition, and was elected as Senior of the Year of my graduating law school class. I also completed three legal aid trips to under served areas of the country while in law school.

My commitment to public service has continued since finishing law school, where I currently am on the Board of Directors of the South Asian Bar Association of Connecticut, and I volunteer regularly via the Hampden County Bar Association pro bono outreach initiatives. I currently serve on the Executive Board of the Real Estate Section of the Hampden County Bar Association, and I am one of 16 attorneys across Massachusetts currently leading the Business Law Section Council of the Massachusetts Bar Association.

I’ve had the benefit of serving as a key volunteer for both former State Senator Eric Lesser (whom I’ve known since he was in high school) during his 2014 and 2016 campaigns, as well as State Representative Brian Ashe during numerous election cycles. Indeed, it was Dr. Martin Lesser, Eric’s dad (and whom I’ve known for decades), who, in part, inspired me to run for political office, after he recently asked me “when I was going to run for something”. This, along with inspiration gleaned from President Teddy Roosevelt’s famous quote that “the courage belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,” have led to my candidacy today for this Special Election for Select Board.

I believe that my business acumen, and my experience as an attorney in the real estate sector, as well as my experience as a real estate broker and active real estate investor, can help Longmeadow navigate some challenging budgetary times ahead.

Longmeadow is facing an existential crisis as its tax revenues have a continuous shortfall compared to the rising expenditures of running the town. By 2033, it will have reached the Proposition 2½ tax ceiling (it is estimated), and state legislative approval would be needed to increase the mill rate beyond the $25.00 per $1,000 in property tax value. Right now, Longmeadow has a property tax rate of $22.92/ $1000 tax rate, and residential real estate and commercial real estate rates are both taxed at the same rate.

It may be possible for Longmeadow to institute different tax rates (like in Springfield) where commercial buildings (the commercial tax rate) are taxed at an elevated rate to residential homeowners to generate much-needed tax revenue.  However, for certain types of commercial leases (especially double-net or triple-net commercial leases), the commercial tenant (business owner) might have to shoulder such a pro-rated commercial property tax increase (especially if there's a tax escalator involved), so I am not in favor of a dual (residential and commercial) tax rate at the present time.

Furthermore, Longmeadow needs to actively plan for budgeting for a potential new consolidated singular middle school if renovations are not practical or feasible for either or both middle school locations. This is a given in that both Glenbrook Middle School and Williams Middle School are both in disrepair, and the useful life of both buildings has long begun to wane.

Finally, after enjoying Long Meddowe Days for decades on the town green, I found it unfortunate when that mid-May festival disappeared a few years ago. Last October, the Long Meddowe Fall Festival was a welcome destination for families and townspeople that sorely missed the old fair. I believe that these types of festivals and gatherings should be encouraged (and funded) at the town level to bring a greater degree of social touch points to our town, and possibly a Long Meddowe Spring Festival could be considered, as well, down the road, in either the short or long-term.

Why I'm Running for Longmeadow Select Board - Vineeth Hemavathi

This information was submitted by Vineeth Hemavathi to the LongmeadowBuzz blog who is running as a candidate in the Preliminary Election on  February 7 for the open Select Board seat.

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My name is Vineeth Hemavathi, and I’m running in the February 7, 2023 Preliminary Election for the Longmeadow Select Board. I’ve spent my entire life in public service as a: 

• Teacher

• Organizer

• National security analyst

• Attorney advocating for victims of domestic violence 

• Attorney representing victims of housing discrimination right here in Western MA

Public service has always been my day job, and it’s provided me with the experience to be a valuable Select Board member. I didn’t choose which child walked into my classroom, or which victim of domestic violence called our office asking for help. I had to assess every person and unique situation as it came and work within the budget and time constraints to develop creative solutions, engage community partners, and employ the necessary resources to deliver results. I’ve always fought for those who had nowhere else to turn. These skills and this commitment to public service are exactly what our Town needs in their elected officials.

I will also bring important perspectives to the Select Board. The Select Board has five members, and to ensure the best decisions are made, we need to have folks of different experiences, expertise, and perspectives sitting at the table. If elected to the Select Board, I would be the first person of color ever elected, the only member with a career in public service, and the only member with preschool aged children. These perspectives matter when we’re making decisions today that will affect our Town’s tomorrow.

I plan on running in the June Annual Town Election, but first thing’s first, I hope to have your vote in the February 7, 2023 Preliminary Election. Voting will take place at the Longmeadow Community House at 735 Longmeadow Street, and the polls will be open from 7 am - 8 pm.

If you’d like to learn more about our campaign, check us out on Facebook at Vote Vineeth for Longmeadow Select Board and on Instagram at vote.vineeth.

I look forward to talking to you and earning your vote.