Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the department that maintains the Manhan Rail Trail. The Manhan Rail Trail Committee maintains the rail trail in Easthampton, using funds from the nonprofit organization Friends of the Manhan Rail Trail.
In recent years, one of the biggest political battlegrounds in Easthampton have been its parks projects. A skate park, pickleball courts, a dog park, and places to play basketball have filled discussion in public meetings.
But as those parks projects advance through planning phases, some Parks and Recreation Committee members and maintenance staff workers are skeptical that the city has done all the necessary groundwork to support this expansion of maintenance demands. Facing multiple logistic limitations, including a moldy and water-logged maintenance office, staff and committee members are questioning how Parks and Recreation will be able to meet increased maintenance demands.
“It seems logical that in order for the department to successfully take on further expansion of services, basic infrastructure needs need to be met,” Parks and Recreation Commission Vice Chair Eric Poulin told The Shoestring. “The city seems to want to put the proverbial cart before the horse.”
A new skate park and a new dog park are planned for the city, both of which the Department of Parks and Recreation would maintain. In July, the Daily Hampshire Gazette reported on the loss of a public gymnasium at the former Pepin Elementary School due to a handful of municipal departments, including parks and recreation, being unable to take on the maintenance responsibility. The parks department currently maintains six parks — including the 260-acre Nonotuck Park — a playground, and the Mount Tom North Trailhead. It also operates three city-owned cemeteries.
Maintenance staff for the Department of Parks and Recreation and the cemetery department staff currently work out of a number of buildings, with some built between 1938 and 1939. All of them are facing significant infrastructure challenges.
On June 28, The Shoestring visited the department’s maintenance building, storage garage, and sheds at Daley Field, as well as the cemetery maintenance building, and spoke with staff members.
Mayor Nicole LaChapelle did not return an interview request for this article.
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Evidence of regular significant flooding was apparent upon entering the Parks and Recreation maintenance building. In addition to a powerful damp smell, a water line on walls, equipment, and boxes was easily visible throughout the building, coming up roughly 2 to 4 inches. On the drop ceiling tiles above were large swaths of water damage and what appeared to be a significant amount of mold in several areas.
Green Environmental Consulting, a company based in Florence, conducted a “baseline mold evaluation” of the maintenance building in 2011. This evaluation consisted of a visual inspection and air and surface sampling. The report findings, obtained via a public records request, outline a significant presence of mold in the building.
“Approximately 16 square feet of suspect black mold growth” was observed on the ceiling in the bathroom and confirmed in sample testing, according to the report. The GEC report also cited water stained carpet, standing water, and mold findings from sample analysis that amounted to a level high enough to qualify as a significant health risk.
GEC’s report recommended remediation and the removal of all damaged materials and building repairs to prevent water intrusion and resampling to ensure the removal of the mold. However, GEC ultimately concluded that “the inspection techniques used are inherently limited in the sense that only full demolition procedures will reveal all building materials of a structure and, therefore, all areas of potential fungal growth. Other unidentified microbiological impacts may be located within walls, ceiling cavities, below flooring or grade, and other non-accessible areas.”
Despite the results of the mold evaluation report, maintenance staff say they are still working out of the building and no significant efforts for removal or remediation have been made.
Jeff Craig, who has worked for the Parks and Recreation Department on and off since 1986, recalled a few updates to the maintenance building he had seen during his time, some done by staff themselves, but nothing that would amount to the recommendations made in GEC’s report. He said the parks office staff did receive a much-needed new building around 2010.
The Shoestring requested records to verify what building renovations, or updates, were done in the past, as well as any future work planned for the parks department maintenance building and any building inspection records for the maintenance building. The city responded three weeks later saying that they had no records.
In addition, the city does not currently have a building commissioner and the Building Department was closed for a period of time starting June 28. The email address listed for the Building Department’s clerk is also defunct.
This situation seems to draw a stark contrast between priorities for working conditions for the Parks and Recreation Department maintenance staff in comparison to some of the other municipal work centers in the city.
In July 2023, the City Hall building on Payson Avenue, built in 1970, shut its doors to staff and the public for air quality concerns amid HVAC repairs. The air quality concerns were triggered by the presence of concrete dust in work areas from a basement wall being opened to install new HVAC equipment.
“Our primary focus is protecting the health and well-being of our employees and residents who may enter the building,” LaChapelle said in a press release at the time. “This may be an over abundance of caution, but this decision has been made to ensure a safe working environment for all. We are committed to reopening City Hall quickly, but only when we are assured by experts that it meets the highest standards of safety and functionality.”
An air quality report conducted a few days later by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health found carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide levels, relative humidity, fine particulate levels, and volatile organic compounds to all be “undetectable” or “below range.” The state also found the temperature to be “within or close to the recommended range of 70°F to 78°F.” The report recommended implementing up-to-date contamination protocols during the renovation to avoid further potential migration of potential pollutants from the construction.
City Hall remained closed to staff until August 21, 2023. A press release from the mayor’s office that day says the building underwent “a deep cleaning by ServicePro” and that staff should “notice improved air quality and comfort within their workspaces.”
By contrast, just down the road, parks maintenance employees are still contending with many challenges in their work environment. In addition to water and mold, ventilation and heating in the maintenance building are seemingly inefficient as well.
There is one small air vent on the building’s ceiling surrounded by water damage and what appears to be mold. There is a large garage bay door that can be opened for air flow, but this is not practical in the winter and leaves staff little respite from extreme heat in the summer. In the winter, the space is heated primarily by a wood stove with a supplemental propane heater in the bathroom kept just warm enough – around 55 degrees fahrenheit – to keep the pipes from freezing. Staff said they were also responsible for gathering and splitting the wood for the stove.
Outdated electrical service in the maintenance building also added some challenges for efficiency and functionality with regular daily activities, like warming up lunch in the microwave, causing outages.
In addition to these limitations and frustrations, there is not a lot of dry storage space in any of the department’s buildings. In the garage where supplies like tractors and limestone are stored, the roof and slatted sides have significant gaps, offering clear views to the outside.
“We store all of our equipment in here, so if it gets rained on there’s a potential for damage,” Nick Laprade, an employee of the department since 2017, told The Shoestring. He recounted a few times limestone for marking the baseball fields was also damaged by rain and that it remained a challenge to keep the supply dry enough to use.
The Parks Department is also using Daley Field’s stone bathroom building, built in 1937, for storage since it can no longer be used by the public. The stone bathroom is the only bathroom on Daley Field and has not been usable for nearly a decade. It has since been replaced by a portable toilet that has some accessibility limitations. The department does have access to three small sheds for storage. However, two of those sheds are collapsing, one of which has a caved in roof. Parks staff said the newest shed, that is in the best condition, was a donation from a private group.
The maintenance building bathroom, which suffers from regular flooding, sometimes has some uninvited guests, too.
“We’ve had a snake in there once, or I guess more than a few times,” Laprade said. He added that chipmunks, spiders of all sizes, and birds were not uncommon either.
The Parks and Recreation Department and the cemetery staff are also struggling with insufficient and unreliable vehicles, causing some to use their personal cars for work. Craig said the department has four vehicles, one donated, and two “buggies,” one of which was also donated. Craig told The Shoestring one of the department’s trucks is from 1994, and most are in need of regular repairs. He said parks security also has one “hand me down” vehicle the Easthampton Police Department donated. A new vehicle was funded in both the Parks and Recreation Department and its cemetery budget this year and both of those new vehicles arrived in mid-July.
Transportation needs for the Easthampton police, however, have seemingly dominated municipal transportation priorities in recent years.
The Shoestring was not able to get up-to-date fleet records and recent vehicle purchase records from the Easthampton Police Department (the state supervisor of records determined on Thursday the department is not complying with public records law). Records from 2022, however, show five cruisers and a “patrol boat” from 2019, three from 2018 — including two motorcycles — one from 2017, and two from 2016. At that time, the police had roughly 20 vehicles registered and in use. The police also purchased two Teslas in 2022, two hybrid vehicles in 2020, and an unspecified “police interceptor” in 2021.
What’s more, current city practices have removed the ability of the Easthampton Police Department to hand down vehicles to other municipal departments, which has historically been a main source of upgrades for those departments. Grant funding the city has used for the transition to electric and hybrid vehicles has required the trade-in of EPD cruisers.
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The city does have a “master plan” for the Department of Parks and Recreation spanning from 2021 to 2027, and some items are broken down into phases or have accompanying cost estimates. Strong timelines, however, are missing from the plan. Renovation and re-opening of the Nonotuck Park pool, which is listed on this plan, was completed earlier this summer. The maintenance building does receive a single-paragraph mention in the plan. It references “many in-house repairs” by parks staff over the years, and includes a $250,000 cost estimate for a new building.
This is not the first time the parks maintenance building has appeared in a renovation plan. The Shoestring obtained a letter the Parks and Recreation Committee wrote in March to the City Council, which recalled that the replacement of the maintenance building was included in a 1998 “five-year plan.” The letter says that the current parks director, John Mason, had also previously submitted a 2014 plan to replace the building and add a meeting space for youth groups. His efforts were unsuccessful.
“There is a strong consensus among members of the Parks and Recreation Commission that this Nonotuck Park Maintenance Shop is unsuitable for further use and must be replaced as soon as possible,” the commission wrote. “Funding requests to accomplish this have been submitted on each capital improvement plan since FY 2019. The FY 2023 capital plan includes a request for the funding needed to purchase a new, prefabricated metal workshop to replace the outdated structure.”
The city’s master plan for the department would add two staff positions — a $16-an-hour offsite park maintenance job and a program director with a salary range of between $30,000 and $35,000 yearly — but also comes with additional maintenance needs because of the addition of two new basketball courts. No timeline or cost estimates are currently listed on the plan for those courts. There are also plans to increase bike- trail connectivity through the park, likely leading to increased park use and maintenance needs.
Neither the skatepark nor the dog park appear on the city’s master plan; however, both have moved through several design plans and received support from the City Council. In 2021, the city approved the use of $42,500 from the Community Preservation Act for the skatepark design and site selection. Councilors also approved $30,000 for soil testing and concept designs in 2023. So far, there have been two designs proposed for the skatepark and one design proposed for a combined skate park and dog park off of Ferry Street. Another design has been made for a dog park that would be located inside Nonotuck Park — a space inaccessible to cars in the park’s off season.
Two additional pickleball courts have also been moving forward through planning stages and will be located next to the existing pickleball courts in Nonotuck Park. The parks department will be in charge of maintenance for those courts, which are not mentioned in the city’s master plan.
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Tommy Lee is a writer, investigative journalist, and audio video producer for community television based in Western Massachusetts.
