NAHANT — Town Administrator Tony Barletta updated the Community Preservation Committee on a number of town projects — from renovating the Council on Aging’s Kitchen to the creation of handicap-accessible ramps — at a Monday night meeting.
In the next fiscal year (FY2025), Nahant expects to receive an estimated $500,000 in state-matched Community Preservation Act funding. At its first meeting to discuss FY2025 CPA grant funding in preparation for Town Meeting in May, the CPC asked Barletta for updates on several ongoing CPA projects to determine which need additional funding.
Under the Commonwealth’s Community Preservation Act, the town’s 3% property tax surcharge is matched annually with state funding to fund open space, historic preservation, affordable housing, or recreational land use projects. Each year, the CPC proposes potential uses for CPA revenue, which are put to an annual vote at Town Meeting.
If CPA funds are not spent on their designated grant projects, the Town may vote to pull the funds and hold them for future CPA projects.
CPC Chair Lynne Spencer, to determine whether any unused CPA funds could be clawed back, asked Barletta about Public Ways projects, which involve mapping and adding signage to the town’s public routes.
Barletta responded that only a few thousand dollars remained in the Public Ways CPA grant. He said the town’s Open Space Committee has worked to replace some of the Heritage Trails maps and will likely need the rest of the funds to complete the projects.
On the $165,000 in CPA funding allocated toward creating a new handicap-accessible ramp at Town Hall, Barletta said the project’s cost was much more significant than expected, forcing the town to search for financially-tenable options.
“We recently hired an experienced mason at the DPW. We’ve hired an experienced contractor as well,” Barletta said. “We may be able to do it in-house under the current budget. If we contracted out to replace that ramp and whatever the needs might be, we may exceed the existing budget, so it’s kind of been in a holding pattern at the moment.”
Barletta briefly mentioned the town’s new mason could also be of use in its efforts to repair the infrastructure surrounding Greenlawn Cemetery.
When asked for an update on the roughly $50,000 in CPC funding allocated toward repairing and renovating the Town’s Council on Aging kitchen, Barletta said the kitchen’s location in a historical building complicated the project. He said the town might consider moving the kitchen renovations to another location and finding other sources of revenue.
“Once the process of this project is projected to exceed that number, you have to start asking the question — ‘Is it really worth it to do it here, or should we be exploring an alternative venue?’ If we were to do that, we would understand that the 50,000 from the CPC wouldn’t go with it, and we’d have to search for additional funding,” Barletta said.
The CPC aims to finalize its FY2025 grant allocations before Jan. 15. It will meet again later this month to further discuss the new grant cycle.
