Thanks to $196,000 in ARPA funding, the Town of Greenfield was able to shift the town clerk’s office into a separate space in the basement of the town offices, and move the Police Department out of the basement and across the common to the building formerly  known as the “Old Town Offices.”

According to Town Administrator Aaron Patt, the overcrowding in the town offices had been an issue for years.

“At one point, we had five departments sharing one computer, coming in in staggered shifts, and during COVID, it just became impossible. If someone in the town clerk’s office was out sick, we would have 18 or 20 people sitting around on the floor waiting, and no one was happy,” Patt said. “Upstairs, we had the building inspector, the health inspector and the supervisors of the checklist and other departments all sharing one computer. It went from being frugal to being impossible.”

According to Patt, the Greenfield Select Board had been looking at ways to find more space for the town’s workers, including the town clerk and deputy clerk, the treasurer’s office, the tax collector and the town welfare officer long before the pandemic. At the same time, the Police Department had outgrown the basement of the town offices.

“The Police Department had no meeting space, no interview space, no training space,” Patt said.

Patt said the town took multiple steps to alleviate pressure on the town offices, including making all tax and assessment information available online. In 2020,  the Crotched Mountain Foundation, which had been renting the Old Town Offices for decades, sold the Crotched Mountain School campus to Gersh Autism and moved all of its operations to other locations. CMF’s departure opened up an opportunity for the town to find the space it needed.

“Since we already owned the Old Town Office building, we had to maintain it regardless of who the tenant was,” Patt said. “In order to rent that building out commercially again, we had to fix part of the roof, we had to repave the parking lot, and we had to update the accessibility. So it made a lot of sense to move the Police Department in there, as we would be paying for that building no matter what.”

In 2021, Greenfield was allocated $196,000 in ARPA funds, and the Select Board voted to allocate 100% of the funds to complete the expansion project, renovating the basement of the town offices as a separate space for  the town clerk and assistant town clerk, and moving the Police Department across the common. Inside the town offices, other departments were able to spread out into the previous space used by the town clerk.

The Select Board worked with Police Chief Brian Giammarino and his team to determine the need and priorities of the Police Department.

“We have always been very grateful for how good the Town of Greenfield is to us, so we had no complaints, but our new space is a lot safer for our staff, and it is safer for the public,” Giammarino said.

The Old Town Office building was renovated to meet the safety requirements of the Police Department. The new department has a separate interview room for subjects, a secure entry to prevent the public entering the building, a secure evidence room, an accessible restroom and a restroom with a shower for the staff.

“In the old office, for 20 years, people just walked right in and there was no kind of entry way, and it was never a problem, but sadly, those are not the times we live in now,” Giammarino said. “The safety of our staff and of the public are our No. 1 priority.”

Patt noted that the creating updated and additional space for town departments was “long, long overdue,” as each town department had grown over the years.

“We are now set to up to be able to serve the town much, much better,” Patt said. “We have a long way to go to become completely up to date; we need to completely digitize our records and go electronic, we need a better phone system, things like that. But this was a huge step to doing a better job to serve our town. We can provide more to the town, and we can do it safely.”