Today’s Tribune has the story of the proposal I have made to the Methuen City Council to lease parkland to the Head Start program at Gill Avenue so that they can construct a new building to house Methuen Head Start students. The land currently has a city building on it that has, in the past, served as a meeting hall for the DAV. It is currently unoccupied, and in some disrepair. The proposal would lease the land to the Head Start program for 99 years at one dollar a year. In return Head Start would build a brand new building on the site that would provide a home for Methuen Head Start students. Currently Head Start utilizes some space in the Central School, which is the administrative building for our school department. That space will not be available to the program after one more year. I have been working with the folks at Head Start for some time to come up with a new location, and Gill Avenue seems like the perfect spot.

The Gill Avenue park abuts a residential neighborhood with an active neighborhood group. That group spoke in favor of this proposal at the City Council meeting that gave the Home Rule Petition its first read. The residents have been interested in making the park a “drug free zone”, and the construction of a school on the site will allow them to achieve that important goal.

The construction will be funded 100 percent by Head Start, which hopes to take advantage of federal stimulus money to help fund construction. We will get to replace an aging structure in need of repair with a new building at no expense to the City, and also provide a new state of the art home for Methuen students. My thanks to Phil Larivierre, Anne D’Errico, and Chic Lopiano for all of their hard work. Lopiano still owes me a coffee at Starbucks, which I may have to wait forever for.

Read the Tribune story here.