Selectmen agree to Youth Hockey pact
Published on October 13th, 2004
STONEHAM, MA -The town’s Board of Selectmen informally approved a proposal to allow Stoneham Youth Hockey (SYH) to run the Arena’s vacant pro shop, snack bar and vending machines Tuesday night.
According to Town Administrator Ron Florino, he placed an ad for proposals on the concession and pro shop stands in early September and received only one response from Stoneham attorney and S.Y.H. representative Charlie Houghton.
“I did send out an ad to accept any proposals for the Arena concession. I think it will help the Arena and make it a better place,” said Florino. “Mr. Houghton, he was the only one who did offer a proposal to run the Arena concession. We still haven’t worked out the details about what the town would receive and what the SYH would get.”
According to Houghton, SYH would create the snack bar right inside the entryway of the Arena and provide a seating area complete with a view of the rink through block-glass windows.
“What we’re talking about is right where the vending area is, we would reconstruct the snack bar. In every rink that has a snack bar, the foods in a warm area. You have to have a warm area to be successful with a snack bar,” said Houghton, who added that the eatery would pipe into the Arena’s existing heating system.
Reluctant to discuss the dollar amounts surrounding the proposal in front of the television cameras, Houghton offered to go into detail off-the-air. Rather than do that, Selectmen Chair Cosmo Ciccarello instead advised Houghton to work out the specifics with Florino and then come back before the board.
However, Houghton did disclose that SYH would assume approximately $22,000 in construction costs. While Hougton attempted to convince the Selectmen that SYH would need a multi-year lease for the deal given it’s capital costs, Ciccarello and Selectmen Charlie Smith countered that such a lease wasn’t possible.
“When we were talking about $8000 to $10,000 that was fine,” Houghton argued. “We’re talking about $22,000. It’s gotta be longer than that.”
Remarking that Houghton himself was the one who initially utilized a loop-hole in the Selectmen-Town Administrator Act that limits a lease of municipal property to one-year — resulting in a proposal to run the entire rink from Facilities Management Corporation being dropped last year — the Selectmen said that any lease longer than a year just wasn’t possible.
According to Florino, while SYH was originally intending to pay $1200 a month for the lease when the construction costs hovered around $10,000, the town might have to charge close to nothing for rent given the amount of investments needed.
“He was originally anticipating on spending about $10,000 and giving us $1200 a month,” said Florino in a post-meeting interview. “Now we’ll have to probably have him absorb all the costs of the concession, so we won’t be expecting as much.”
With the Selectmen only discussing SYH’s proposal for about 15-minutes last Tuesday night, many details of the process undertaken to receive the proposals and the financials surrounding the plan remain uncertain.
For example, while Florino claims that SYH was the only party to express interest in running the concession stand and pro shop, advertisements for the proposals were only placed on community access television for ten days between Sept. 8 and Sept. 17.
In addition, the ad said proposals must have been submitted by September 17. However, according to a document dated on Oct. 4, and faxed on Oct. 5. to Florino’s office that was characterized by the Town Administrator as Houghton’s “formal proposal”, SYH submitted their request after that deadline.
Lastly, Florino claims that because the SYH proposal will cost less than $25,000, the process does not require that sealed bids be sent into the town. And while SYH’s proposal does list the overall cost at $22,580, a separate section labeled “other items” lists equipment, flooring, and furniture as other capital needs. No dollar amounts or estimated costs have been linked to those additional items. In addition, the SYH proposal provides little detail about the costs associated with renovating the Pro Shop.
According to Selectmen Charlie Smith, while he endorses the idea of restoring the snack bar and pro-shop, he questions how and when the process to receive the bids took place.
“I’m pretty frustrated about how things get tweaked and worked on behind closed doors to the benefit of certain people and not for the benefit of ordinary citizens on the street,” Smith remarked, who added that he never heard or saw anything about the outsourcing proposal until he opened his Selectmen’s packet three days ago.
“Obviously, it was predestined to happen. They blocked FMC for their own good; not because they didn’t think it would work but because they wanted to for their own skin. I’m going to ask about the process. We should do due diligence, that’s our job, and I don’t think this was done properly.”
According to Houghton, the shops must be in place by the high school hockey season this November to make “financial sense”.
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