Longmeadow, Massachusetts

How Longmeadow’s Government Works

Longmeadow runs on an open Town Meeting, which means there are no elected Town Meeting members at all: every registered voter in Longmeadow is a member, and any of them can walk in, speak, and vote on the budget. Voters also elect a 5 member Select Board to set policy between meetings and the School Committee that oversees the schools. The Select Board hires a professional Town Manager to run the town day to day. So the money is voted by whoever shows up, the direction is set by the Select Board, and the daily work is carried out by the Town Manager.

1. Residents elect the 5 members of the Select Board and the School Committee.
2. The Select Board hires the Town Manager and decides what goes on the Town Meeting warrant.
3. Town Meeting votes the budget and the bylaws, and every registered voter present can vote.
4. You take part: register at 16, vote at 18, and once you are registered you are already a member of Town Meeting.

Why This Town Has to Vote Twice to Raise Its Own Taxes

Proposition 2 1/2 caps how much a Massachusetts town can raise in property taxes each year. To borrow past that cap for a building, Longmeadow has to win in two different rooms. Town Meeting has to authorize the borrowing in a hall where every registered voter present holds a handset and votes. Then the whole town has to exempt that debt from the cap at the ballot box, on a separate day. Lose either one and the project stops.

The town publishes its entire record of those questions, twenty seven of them, running from a $266,459 operating override that failed on March 8, 1983 to a $1,541,000 field improvement that passed on June 11, 2019. The list is worth reading, because it is the clearest picture there is of what this town has been willing to pay for. A $77,969,388 debt exclusion for the Longmeadow High School addition passed on June 8, 2010. A $21,205,000 public works facility passed in 2017 and a $14,000,000 Adult Center passed in 2018. Three separate school overrides on one day in May 2005 all failed. School additions failed in April 1999 and passed in November of the same year.

• September 30, 2025: the middle school debt exclusion passed, 2,129 to 1,360, on 3,490 ballots, which the town recorded as 26.7 percent of its 13,056 registered voters.
• June 2, 2026: the town wide fiber network debt exclusion was turned down, 430 to 835.
• Both were the same instrument, a Proposition 2 1/2 debt exclusion, and the difference in the result was the town deciding.

Civic Calendar

• Select Board: generally the first and third Monday evenings of the month, on the schedule the board publishes for the year, at the Greenwood Center, 231 Maple Road. Each agenda is posted in advance on the town’s Agenda Center.
• Town Meeting: the Annual Town Meeting is held on the second Tuesday in May, in the Robert D’Agostino Gymnasium at Longmeadow High School, and the town regularly holds a Special Town Meeting in the fall. Fifty voters make a quorum. The Moderator presides, and that is an elected job: Rebecca Townsend was elected to it town-wide on June 11, 2024, with 1,984 votes, for a three-year term.
• Town elections: Longmeadow votes in June, across five precincts. The 2026 Annual Town Election was held on Tuesday June 2. The next is in June 2027.
• State and federal elections: even-numbered years. The 2026 primary and general are this fall.

Explore the Longmeadow Edition

• Town Manager’s OfficeThe town’s chief administrator
• Select BoardYour five board members
• School CommitteeSuperintendent & committee
• Town DepartmentsWho does what at the Greenwood Center
• Boards & CommissionsWhere residents serve
• LegislatorsYour voice in Boston & D.C.
• Longmeadow History1644, 1783, and the town that split in two
• DemographicsWho lives in Longmeadow
• Non-ProfitsCommunity organizations
• Student DataLongmeadow schools by the numbers

Your County Officials

Two of the people with the most direct power over your life are elected countywide. The district attorney decides who gets charged with a crime, and what they get charged with. The sheriff runs the county jail. Both of them answer to the voters of Hampden County, and that includes Longmeadow. They appear on your ballot. Now you know what to look for.

Every county in Massachusetts elects its own, and the job is the same everywhere: the charging decisions, the jail. Look up any town in the state and see who holds these two offices there.

Your First Civic Action in Longmeadow

You do not have to wait until you can vote to be heard in your own town. Here is how to take a real concern to the people who decide.

1. Pick the right body. Town policy, roads, and police or fire go to the Select Board. Schools go to the School Committee. The budget and bylaws are voted by Town Meeting.
2. Find the meeting. The Select Board generally meets the first and third Monday evenings of the month at the Greenwood Center, 231 Maple Road, and the agenda is posted in advance on the town’s Agenda Center.
3. Know your members. Five Select Board members are elected town-wide, so every one of them answers to you.
4. Write an article. Ten registered voters can put a subject on the Annual Town Meeting warrant, and one hundred can put one on a Special Town Meeting warrant. The Moderator invites petitioners to talk it through with her first.
5. Or skip the trip. Report a pothole, a broken light, or a missed pickup to the Department of Public Works at 170 Dwight Road, which is the department that owns the repair.

• Municipal Offices: Greenwood Center, 231 Maple Road, Longmeadow, MA 01106. Select Board and Town Manager’s office 413-565-4110.
• Town Clerk & agendas: 413-565-4103, with meeting agendas and minutes posted at longmeadowma.gov.
• Public schools: Longmeadow Public Schools, 535 Bliss Road, 413-565-4200.