As town officials work to finalize a new naming policy for capital assets, a recently filed citizen petition is calling for a Town Meeting vote on whether to name the new municipal skating rink after a local hockey icon.
James P. Viglirolo, known to most as “Skip,” was a lifelong resident and employee of Belmont who played hockey and coached the high school teams for 25 years. According to his family, he was a member of the U.S. National Hockey Team, representing the United States in 1959, playing five games in Moscow against Soviet Army teams during the height of the Cold War. Viglirolo also served as the first coach and mentor of the Belmont Recreation Women’s Hockey Program and was a founding volunteer of Belmont’s Camp Willow Program, now known as Belmont SPORT, which provides activities for students with special needs.
The former municipal rink, which bore his name, was demolished to make way for the new one.
A recipient of numerous accolades and Hall of Fame inductions, Viglirolo died earlier this month at the age of 95.
In the wake of his death, a petition seeking to retain Viglirolo in the name of the new rink—set to open in time for the upcoming hockey season—garnered 258 signatures. The petition was submitted on June 17 by Gail Harrington, one of Viglirolo’s daughters.
According to the language of the petition, the motion to be read at Town Meeting seeks to see if Town Meeting agrees to maintain the old rink’s name, “to keep Skip’s legacy alive in our community.”
The petition is “to get in front of Town Meeting … since we haven’t received an answer from the Select Board—a formal answer,” Harrington said when she filed the petition.
According to Harrington, her family started collecting signatures just before her father died on June 3.
“We could have gotten more signatures,” she said. “It was just a hard time for the family to make rounds and get signatures. We had plenty of people that offered help and took forms and got signatures for us. It was really nice. It was really nice we had the community support behind it.”
The Select Board must now schedule a special Town Meeting within 45 days of receipt of the certified petition. On Monday, the board talked tentatively about scheduling a fully remote meeting for July 23. However, an interest expressed by Harrington Monday night to instead include the petition in a special Town Meeting already scheduled for Oct. 20 would require her to withdraw the petition, collect new signatures, and resubmit to capture the Oct. 20 date in that 45-day window.
Efforts to reach the petitioner and her family were unsuccessful as of press time on Wednesday.
To be in compliance, the Select Board will have to call a special Town Meeting by its first meeting in July.
“I am going to express my personal frustration that this is the route the petitioners chose to go,” Select Board Chair Elizabeth Dionne said Monday night. “We have been working on a naming policy for months now; we expect to finally approve it. I’m very concerned about the precedent this sets. If Town Meeting is going to be asked to weigh in on this asset, Town Meeting can be asked to weigh in on any asset in town…This is, in my mind, in opposition to good management.”
The board expects to vote on a revised capital asset naming policy at its next meeting.
Whether a Town Meeting vote on the naming issue is binding or just a strong recommendation remains to be seen, she added.
