Tonight, Town Meeting members will be asked whether they feel the new municipal rink should be named for the late James P. Viglirolo, known to most as “Skip.”
According to Select Board member Elizabeth Dionne, town counsel has advised the board that a Town Meeting vote tonight would be advisory in nature, rather than binding. In an email to The Voice, Dionne wrote that Belmont’s bylaw is “silent on the naming of public assets,” as is Massachusetts General Law. As such, a policy created in 2018 and updated on July 7 both grant authority to the Select Board for the naming of public assets.
The meeting, called in response to a citizen petition filed by Viglirolo’s family, will include an additional citizen petition that seeks to eliminate the seating capacity requirement for all-alcohol licenses, increase the number of licenses available, and modify policies to simplify eligibility requirements. The meeting will be held remotely tonight via Zoom.
Rink Name
An amendment to the citizen petition, filed by Precinct 8 Town Meeting member Angus Abercrombie, seeks to strike the original motion in its entirety and instead move that Town Meeting “express its support for the town asset naming policy as amended by the Select Board … and ask that it be applied to the Belmont Rink and Sports Facility.”
The special Town Meeting has stirred considerable debate between residents on both sides of the issue. In recent weeks, a three-page flyer asking Town Meeting members to support “retaining the name” Viglirolo has circulated, citing his “unmatched contributions to Belmont.” Select Board members and Town Meeting members who have reached out to The Voice have been subject to an aggressive email campaign supporting the family’s plea to have Skip’s name on the rink.
Among those emails was one from Virginia Gardner, chair of the National Chapter of the Italian American Alliance, who called any effort to not name the building for Viglirolo “questionable and insulting.”
“The move is not only disrespectful, but it seems to be a conscious attempt to diminish the man and the many contributions he selflessly made to the Town of Belmont,” she wrote. “This action is reprehensible.”
On the other side of the issue, Precinct 8 Town Meeting member Ellen Shreiber wrote in an email to Select Board members that the Select Board voted on Feb. 6, 2023, on the name of the rink in the context of what to call it on the ballot. She explained that when the first vote of the rink failed in 2022, members of the public felt the name on the ballot (Belmont Ice Skating Rink) was limiting and didn’t reflect its intended uses for the broader community.
“By vote of the Select Board, the facility was named the ‘Belmont Rink and Sports Facility,’ which is the name that was included in the debt exclusion language on the ballot. … In other words, the facility already has a name — the Belmont Rink and Sports Facility — that was key to the public vote in April 2023,” Shreiber wrote.
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The former rink, demolished to make way for the new one, was named for Viglirolo in 1998 in recognition of his decades of involvement with various hockey programs in Belmont. Following his death last month, a petition seeking to retain Viglirolo’s name on the new rink—set to open in time for the upcoming hockey season — garnered 258 signatures, triggering the town to call a special Town Meeting.
According to the language of the petition, the motion to be read asks whether members agree to maintain the old rink’s name, “to keep Skip’s legacy alive in our community.”
Earlier this month, the Select Board’s vote to open and close the warrant for a special Town Meeting in July followed a request from the petitioner to include the petition in the special Town Meeting warrant in October instead.
“Our clear intent was not to have a special Town Meeting called during July,” petitioner Gail Harrington, one of Viglirolo’s daughters, said at the July Select Board meeting. “We, as the petitioners, are in agreement with moving it to Oct. 20. If not, we understand and will be ready for July 23.”
The board, however, felt that, to comply with state law, they were obligated to call a Town Meeting within 45 days of receiving the certified petition.
“Summer is not an ideal time,” said Select Board Chair Matt Taylor. “Our Town Administrator Patrice Garvin did check with town counsel on this issue; this is an example where town counsel did not give us an answer we were necessarily hoping for, but they did advise us that the safest thing to do for the town of Belmont is to hold a special Town Meeting within 45 days. … It seems like the prudent thing to do—even if it’s not the answer we wanted, and it sounds like it wasn’t the answer the petitioners wanted, either.”
The conversation that evening came on the heels of a vote to approve the new capital assets naming policy. Part of the policy, which the board has been reviewing for several months, included guidance on naming assets built to replace old ones—specifically, it clarified that new buildings should be required to go through the naming process rather than immediately adopting the name of the original building. Given the special Town Meeting, this element of the policy was tabled until after a Town Meeting vote.
“I think some people have been surprised that this might be a side effect of rebuilding the rink, and I want to be sensitive to that,” Taylor said.
The policy was based on an original policy drafted by former Select Board member Adam Dash.
