Hello Everyone,
I hope everyone has been enjoying what remains of their summers.
This week was an exciting week of new beginnings in our district. Monday morning, I attended the ribbon cutting for the brand-new Valley Springs Behavioral Health Hospital in Holyoke. As a cooperative effort with the Baystate Health System and LifePoint Heath, this facility will provide the greater Springfield area with critically needed beds for patients suffering from mental health issues. As Chairman of the Joint Committee on Mental Health, Substance Abuse, and Recovery, I’m thrilled to welcome Valley Springs to our community and glad to have services like these available to constituents in our region.
Monday afternoon was also the official groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of the new Holyoke Veterans’ Home where I was honored to move one of the first shovels of dirt for the project. It’s been over three years since the tragic loss of veterans during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and after much hard work and collaboration from many of my colleagues in the legislature, we finally reached an agreement to build an entirely new Home with state-of-the-art facilities to help prevent such tragedies from ever occurring again. The new Home will have- and almost exclusively private rooms -. This new facility is a huge triumph for veteran services here in the Commonwealth and I’m extremely proud to have assisted in its passage. The Home is scheduled to be completed in 2028 and I cannot wait to see the doors open to our vets and their families.
This week I also had the pleasure of visiting American Legion Post 351 in Holyoke. I always love spending time in my community, especially with my fellow veterans at our great Legions. I was happy to stop by and get to know some of their leadership there better.
Later in the week, I toured the Northampton Recovery Center with Senator Comerford. Facilities like these provide critical services to those struggling with substance abuse disorders. Actually seeing the work being done in the field of recovery is crucial to my job as a legislator and knowing how the legislature can best work alongside care providers is key to combatting the substance abuse epidemic here in the Commonwealth. A big thank you to the Center for hosting and to Senator Comerford for inviting us along.
This week my team held office hours at the Easthampton COA on Tuesday and at the Holyoke COA on Wednesday. Next week, we will be at the Russell COA on Tuesday at 11:30am and at the Chicopee COA on Thursday at 10:00am. If you can’t make office hours, I can always be reached by email, john.velis@masenate.gov, by phone, (413) 527-3920, and you can find me online at senatorjohnvelis.com
Sincerely,
John Velis