On the third floor of city hall, Chicopee's newly-renovated auditorium is sparking new debate. The project, which has cost nearly $7 million to date, is where the city council started holding their meetings in March. At a special meeting Tuesday evening, a majority voted to return the meetings to the chamber on the fourth floor.

"People say, ‘what a waste of money, that was supposed to be for us,’” Councilor At-Large Frank Laflamme said. “Well, the auditorium is an auditorium and the chambers are the chambers, in my opinion. I believe us doing the auditorium needed to be done no matter what, but I would like to see that more for community stuff.”

Laflamme, also the council's vice president, said he supports holding their televised meetings in the auditorium twice a month, but in his opinion said subcommittee meetings should be held in the chamber.

"Why should we be heating the auditorium, cooling the auditorium, such a big space, for such a small thing?" said Laflamme.

Ward 3 Councilor and President Shane Brooks did not attend Tuesday's meeting. He said one of the reasons the council voted to renovate the auditorium was so their meetings could be more accessible to the public and encourage participation. 

"We won't have the ability to renovate the bathrooms to be fully ADA compliant, access to that room is only afforded by an elevator,” said Brooks. “If you look at the third floor as a comparison, we are at full ADA compliance and we won't be able to achieve that on the fourth floor.”

A big concern some have about the auditorium is outside noise during meetings, including from traffic.

"The other thing that was mentioned was the noise from Front Street, versus where our chambers is now it a lot quieter too," Laflamme said.

"Acoustically there are some challenging moments with the flow of traffic on the Front Street corridor but that was true on the fourth floor as well," said Brooks.

Brooks added that ultimately more discussion is needed between the council and the city's administration.

"We need to open up those lines of communication, work with the current administration about what he sees as a future use as the fourth floor building and work within our confines,” said Brooks. “Again, it's a significant taxpayer investment that we are talking about here and that is not something I want to walk away from lightly.”