SOUTHWICK — At the conclusion of a joint meeting of the Planning and Select boards, the Select Board voted unanimously to have the Planning Board schedule public hearings to allow residents to weigh in on whether the town should establish a moratorium on the new construction of battery energy storage systems and large solar arrays.

“I think if the result of a public hearing is that the townspeople are looking for a moratorium to go into effect, we would do our due diligence and best to get it onto the special,” said Planning Board chair Jessica Thornton about the attempt to have a warrant article to establish the moratorium ready in time for the Special Town Meeting on Jan. 13.

Select Board member Russ Anderson questioned the attempt to fast-track the process.

“You know, it may not be practical,” he said.

That prompted Select Board chair Diane Gale to announce “it,” referring to the warrant article, “is already written.”

“They just need to have the public hearings,” Gale said, referring to the Planning Board.

“Right,” said Thornton, adding that the outcome of the public hearing isn’t guaranteed.

During the last Select Board meeting on Dec. 1, there was some confusion as to whether the Select Board could formally recommend to the Planning Board that it open public hearings on the moratorium question.

Gale believed the board could, Select Board member Doug Moglin said it couldn’t; “…that’s backwards. They should vote.”

At the conclusion of the Dec. 1 board meeting, the members didn’t make a formal recommendation to the Planning Board, which discussed the issue at its meeting the next evening.

At Monday’s meeting, Thornton explained the need for a moratorium.

“The Planning Board was in receipt of concerns from members of the public and other volunteer and elected officials throughout town … concerned about the potential for the town of Southwick to become overwhelmed by applications for large-scale solar and battery energy storage systems, or the battery systems that usually come alongside those large solar fields,” she said.

She said public awareness locally of the large renewable energy systems has heightened since there was an attempt by a company to install a BESS on a parcel off Medeiros Way in Westfield earlier this year.

“Since then, town property has been purchased by electric companies, so we have to keep an eye on the fact that people are already eyeing us [for these kinds of systems],” she said, adding that other towns have already established moratoriums for two reasons.

“Either because the towns themselves didn’t have any bylaws in place or also to wait for state guidance to come down on these, since it is a hot topic not just here in Western Massachusetts, but throughout the state,” Thornton said.

When the Planning Board discussed the issue at its last meeting, its members voted unanimously to request the Select Board to start holding the hearings.

“The Planning Board discussed this and agreed that it would be in the town’s best interest to open a public hearing,” Thornton said.

She also said the length of the moratorium should run until the Annual Town Meeting in May 2027, which would allow time for the town’s zoning bylaw update and the state to come up with its own regulations related to large solar arrays and BESS systems.

Anderson, who played the devil’s advocate at the Select Board meeting last week when questioning the need for a moratorium, said then that he believed the state already had guidelines on the energy systems. He added that many fire chiefs across the commonwealth now believe the BESS systems and the lithium-ion battery fires associated with them are not a “big deal” as originally believed.

“Can’t some of that be covered under the fire chief’s authority having jurisdiction,” he said Monday.

Thornton said she didn’t think so.

“I think the public hearing would give us that opportunity to hear directly from the fire chief and have current updates of what’s happening at the state level because it’s coming down not just in building code, but in fire code,” she said, adding the town needn’t be left exposed in the interim.

The Planning Board will hold its first public hearing on the moratorium question at its next meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 16.