17-Jun-10

What is the value of a village school?

By David Scribner MONTEREY – This week at the Monterey School, the former Town Hall and police station, up the hill from the library and the General Store, the seven kindergarten students currently enrolled in the village’s educational program were rehearsing their parts in the school play. It is a remarkably comfortable and homey classroom setting, with walls decorated with student art, tables of numbers, posters of the alphabet. There are no rigid rows of desks. It is a rambling set up of tables and chairs, allowing students to find a space of their own. Under the guidance of longtime Monterey teacher Susan Andersen and assistant Belinda Twing, the students are reciting, from memory, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost, “The Owl and the Pussycat” by Edward Lear, and “Wynken Blynken & Nod” by Eugene Field. For each poem, they donned costumes, or held illustrations.

22-Nov-09

Sandy Beach proposal resurfaces

By Michael Kelley LEE—A recommendation has resurfaced as how to move forward on the issue of public access to Sandy Beach on Laurel Lake. On Nov. 17, Neil Clarke, the chairman of the Laurel Lake Access Committee, presented the Board of Selectmen, and the standing-room only crowd, both a short-term and long-term recommendations to make sure the residents and visitors of Lee can enjoy the beach for many years to come. Their short-term recommendation, he said, which was a unanimous decision, is to continue the current arrangement with Laurel Lake Water Power owner Roger Scheurer in which the town pays a access fee to cross Scheurer’s property. The Board of Selectmen and Scheurer are currently in executive sessions negotiating the access agreement for next summer. The deadline in Nov. 30. This past summer the town representatives, at a special town meeting, agreed to a $6,400 fee for the summer months, but not without much debat

08-Nov-09

Barrington unveils five-year program

By David Scribner GREAT BARRINGTON—At a joint meeting of the Finance Committee, Board of Selectmen and an assembly of town department heads, Town Manager Kevin O’Donnell unveiled a 5-year, $15.6-million schedule of necessary capital improvement projects that included everything from road reconstruction and maintenance,downtown streetscape renovation and new patrol cars for the Police Department. “We are in a very challenging economic time,” O’Donnell told the town officials at their Monday night meeting, “so we should be revisiting this plan quarterly, to see whether the funds we’ve anticipated to pay for these projects over five years are, in fact, available.” O’Donnell pointed out that this is the first time the town has had a long-term Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) correlated to a realistic assessment of town resources. “That’s right,” said Select Board Chairman Walter F. Atwood III. “Combined, I’ve been on the Finance Committee and Board of Selectmen for 19 years, and this is the first time we have had a comprehensive, long-term program for capital projects.” n officer in the firehouse. They’re in the basement, without any windows right now.”

02-Nov-09

Firehouse $450,000 under budget

By Michael Kelley GREAT BARRINGTON—The old fire station at 20 Castle Street is officially closed, at least informally, and the new one should make taxpayers smile: it came in $450,000 under budget. On Monday evening, during the town’s Board of Selectmen’s meeting, the department’s fire engines paraded in the grandest of fashion down Main Street to their new home on State Road. Construction of the fire house broke ground in August, 2008, and came in about 41/2 percent under budget. Town voters had approved of up to $9.5 million for the fire house, including funding to purchase the land, construct the building and pay architectural fees in 2007. The new 16,500-square-foot fire house brings to an end the use of the old station after more than a century of service. It had, over the years, become too cramped for the department’s needs and modern fire trucks.

25-Oct-09

Collaboration, Yes; Consolidation, No.

By David Scribner GREAT BARRINGTON - South Berkshire school committees and superintendents have spoken: Collaboration, Yes; Consolidation, No. From the stage of the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center Tuesday night, this conclusion was delivered - in so many words - by a panel of educators representing the 10 towns from Lee to Sheffield who were the subject of a state-authorized study by MGT of America examining the benefits of consolidating the Berkshire Hills, Southern Berkshire and Lee-Tyringham school districts. The panel recited instance after instance where the school districts already engaged in initiatives through the South Berkshire Educational Collaborative (SBEC). “The MGT report recommended replacing our three superintendents with one — that idea isn’t even on the radar,” Herbert Abelow, chairman of the Southern Berkshire Regional School Committee, declared at the opening of the first public response to the consolidation report. “The three School Committee chairs want three superintendents. One superintendent will not result in savings, because of the additional support staff that you would have to have to replace them. We feel pretty strongly about that.” Despite an advisory from the Department of Education calling on contiguous regional school districts to consider consolidation, in the wake of severely reduced state aid to education, Abelow pointed out that there was no mandated timetable for a consolidation plan.

04-Oct-09

Yes Virginia...

There is a Santa Claus, and he was spotted packing his Cadillac sleigh in the Taconic parking lot in Great Barrington, disguised as a tourist, before heading back to his workshop

28-Sep-09

Redesign plan draws overflow crowd

By David Scribner GREAT BARRINGTON—Competition among Berkshire communities for limited MassHighway development funds has persuaded Selectmen to pursue the reconstruction of Main Street from Taconic Avenue to Cottage Street, despite pleas from downtown businessmen that the project might put them out of business. An information session to introduce the project director, Jon Dietrich of Fuss & O’Neill in West Springfield, and to delineate project’s scope drew an overflow crowd at Town Hall Tuesday morning at 7:30, with people packing the Board of Selectmen meeting room and jammed into the hallway outside the meeting room doorways, trying to hear the presentation and speakers. In effect, the $3.8-million Main Street redesign is a fait accomplit, provided that the town can meet deadlines for design and implementation for a rebuilding of roadway, sidewalk and highway infrastructure beginning in the spring of 2013.

13-Sep-09

Pear trees must go

By Michael Kelley GREAT BARRINGTON— The town’s Main Street redesign plan, which calls for a complete reconstruction of the downtown business district, has prompted concern for many in town, who wonder what sort of an impact it will have, especially on the downtown business community. But no portion of the project has caused more concern than the proposed removal of the flowering pear trees that line downtown’s Main Street. Many feel it is the trees, with their beautiful canopies, that give the downtown its special look and fee