Town Meeting Is Coming!

Please Join Us on Monday

This coming Monday, May 11, is the date for Hawley’s Annual Town Meeting. We hope to see as many Hawleyites as possible at 7 p.m. at the Town Office on Pudding Hollow Road. If the weather is clement on Monday (right now, the forecast looks a bit iffy), we will meet outside in the parking lot so if it’s nice bring a folding chair. Otherwise, we’ll squeeze inside the building.

Here is the warrant. As you can see, there is nothing terribly controversial on the agenda. A couple of unexpected expenses are the replacement of the heater in the Fire Station (about a month ago, Fire Chief Greg Cox walked in and discovered that the old one had died) and a lot of extra funding for the snow-roads account. The legislature is hoping to help with the latter problem; just about every town in Massachusetts went over its snow-roads budget this crazy winter. As of this writing, however, the legislation for this is just a draft.

School and school-committee officials will be on hand to walk townspeople through the intricacies of this year’s Mohawk Trail and Hawlemont School budgets. This information will walk you through the basics of those budgets. These sheets will explain the challenges of this particular school-funding year. And here is the latest information on the 2 District/8 Town Sustainability Study.

All this material will be available at the meeting, of course, but we hope people will look at it in advance if possible.

Election Results

We didn’t have a huge turnout at Monday’s election; only 34 people voted. The election workers did their job, however, and here are Hawley’s new (in some cases, re-elected) officers:

Will Cosby will once again be a Selectman for three years.

Wayne Lemoine will again serve as Assessor for three years.

Ken Bertsch will return to the Hawlemont School Committee for three years, and Robert Sears will continue on the Mohawk Trail Regional School Committee for three years.

We have a new Moderator, Julie Carantit, who will start this Monday and will hold the position for one year.

And Jill Behringer will serve as Auditor for one year.

Honoring William Apess

Next Friday, May 15, at 1 p.m. at the library at Mohawk Trail Regional School, the school and the “Museum on Main Street” program will present a program about William Apess (1798-1839), a Pequot writer, indigenous activist, and Colrain son.

Artist Deborah Spears Moorehead will talk about her portrait of Apess, which she is donating to the school, and Professor Drew Lopenzina of Old Dominion University will talk about Apess’s unique perspective on the early American republic.

Visitors should ring the bell at the front door and sign in at the front office. Like all of the Museum on Main Street events, the painting dedication/discussion is free and open to all.

Previously Announced Events

More events are of course coming, starting this evening! I have written about these before but just in case…..

Calling All Music Lovers

Mohawk Trail Concerts wants YOU! The summer chamber-music series will return to the Charlemont Federated Church from June 13 to July 18. All concerts will take place on Saturdays at 5 p.m.

MTC is looking for volunteers to help out at the concerts: ushers, clean-up people, and parkers. All volunteers will receive free admission to the concert of their choice and MTC’s enduring gratitude.

 

Please look at the schedule for this year’s offerings, and contact me, Tinky, if you are interested in helping out on any particular date. Please note that the volunteer roster is almost full for the July 11 concert, which seems to be very popular; we need just one more person to help with parking for that one.

Thank you for supporting music in our community!

That’s all for now I hope to see you all at Town Meeting.

Warmly,

Tinky Weisblat
Gal Friday
Town of Hawley

413-339-5518