Maguro House

Utilization of the retail store front in the new building is coming to completion. East Coast Driving School opened next to Sarapaan. Now a new Japanese restaurant, Maguro House, will be opening on the corner. When running Sunday, I catch sight of the door sign and stopped for a photo.

Construction on the interior is still in progress.
When I find out the tentative opening date, I'll share that here.

Updated - 2/25/10
The Grand Opening Party is scheduled for Sunday, February 28th from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM

The restaurant website can be found here: http://www.magurohouse.com/

Franklin, MA: Police Dept

It has been a very difficult year for us all. The economic times have left no one unscathed including your Police Department. We have had a reduction in personnel. Currently we are down to 45 sworn officers. Our business, with all its expectations, is still there and we are doing our best to keep Franklin a great place to live.

We continue to seek out grant monies to offset some of our important projects dealing with alcohol, traffic, the elderly and our youth. Franklin has been fortunate in that we have received some grant monies to help us to continue what we have started in these areas.

Our main concerns are that we continue to be an active partner in our youth and elderly programs. Our Community Service Division has been very busy in our schools and offering summer camp programs. We will hopefully be able to provide another great Halloween event at the High School Field House as we did this past year by providing a safe and fun day for the entire family.

The High School Hockey team, the Varsity Basketball team and the Tri-County Football teams all have enjoyed great seasons ending in playoff finals or in the Super Bowl. We would like to think this was in no small part due to several of our police officers in coaching positions. I believe this interaction between our officers as coaches and the student athletes builds bridges of friendships, trust and understanding. Ben Franklin’s adage of “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” certainly appears to be true in this case.

The Alcohol Grant Awards have been very helpful in offsetting costs associated in our attempts to curb underage drinking. The success of our program has been evident with the number of license suspensions, and arrests made of those procuring for minors. Please accept my sincere thanks for being a great community in which to work. I’d like to take this opportunity to also thank the officers of our Police Department for their dedication and hard work over this past year. I boast of being blessed with great people to work with not only within the department but with all the other departments and boards.

Sincerely,
S.T. Williams
Stephen T. Williams
Chief of Police

From the 2009 Town of Franklin Annual Report. This is available in a printed version at the Municipal Building or online at the Town website here.

For additional information, be sure to  visit the Police Dept website here

• The Daily Police logs are available here
• You can follow them on Twitter here
• There are a number of safety tips available here

DPW Sidewalk Snow Removal Presentation - 01/06/10

The presentation text for the DPW discussion on sidewalk snow removal from Wednesday night's Town Council meeting.

Sidewalk Snow Removal 20100106 from Franklin Matters

The sidewalk map that shows the three routes can be viewed on the DPW website here.

PLEASE NOTE:
These maps are in provided in Adobe Portable Document Format and Architecture D Size (24" x 36"). Because of their size and level of detail they are large files and take additional time to download. Please be patient.

Note: email subscribers will need to click through to the Franklin Matters website to view the presentation.

"a teacher-driven initiative"

The Franklin Arts Academy is a "school within a school" designed to create smaller learning communities where students can engage in academics through music and video production, visual art, theater and architecture.

"Each of the arts classes is creating a lesson through academics," Waters said. "Everything is interrelated."

The Franklin Arts Academy program was proposed for Franklin High School. Hopefully it will be implemented for the next school year (Fall 2010) with no impact to the budget. Read more about the program in the Milford Daily News here.

The live reporting and presentation from the Dec 8th School Committee meeting can be found here. The video and Q&A discussion can be found here.

Food, Inc. Sunday Jan 10th - 7:00 PM

A series of films on sustainable living called "The Green Reel" will be held Sunday evenings in North Attleboro. The films are presented free of charge. Some refreshments are available. Discussion about the film is encouraged.

Food, Inc. will be shown Jan 10th at 7:00 PM

The flyer for the full series can be seen here:

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Franklin Citizens Rail Trail Committee Meeting

FRANKLIN CITIZENS RAIL TRAIL COMMITTEE MEETING

Agenda for January 14, 2010

       
I. Call to Order / Introductions of New Attendees
A. Introduction of new attendees
B. Volunteer to write minutes of the meeting
C. Motion to accept previous meeting minutes


II. Report from our representative from DCR
A. Gates at Spring St
B. Leveling of the Trail
C. Walking Trails


III. Membership Committee Report (Denison, McKeown, Sawyer)
A. Committee to report on membership activity


IV. Report from Finance Committee (Rossetti)
A. Report from Treasurer


VII. Report of Fund Raising Committee (Sawyer)
A. Report on fund raising activities
B. Bike Donation from Southbridge Bicycle. Need Volunteer to print raffle tickets & need sub committee
C. Spring fundraiser road race. Do we have a hosting facility? Can we pull a sub-committee together?  Can we set the date?


VII. Unfinished Business:
A. Questions from members / attendees

VIII. New Business:
A.

Set Date for Next Meeting and Adjourn



The next meeting of the FCRTC will be held at the Franklin YMCA, Forge Hill Rd. Franklin. The meeting on January 14th will commence at 7:30 PM and conclude NLT 9:30 PM

Town Council Mtg Smry 01/06/10

The collection of live reported posts from the Town Council meeting of Jan 6, 2010 can be found here:

• Live reporting - Administrators report
• Live reporting - snow removal
• Live reporting - Biotech zoning changes proposed
• Live reporting - license transactions
• Live reporting - Town Council - 1/6/09

Franklin, MA: Public School Inclement Weather Notice

The standard policy for the Franklin Public Schools during inclement weather (i.e. snow storms at this time of year).

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Note: subscribers via email will need to click through to the Franklin Matters website to review the document.

Franklin Downtown Partnership looking for help

The text of an email from Lisa Piana is found here:

Happy New Year!

We are currently planning our events for 2010. In order to continue with our full schedule of festivals and special events this year we need to fill some key volunteer positions.

Please take a look at the following list and e-mail me by January 12th if you are interested in taking a more active roll in the Franklin Downtown Partnership.  Thank you to all of you who have volunteered in past years!

• Harvest Festival Co-Chair -> Responsible for helping plan and run the event
• Strawberry Festival-Co-Chair -> Responsible for planning event
• Third Thursday-Co-Chair -> Responsible for planning events
• Holiday Stroll-Co-Chairs -> Responsible for planning event
• Website Coordinator -> Responsible for keeping website up to date

We really need some new members to step forward and take a more active role this year. Some of our current members have been running the events for over 5 years and need a break.

Please call or e-mail me with any questions you might have.
Lisa Piana
Franklin Downtown Partnership
(774)571-3109

MBTA going 'real-time"?

Yes, hard to believe but it just might work.

Apparently, the trains will be equipped with GPS devices and the status will be provided via a 'count-down' timer as the train approaches the station. Coming to the Franklin line sometime in February according to the write up here:

MBTA: Commuter Rail "Real-Time Arrival" Countdown

from Commonwealth Conversations: Transportation by Klark Jessen

Will this replace the Clever Commute service that can be the T's own alerts?

Stay tuned!


Note: This was also posted to Steve's 2 Cents.