Need for money is not an act
FRANKLIN - When they learned money was tight for this year's high school musical, Alexandra Lonati and a group of student theater enthusiasts decided to take matters into their own hands.
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Providing accurate and timely information about what matters in Franklin, MA since 2007. * Working in collaboration with Franklin TV and Radio (wfpr.fm) since October 2019 *
By Aaron Wasserman/Daily News staff
FRANKLIN - When they learned money was tight for this year's high school musical, Alexandra Lonati and a group of student theater enthusiasts decided to take matters into their own hands.
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By Michael Morton/Daily News staff
FRANKLIN - New Planning Board member Gregory Ballarino led all town candidates in spending for the November election, according to campaign finance forms filed with the town clerk, using his own money to buy $824.25 worth of yard signs.
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By Michael Morton/Daily News staff
FRANKLIN - Town Council voted to spend money on a library architect and museum renovations last night, but not before Councilor Joseph McGann questioned the cost and timing of the work at the leaking lending facility.
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By Michael Morton/Daily News staff
FRANKLIN - The council voted to keep a single tax rate last night with little discussion on the perception that commercial and industrial properties are not assessed as high as they should be.
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By Michael Morton/Daily News staff
FRANKLIN - When it comes to building a 7-foot tall menorah, it turns out there are no established instructions.
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By Michael Morton/Daily News staff
FRANKLIN - With lingering questions about how commercial and industrial assessments are calculated, new analyses of the town's system are expected to be unveiled at tonight's final council tax rate hearing. |
By Michael Morton/Daily News staff
FRANKLIN - Ten years after controversial administrator Wolfgang Bauer resigned from running their town, current and former officials reacted with surprise yesterday to his firing from a similar job in Rhode Island. |
By Michael Morton/Daily News staff
FRANKLIN - With the second building in the Franklin Center Commons project nearing completion, some residents are questioning why the much-anticipated project contains bricks with a whitish hue rather than the traditional red as expected. |
By Staff reports
WEST WARWICK, R.I. - West Warwick Town Manager Wolfgang Bauer, who worked as town manager in Franklin, Mass., in the 1990s, has been fired by the town council, which found "gross mismanagement" of a river improvement project. |
By Michael Morton/Daily News staff
FRANKLIN - Unable in recent months to receive local public television channels, Verizon customers finally got a chance to watch a live town event with last night's Planning Board meeting. |
By Michael Morton/Daily News staff
FRANKLIN - Planning Board Vice Chairwoman Paige Duncan will resign next month to spend more time with her family, Chairman Anthony Padula announced last night, prompting a search for a replacement. |
By Aaron Wasserman/Daily News staff
Shelf space was in short supply yesterday morning in the Franklin United Methodist Church's kitchen. By 10 a.m. rows of cookies had already filled several baking sheets, their smell noticeable moments after walking in the church's side door. |
By Aaron Wasserman/Daily News staff
Several area chambers of commerce, concerned about volatile utility prices' impact on their members, are working with energy consultants to help local businesses control their costs. |
By Michael Morton/Daily News staff
Inside the game room of the town's new senior center, a donated pool table is already well on its way to bringing in more men to the community facility. |
By John Fenuccio/News Staff Writer
When the Historical Commission needed help restoring Admiral Louis Emil Denfeld’s portrait, it not only sought out a professional artist, but also a “townie.” |
While recognizing the need for safeguards in the post-9/11 era, Lavery believes immigration law does need to be reformed.
"It can be incredibly draconian," Lavery said of U.S. immigration law. "There are laws in place that kind of curl your toes."
For example, he said, the law requires the detention of anyone with "even a minor offense," such as violating a visa. It can take anywhere from 12 to 18 months to resolve such cases, Lavery said, and in the meantime the aliens are kept in corrections facilities along with people who have been tried and convicted of various crimes.
If an alien in detention gives up on becoming a U.S. citizen, Lavery said, even then it can take six to eight weeks before they are released to return to their countries of origin.
"There needs to be reform. The immigrant population here is just burgeoning," Lavery said. "It's about time we give them some kind of fair avenue to legalize their status here."
Read the full article by Heather McCarron in the Milford Daily News about the recognition Chris is receiving as a recipient of the Solas Appreciation Award.
Congratulations, Chris. Keep up the good work!This is an issue where Franklin can take control of it and put their own resources to use to make some real substantial progress. This is not just a school issue, this is a community issue.Nearly half of town high school students participating in a health survey said they had drank alcohol recently, according to results released this week, with the rate exceeding the average regional consumption.The survey, funded by the MetroWest Community Health Care Foundation and conducted last spring by the nonprofit Education Development Center, found that 48 percent of the 1,350 Franklin high school students who took part in the survey said they drank within the last month. That figure was higher than the 42 percent average for the 18 MetroWest and Milford area communities that participated, but the same as the statewide rate.
"Every community is surprised it's that high," said Michele Kingsland-Smith, Franklin's director of instructional services. "If it were 35 (percent), it'd still be too high."
The survey's topics included alcohol, drug and tobacco use; violent behavior; suicide; and sexual behavior among middle school and high school students. While regional averages were released last month, Franklin unveiled its results during a School Committee meeting Tuesday, with a number of categories showing a continued downward trend.
Faced with a recently discovered $590,000 school funding gap, councilors voted last night to plug the hole with money from the town's savings account.
Although the Finance Committee recommended that the schools be held accountable by giving up $290,000 from their budget, and taking $300,000 from the fiscal stabilization fund, the council decided that it did not yet have enough information to assign responsibility.
Michael Leblanc is an honorable man, I have worked with him, he does good analysis. I would caution you to use the information he has provided carefully... Let's get Mr Whalen and Mr LeBlanc together and see what they can come up with.
Can you re-cast this spreadsheet to show the assessed valuation at the time of the sale? Could you do that for us?from Stephen Whalen during this discussion
said by Judith Pond Pfeffer in reference to the discussion around the information provided on assessed value versus sales price of local business/commercial properties since 2005.
"This is a deceptive piece of information... not apples to apples, oranges to oranges.."
With the library leaking and the museum headed for a new downtown home, the Finance Committee recommended last night that money for the projects be taken from a fund dedicated in the past to open space.
The fund currently holds $1.6 million and is drawn from the town's hotel/motel tax. While that money would remain earmarked for open space, upcoming earnings from the current fiscal year would go to the library and the museum under a plan proposed by Town Administrator Jeffrey Nutting and recommended by the Finance Committee.
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Since the Finance Committee is an advisory group, the Town Council is expected to discuss the museum and library tonight (Wednesday 11/28/07). To use the hotel/max tax for purposes other than open space, the council must make a final decision before setting the tax rate.
A image of the statement as read by Chairperson Jeffrey Roy Tuesday night at the School Committee meeting regarding the financial discrepancy just discovered.
The annual Holiday Lighting on the Common will take place this afternoon at 4 p.m. on the Franklin Town Common.
Presented by the Committee for Concerts on the Common, the festivities will include lighting up the Town Common holiday lights and displays, refreshments and goodies, and a visit from Santa and the elves. A special attraction this year will be having a free picture taken with Santa, ready to be taken home.
In case of inclement weather, the festivities will take place across the street in the Ben Franklin Charter School.
Donations to help defray the cost of decorating may be sent to Concerts on the Common, P.O. Box 92, Franklin, MA 02038 or call 508-528-2206 for more information.
Winners of the Franklin Art Association's annual members exhibit, Autumn Talent Unveiled, held recently at Hayward Manor, were announced during the recent artists reception.Best in show was awarded to Susan Pratt Sheridan for "Afternoon in Piensa," watercolors.
When the Conservation Commission visits the pond-dappled DelCarte property Sunday, members will take another step toward determining the future of the overgrown sanctuary, widely regarded as the most generous gift in town history.
In 2001, Shirley Stewart donated 130 acres off Pleasant Street to Franklin on behalf of her deceased father, longtime landowner Ernest DelCarte. Following his final wishes, the town agreed to maintain the $3 million property as open space and to ban all fisherman on the man-made ponds except for a few neighbors.
Read the full story about this "Hidden Gem". Be sure to click though and view the multimedia slide show with some photos of what Franklin Reservoirs looks like today.
The Boston Globe has a recap of the leaking library situation:
Now that Franklin voters have rejected a property tax increase to raise Community Preservation Act funds, town officials are scrambling to pay for as much as $6 million in library repairs, or at least enough to prevent further damage this winter.
The town's leaking library was on the top of the list of projects to receive Community Preservation Act money if voters had approved the tax surcharge this month. It was rejected by about 60 percent of voters, 2,174 to 1,528.
Water is seeping through the roof and inside walls of the Franklin Public Library, which opened in 1904, said Ken Wiedemann, chairman of the library's board of directors. Some water has already reached murals that adorn the reading room, and other paintings are vulnerable.
He said the situation isn't "desperate" yet, but can't wait too long, either.
Read the full story here.
A previously undisclosed shortfall of $580,000 from last year's budget was apparently moved to this year's ledger, the School Committee announced yesterday, prompting an outside investigation and the placement of the school finance director on leave.The discrepancy was discovered in recent weeks by Town Comptroller Susan Gagner as she squared away the district's books for fiscal 2007. Moving funds between fiscal years is illegal, as state law dictates that each year's budget be balanced individually.
Tip #1: The youth vote is not synonymous with students. In fact, students make up only a small part of the eligible youth vote. Only 21% of all 18-29 year olds are currently attending a college or university. That means that when you report on "students", you are leaving out the other 79% of all the individuals that make up the "youth vote." These people serve in our military, are struggling to raise families - and yes, have very different concerns from college students. I understand that makes it difficult for you to cram them into a cookie-cutter story about student aid activism and tuition costs, but you do them and your readers and our democracy a disservice when you limit your coverage to students.Food for thought.
Just because Willow Street resident Carlo Geromini recently retired from town service after four decades, don't expect him to give up one of his public arena passions: Perfecting his command of parliamentary procedure and encouraging others to follow suit.
``Some people like to read detective stories, some people like to read science fiction,'' Geromini, 79, said as he relaxed in his home office this week. ``I like to read Robert's Rules of Order.''
The longtime public servant still owns a pristine paperback copy of the book, a backup complementing the dog-eared hardback he lugged to meetings for many years. After serving on the School Committee in the 1960s, he won election to Town Council in 1981, holding a seat there for all but two years until leaving before this fall's election.
Asked by a group of eighth-graders yesterday whether he had wanted to be drafted during the Korean War, veteran Donald Barrow replied that young people back then held different assumptions.
"It was just something you grew up expecting," he said as he sat next to his grandson, student Andrew Wilson. "It was part of growing up at that time."
Horace Mann Middle School took a slightly different approach to celebrating Veterans Day yesterday. While it held the standard school assembly filled with invited guests and patriotic messages, the school also had students break into small groups later to learn firsthand from those who served in the military.
In one classroom, Douglas Bernard, the step-grandfather of math teacher Kim Bishaw, related both humorous and tragic memories from his time as an infantryman in World War II.
Read more about the day's event, especially the interaction between the veterans and students in this wonderful learning experience.
As a plug for one of my other projects; I am working with my father to record his oral history. Dad, Gerald (Jerry) Sherlock, grew up in Pawtucket, RI and served in the US Marines 4th Division during World War II on Saipan, Tinian and Iwo Jima. We have recorded up through the war and are just now getting into the post war period where he come home to find work, find and eventually marry my mother. You can listen to Jerry's Story here.
The Fire Safety Act, signed into law by former Gov. Mitt Romney in 2004, requires all bars, nightclubs and other entertainment venues that hold 100 people or more to have automatic sprinklers. The legislation was passed in the wake of The Station nightclub fire in Rhode Island, which killed 100 people in February 2003.
Seeking to follow in the footsteps of Boston and its Freedom Trail, leaders of a downtown booster group announced yesterday that they want their own walking route connecting points of local culture.
"There are so many historical sites," said Lisa Piana, the executive director of the Downtown Partnership. Citing one, she added, "I would guess 90 percent of residents haven't been to the (Horace Mann) museum."
The trail proposal was one of several topics discussed during a meeting on downtown revitalization at Dean College which drew two dozen merchants, politicians and educators.