North Adams Council Finalizes Conte Borrowing

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The City Council on Tuesday confirmed a second reading of a $29.7 million borrowing order for the Conte School project but an opponent vowed to stop the plans.

The 7-2 vote at the special meeting was a repeat of the order's first reading on Jan. 22, with Councilors John Barrett III and Marie Harpin voting against.

The Massachusetts School Building Authority has approved 80 percent reimbursement for the project, bringing the city's cost down to $6.5 million.

Council gadfly Robert Cardimino said he would "knock on every door" in the city to get enough signatures to put the borrowing on the ballot.  

"I think the voters are going to have the last word in this city," said Cardimino, who was a vocal opponent of 2011's Proposition 2 1/2 override attempt. "You're wrong on 2 1/2, you're going to be wrong on this school."

City Clerk Marilyn Gomeau said a ballot vote would require the signatures of at least 12 percent of the city's registered voters, or more than a thousand, submitted within 20 days. She and council President Michael Bloom said the city solicitor had opined that the borrowing could be petitioned to a ballot; some municipal loan borrowing cannot.

Gomeau estimated the cost of a special election — which would have to be borne solely by the city and cannot occur on the same day as the Senate special election April 30 — at $5,000 to $6,000, depending on the voting hours required.

Cardimino said his main concern was rising taxes. Mayor Richard Alcombright has said the debt could be absorbed into the budget, at $102,500 each the first two years on interest only and $370,000 annually over the balance. The city's long-term debt payments are expected to drop by $1 million by 2020 as other projects are paid off.

Barrett again brought up a 2008 school building capacity plan by the New England School Development Council that he said offered options for upgrading both Sullivan and Greylock schools for $22 million.

The report, according to the executive summary provided by Barrett, identified some of the same issues as the consultants engaged by the School Building Committee: schools in need of major upgrading or renovations, overcrowding because of lack of program space, and the need to develop long-term maintenance planning.

Alcombright said the plan will now go to the School Committee.

Updated at 2:50 p.m. on Feb. 6, 2013, to correct a quote by Ronald Superneau.

Update: It was initially thought that the vote could not happen on the primary but the secretary of state has decided it can.

Amphibious Toads Procreate in Perplexing Amplexus

By Tor HanseniBerkshires columnist
08:09PM / Sunday, May 05, 2024

 

Toads lay their eggs in the spring along the edges of waterways. Photos by Tor Hansen.

My first impressions of toads came about when my father Len Hansen rented a seaside house high on a sand dune in North Truro, Cape Cod back in 1954. 

 

With Cape Cod Bay stretching out to the west, and Twinefield so abundant in wildflowers to the east, North Truro became a naturalist's dream, where I could search for sea shells at the seashore, or chase beetles and butterflies with my trusty green butterfly net. 

 

Twinefield was a treasure trove for wildlife — a vast glacial rolling sandplain shaped by successive glaciers, its sandy soil rich in silicon, thus able to stimulate growth for a diverse biota. A place where in successive years I would expand my insect collection to fill cigar boxes with every order of insects abounding in beach plum, ox-eye daisy and milkweed. During our brief summer vacation there, we boys would exclaim in our excitement, "Oh here is another hoppy toad," one of many Fowler's toads (Bufo woodhousei fowleri ) that inhabited the moist surroundings, at home in the Ammophyla beach grass, thickets of beach plum, bayberry, and black cherry bushes. 

 

They sparkled in rich colors of green amber on beige and reddish tinted warts. Most anurans have those glistening eyes, gold on black irises so beguiling around the dark pupils. Today I reflect on a favorite analogy, the riveting eye suggests a solar eclipse in pictorial aura.

 

In the distinct toad majority in the Outer Cape, Fowler's toads turned up in the most unusual of places. When we Hansens first moved in to rent Riding Lights, we would wash the sand and salt from our feet in the outdoor shower where toads would be drinking and basking in the moisture near my feet. As dusk fades into darkness, the happy surprise would gather under the night lights where moths were fluttering about the front door and the toads would snatch bugs with outstretched tongue.

 

In later years, mother Eleanor added much needed color and variety to Grace's original garden. Our smallest and perhaps most acrobatic butterflies are the skippers, flitting and somersaulting to alight and drink heartily the nectar abounding at yellow sickle-leaved coreopsis and succulent pink live forever sedums of autumn. These hearty late bloomers signaled oases for many fall migrants including painted ladies, red admirals and of course monarchs on there odyssey to over-winter in Mexico. 

 

Our newly found next-door neighbors, the Bergmarks, added a lot to share our zeal for this undiscovered country, and while still in our teens, Billy Atwood, who today is a nuclear physicist in California, suggested we should include the Baltimore checkerspot in our survey, as he too had a keen interest in insects. Still unfamiliar to me then, in later years I would come across a thriving colony in Twinefield, that yielded a rare phenotype checkerspot (Euphydryas phaeton p. superba) that I wrote about featured in The Cape Naturalist ( Museum of Natural History, Brewster Cape Cod 1991).