North Adams 'Life Blood' of State Aid Seriously Anemic

The City Council on Tuesday approved a change in the Rules of Order and an appropriation for the second year of lease agreement.

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The mayor warned the new City Council to get ready for a rough ride this budget season.

Mayor Richard Alcombright said he sent the councilors an "oh, boy" email on the first pass of the governor's budget, which calls for no increase in unrestricted local aid.

"Unless something changes, we are going to be in a situation that none of us want to be in," Alcombright told the council on Tuesday night. "[State aid] is the life blood of the city and has been for years."

The city was getting 53 percent of its funding from the state in 2008; postrecession, that's been cut to 42 percent. In actuality, the city is getting even less, because the level funding in recent years means a cut when costs of living are factored in.

"We were really hoping the governor, on the way out, considering the fact the state is sitting on $1.4 billion in reserves and that the fact that, from my understanding, state revenues are pacing 7-8 percent above anticipated ... ." said Alcombright. "It's very, very discouraging for the city of North Adams to see the aid number that weren't proposed.."

Gov. Deval Patrick's fiscal 2015 spending plan does include about $100 million more in Chapter 70 school funding but that translates to about $38,000 for North Adams. At the same time, the minimum school spending is going to go up $240,000.

The mayor predicted the city could be in the same position as last year and looking at $750,000 to $1 million deficit.

He said he has been in contact with the city's state delegation and urged the councilors to contact them as well. House Speaker Robert DeLeo told the Massachusetts Municipal Association this past weekend that he would "do better" for municipal aid in the House budget.

The council approved an amendment to the new Rules of Order passed on Jan. 7 for the council's two-year term.

Rule No. 8 had called for all documents and agenda items to submitted to the city clerk by noon on the Wednesday prior to the regular Tuesday council meeting. The council voted to return to the deadline to Thursday at noon.

The push for submissions a day earlier had come in response to some of the new councilors requesting their agenda packets earlier to give them more time to research any items they were unfamiliar with. The packets are put together by the city clerk and usually delivered by the police, usually between Thursday night and Friday.

The mayor, however, said the day earlier deadline made it more difficult to get the documentation together, particularly for more complicated material coming from multiple departments, such as budgets. He was also unawares the rules had changed.

"Many times it is difficult for the administration to prepare the documentation," he said, noting last week's Monday holiday further complicated the issue. "Wednesday noon just doesn't cut it. ... but at the end of the day, I will live by what you decide."

Councilors Jennifer Breen and Wayne Wilkinson thought delivery of the packets by the police wasn't an efficient use of officers, with Breen endorsing digital delivery. Councilor Nancy Bullett said she preferred getting the paper product because it was easier to read: "I have not had a problem with the system the way it was."

Councilor Eric Buddington said getting the packets on Friday didn't leave much time for research because city employees weren't available on the weekends. Councilor Joshua Moran also said the weekend was too short a time for preparing for the agenda.

However, Council President Lisa Blackmer, at the outset of the discussion, said,  "I would like to remind the councilors it is your right and your duty to do your own research."

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).