Eleven volunteers spend Wednesday night helping with the program.
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — City children are getting unexpected phones calls Wednesday and Thursday night from Santa.
Santa Claus is calling 121 city children this year as part of the annual North Pole Calling program. Each year about a dozen volunteers spend Wednesday night calling area children and the Knights of Columbus make calls the next night.
"We have some [volunteers] who are returning and some who are new," said Recreation Activities Coordinator Becky Manship, who heads the program.
"It is my favorite program of the year. You can hear the joy of the kids and the parents."
The program starts with a letter being sent home from the Department of Community Development to parents of children in grades kindergarten through second. Parents fill out forms providing a bit of information about the children, such as where they go to school, if they have any pets or siblings, and their interests.
"We send out the forms to Pittsfield school children and parents who are interested fill out the form and send it in," Manship said.
Santa takes it from there and has a conversation with the children over the phone, encouraging them to work hard in school and to be nice.
The program takes about a month to get organized. And volunteers have been easy to come by. Sheila Eleanor McKenna was a volunteer last year and said she wanted to come back because of the children's reaction. The joy goes both ways.
And on other end of the phone, the Santas have plenty of their own stories. From a child who hung up on one Santa to another crying and screaming, to one even recognizing the voice of Santa.
One year, volunteer Joe Cimini called a home expecting to speak to just a couple children but there were guests over that night and he ended taking the wishes of nearly a dozen. Bill Knowles still tells the story of when he called a 9-year-old girl who said she wanted to become a marine biologist but couldn't because she was a girl. Knowles didn't like that response and told her that, yes, she most certainly can become a marine biologist if she works hard in school and he told her not to let anyone say she couldn't. Police Chief Michael Wynn once called a child from a classroom he visited that day. And the child called him out on it.
The city doesn't put an age limit on the program but mostly focuses on children in the early grades. But they've called children as young as 1 and some even older.
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Pittsfield Community Development OKs Airport Project, Cannabis Amendment
By Brittany PolitoiBerkshires Staff
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The Community Development Board has supported plans for a new hangar at the airport and a change to the cannabis ordinance.
Lyon Aviation, located in the Pittsfield Municipal Airport, plans to remove an existing "T" style hangar and replace it with a new, 22,000-square-foot hangar. The existing one is said to be small and in poor condition while the new build will accommodate a variety of plane sizes including a larger passenger jet.
"There's no traffic impacts, there's no utilities to speak of," Robert Fournier of SK Design Group explained.
"I'll say that we did review this at length with the airport commission in the city council and this is the way we were instructed to proceed was filing this site plan review and special permit application."
The application states that the need for additional hangar space is "well documented" by Lyon, Airport Manager Daniel Shearer, and the airport's 2020 master plan. The plan predicts that 15 additional hangar spaces will be needed by 2039 and this project can accommodate up to 10 smaller planes or a single large aircraft.
Lyon Aviation was founded in 1982 as a fuel-based operator that provided fuel, maintenance, hangar services, charter, and flight instruction.
This is not the only project at the Tamarack Road airport, as the City Council recently approved a $300,000 borrowing for the construction of a new taxi lane. This will cover the costs of an engineering phase and will be reduced by federal and state grant monies that have been awarded to the airport.
The local share required is $15,000, with 95 percent covered by the Federal Aviation Administration.
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