Adams Approves Nov. 15 Town Meeting Warrant

ADAMS, Mass. — The Board of Selectmen has approved the Nov. 15 special town meeting warrant, which primarily serves to appropriate an additional $2.37 million in funding for improvements to the wastewater treatment plant.

The board met briefly on Wednesday to approve the warrant, with the Finance Committee voting to recommend it in a meeting shortly after. Article 1 would appropriate the funding for the plant, as the town's bond counsel requires an additional two-thirds approval from town meeting.

Construction is already ongoing, as the project went out to bid earlier in the year.

"They're about 10 percent through. The project should be done by December of 2023. So they're working," said Town Administrator Jay Green to the Finance Committee. "... We had everything we needed, administratively, except the formal town meeting vote."

Town meeting gave the OK to just more than $5 million for the plant in 2021. The plant was built in 1968 and had only a partial upgrade in 2006.

The total cost of the project is an estimated $7.42 million.

MCLA in Talks With Anonymous Donor for Art Museum, Art Lab

By Tammy DanielsiBerkshires Staff
05:19AM / Monday, April 29, 2024

Andre Lynch, the new vice provost for institutional equity and belonging, introduces himself to the trustees, some of whom were participating remotely.

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts may be in line for up to a $10 million donation that will include a campus art museum. 

 

President Jamie Birge told the board of trustees on Thursday that  the college has been in discussions for the last couple years with a donor who wishes at this point to remain anonymous.

 

"It's a donor that has a history of working with public liberal arts institutions to advance the arts that those institutions," he said.  "This donor would like to talk with us or has been talking with us about creating art museum and an art lab on campus."

 

The Fine and Performing Arts Department will have input, the president continued. "We want to make sure that it's a facility that supports that teaching and learning dynamic as well as responding to what's the interest of donor."

 

The college integrated into the local arts community back in 2005 with the opening of Gallery 51 on Main Street that later expanded with an art lab next door. The gallery under the Berkshire Cultural Resource Center had been the catalyst for the former Downstreet Art initiative; its participation has fallen off dramatically with changes in leadership and the pandemic. 

 

This new initiative, should it come to pass, would create a facility on MCLA Foundation property adjacent to the campus. The donor and the foundation have already split the cost of a study. 

 

"We conducted that study to look at what approximately a 6,500-square-foot facility would look like," said Birge. "How we would staff the gallery and lab, how can we use this lab space for fine and performing arts."