Northern Berkshire District Court Collecting Food Donations

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NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The Trial Court is holding its 8th annual Cultural Appreciation Week this week and will be collecting non-perishable food items for the Al Nelson Friendship Center Pantry on Eagle Street.
 
Collection boxes have been set up at Northern Berkshire District Court. Court-users, court employees, and members of the general public are welcome to participate by dropping off non-perishable food items.
 
The drive coincides with Cultural Appreciation Week, which this year has the theme "Diverse Threads, One Tapestry-Strength of Connections."
 
"The courts and probation are part of the community and as neighbors we want to make sure that we address the needs of people living here. Coordinating this food drive is something we we wanted to do to give back and help those who are food insecure," said Chief Donald Wright.
 
Northern Berkshire is one of more than 70 courts that will celebrate culture and diversity in the courts and community. This statewide celebration in the courts in community is believed to be the largest of its kind in any U.S. court system.
 
A celebration was to be held Thursday, Oct. 24, at Northern Berkshire District Court. The event included Berkshire Juvenile Court and the Pittsfield Community Justice Resource Center and Pretrial Services Unit. State, local, court, education leaders addressed the  audience, local school children perform and cultural dishes.
 
The following is a list of the most needed items:
 
Ground regular coffee
Vegetable stock
Canned Black Beans
64-ounce juice bottles
Biscuit mix
Chicken stock
Canned kidney beans
Olive oil
Beef stock
Lemon juice
Diced tomatoes
Canned chickpeas 
 
Gift cards and certificates may be dropped off to the Probation Department.

Tags: food drive,   food pantry,   

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North Adams School Project Awards $51M Bid

By Tammy Daniels iBerkshires Staff
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The School Building Committee has awarded the Greylock School project to Fontaine Bros. Inc. of Springfield. 
 
Mayor Jennifer Macksey said she could "breathe a little better" with a bid contract that comes in nearly $2 million under budget.
 
The committee approved a bid of $50,498,544 on Thursday night that includes two alternates — the rebuild of the Appalachian Trail kiosk and the relocation and reconstruction of the baseball field. 
 
"I will say, all in all, for us to have overall the number of bidders that we had interested in our project, and especially to receive the GC bids that we did, the team Colliers and TSKP certainly did a good job attracting people to us," she said. "But this project ... really shows the testament of the good work that Colliers and TSKP and all of you have been doing throughout this process."
 
Fontaine had the low bid between Brait Builders of Marshfield and J&J Contractors Inc. of North Billerica.
 
The project had been bid out at $52,250,000 with three alternates: moving the ballfield, the kiosk and vertical geothermal wells. 
 
Committee members asked Timothy Alix of Collier's International, the owner's project manager, about his impressions of the bidders. He was most familiar with Fontaine, having worked with the company on a half-dozen school projects and noted it was the contractor on the Mountain View Elementary School in Easthampton that the Massachusetts School Building Authority has held up as an example school. He also had some of his colleagues call on projects that he had not personally worked on. 
 
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