I know there will be plenty of challenges, compromises, and things to work out ahead, but I see merging the districts as the best way for our educational communities, our towns, and our families to support each other.
Whatever the reasons were in the past for not locating an MRI at Fairview Hospital, I would ask that Berkshire Health Systems reconsider this decision, especially given how critical an MRI can be for certain diagnoses.
We are your relatives, your friends, colleagues, and neighbors. We were appointed by the selectmen in our towns in 2020 to do this work. We are thoughtful, intelligent, community-loving taxpayers and voters just like you. We did a job and made a recommendation based on the data.
When I become inundated with such news, I tend to escape into early memories. They are rarely idyllic ones, but it gives me pleasure remembering simpler times.
The Town that promised to “partner with the new owners of the Fairgrounds” has invested tax dollars to try to stop us from mowing the grass, charged us for sewer and water we don't use, dumped salty road run-off onto the site while calling on state officials to halt our efforts to bioremediate that pollution before it gets into the river, and waged an aggressive campaign to use our land to site and expand their sewage station in a floodplain where it risks contaminating groundwater.
Is it possible that a free and appropriate public education presents a challenge to the dominance of a dwindling but politically influential contingent of wealthy white power brokers in Texas?
Winchester Hospital convinced the Department of Public Health of its need for an MRI on site. The question is, what will it take to similarly convince BHS of Fairview Hospital’s need?
Whatever PCB-laden muck is dredged up will be moved from the Housatonic River to the Lee dump by trucks. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has not published the approved truck routes, but there are not that many roads in South County—close your eyes, and imagine the route.
Throughout Lee Founders Weekend, the Lee Greener Gateway Committee, with a dedicated troop of volunteers, diverted more than 80 percent of the waste volume to recycling and composting.
Our committee has worked for years to minimize trash during Founders Weekend, expanding our efforts to keep downtown clean and trash bins from overflowing, and to capture as much as we could for recycling and composting.
Fast forward to today. Dozens of leaders from all eight towns toiled and completed the extraordinary work that informs this plan, using real, science-based data projections. Trust this plan: It is is thorough, informed, comprehensive, and visionary.
This year, I think it appropriate to make a public apology to the readers of this column. I am confident there are a number of you who rightfully feel that an apology is both warranted and overdue.
