Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Park and Rec is looking to fill a FT/Temporary Administrative Assistant position in the Park and Rec Office. Position will need to be filled from 10/8/14 until at least 12/1/14. Hours are 8:30 to 4:30.  If you know of anyone that would be interested please have them contact me. The position has the potential to run through 12/31/14 but I don’t anticipate it running longer than that.

Kristine Trierweiler

Assistant Town Administrator

Town of Medfield

459 Main Street

Medfield, MA 02052

508 906 3011 (p)

508 359 6182 (f)

The Dukakis Center at Northeastern University held its 15th anniversary by inviting municipal officials to a dinner event with lots of information provided about what they are doing.  I picked up lots of information to use with the redevelopment of the Medfield State Hospital.

The Governor, Senator Markey, Speaker DeLeo, Senate President Murray, and many more.

This today from the Chair of the Dover ZBA –

Cell Tower Junction Street, Dover, MA

DOVER ZONING BOARD OF APPEALS, NOTICE OF FURTHER RESCHEDULING OF HEARING AND SITE WALK

CELL TOWER 64 JUNCTION STREET DOVER,MA

At the request of the Applicant(SEE ATTACHED), the Site Walk, which had been rescheduled to October 8, 2014, at 6:00PM at the entrance to the property adjacent to 24 Evergreen Street in Medfield, and the adjourned Hearing, which had been rescheduled to October 8,, 2014, at 6:00PM at the Dover Town House, ARE BEING RESCHEDULED AGAIN.

The  new Site Walk and Hearing dates, places and times are :

(a) the Site Walk has been postponed indefinitely and may be rescheduled as determined in a continued hearing; and

(b)  Wednesday, November 19, 2014, at 7:00 PM, at the Dover Town House for the continued Hearing.

Notice of the revised schedule will be posted at Dover Town House and on the Dover Town Webpage and at the entrance to the lower hearing room at the Dover Town House where the original hearing was opened.

IN SUMMARY, THE REVISED SCHEDULE IS:

Site Walk –   has been postponed indefinitely; and

Adjourned Hearing – has been continued until Wednesday, November 19, 2014, at 7:00 PM, at the Dover Town House.

Gary P. Lilienthal
Two Seaport Lane, 9th Floor
Boston, MA 02210
617-790-3360

The state has a new website that lists all state grants

http://www.mass.gov/anf/budget-taxes-and-procurement/grants/

Per the DLS of the DOR, in its newsletter, Massachusetts has launched a website that lists all state grants that are available.

New One-Stop-Shop Web Portal for Municipal Grants Now Available
Executive Office of Administration and Finance

The Patrick Administration has recently unveiled a new web portal for cities and towns to easily identify grant opportunities that could benefit their communities.

The Municipal Grant Finder is a one-stop-web shop for local officials and residents to learn about grant opportunities across state government, regardless of which state agency manages a grant program. This tool represents the latest of the Patrick Administration’s initiatives to help local officials deliver core services to residents and businesses effectively and efficiently.

The web portal will highlight what resources exist and where to find them, as management of these grants and resources is decentralized among a multitude of state government agencies. The Municipal Grant Finder will now help them navigate state government, by succinctly profiling more than 60 funding and support opportunities for cities and towns.

To use the Municipal Grant Finder, a local official simply selects the appropriate category and is presented with a list of available resources. The user is then connected to detailed information about the grant, the available funding, how to apply and contact information. Local officials no longer need to know which of the Commonwealth’s many state agencies manage a specific grant program. With a few clicks, the Municipal Grant Finder can help a local official identify:

• Training to enhance local public safety responses to complex emergencies
  .
• Resources to rehabilitate abandoned and vacant property in a community
  .
• Funding to reduce the municipal solid waste and household hazardous waste in the general waste disposal stream
  .
• A program to support residents transitioning from renting to purchasing a home for the first time
  .
• Funding for renovations to a local library
  .
• Financial support to mitigate the cost of adding a local transit station
  .
• A grant to convert an old railway line to a scenic recreation trail

Working together, the Patrick Administration and the Commonwealth’s municipalities have already achieved real, meaningful savings and structural changes to keep costs down so municipalities can make the necessary investments in community services that keep them thriving. Municipal health care reform is providing significant and immediate savings to cities and towns and 257 communities and school districts across the Commonwealth have already collectively saved more than $247 million in health insurance premiums over the past three years as a result of the landmark municipal health care reform law signed by Governor Deval Patrick in July 2011.

Including Municipal Health Care reform, the Patrick Administration has provided cities and towns with the tools to realize $3.78 billion in savings, revenue and investments through new local option taxes, increased capital investments and pension reforms.  Communities are also achieving savings through innovations achieved through the Community Innovation Challenge Grant and municipal performance management programs.

To utilize this new tool, click here.

The clean up of the C&D area at the MSH has begun with a lot of tree clearing, which has opened up beautiful vistas of the river.  The homes that get these views will be really fortunate.  High above the river with lots of sky for subset views.  The new overlook should be spectacular.

Thanks to the intervention of the town, via a cease and desist order from the Building Commissioner, plus the Historic District Commission, the BoA scrapped its original plan to install cement walkways in favor of new bricks installed over a cement base.  They opted to use the same bricks that were used in front of the new Brothers Marketplace.

From Commonwealth Magazine –

Needham’s anti-smoking legacy grows

Friday August 8, 2014

Needham in 2005 raised the smoking age to 21, establishing a public policy on teen smoking that appears to be gaining momentum in Massachusetts and across the nation.

Salem became the latest convert on Thursday when the Witch City’s Board of Health voted 3-2 to raise the minimum age to buy cigarettes from 18 to 21. Seven other Massachusetts communities and New York City adopted similar measures in 2013. And now several states, including New Jersey, are considering following suit, although similar statewide initiatives have failed in Utah, Colorado, Hawaii, Maryland, and Massachusetts.

The so-called Tobacco 21 laws follow the same strategy used by the federal government in 1984, when it required states to raise the minimum drinking age to 21 in order to keep receiving highway funds. Research has shown that many people take their first drink or smoke their first cigarette in their teens, and that reducing access to liquor or cigarettes during that critical time period can curb addictions and save lives.

Prior to Thursday’s vote by the Salem Board of Health, opponents of raising the minimum smoking age said the measure was an attack on personal freedom and argued that it would be ineffective because teens would just go to neighboring towns to buy their cigarettes.

But medical researchers suggest the data gathered so far indicate raising the smoking age is an effective deterrent to smoking. They say 80 percent of adult smokers start smoking regularly before they turn 20 and 90 percent of the people who purchase cigarettes for minors are under 21.

They also point to the evidence from Needham. When Needham adopted its Tobacco 21 law in 2005, the town had a smoking rate among high school students of 12.9 percent; the rate in surrounding communities was 14.9 percent. By 2010, the rate in Needham had fallen to 6.7 percent, while the rate in surrounding communities dropped to 12.4 percent.

“The percentage decline in Needham was nearly triple that of its neighbors — contradicting the hypothesis that young people will simply shift their purchases to surrounding towns,” according to an article earlier this year in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Dr. Jonathan Philip Winickoff of Massachusetts General Hospital, one of the coauthors of the New England Journal of Medicine article, said Needham’s experience is what is changing public policy on smoking. “It was the shot heard round the world,” he told the Needham Times.

—BRUCE MOHL

These are in an extremely prominent place.  Hint – they look really old.