Community - Page 20

School Committee moves to leverage anticipated increases in state aid for the 2025-26 preliminary budget

February 21, 2025
Budget season formally kicked off at the School Committee’s January 30 business meeting with a 2025-26 budget overview presentation and recommendation to set the preliminary budget at $116.1M. This represents a 2.9 percent increase over a base budget that has been reduced by retirement of debt ($1.6M) and removal of $1.7M in allocations used in 2024-25 for unanticipated, non-recurring expenses. The School Committee’s budget guidelines for 2025-26 limit the overall budget increase to 3 percent. Acton’s preliminary assessment is set at $79.8M, a 0.97 percent increase. Boxborough’s preliminary assessment is set at $16.8M, a 5.25 percent increase. Each town’s share…
Birders, sharing woodcock information

Woodcock Watch

April 12, 2024
If you were driving on Littlefield Road in Boxborough on Monday, April 1st, you may have noticed twenty or so people sitting in the Rolling Meadows field. Not an April Fool’s Day joke, but an Acton Conservation Trust (ACT)  woodcock watch! What happens on a “woodcock watch”? Around…
John T. “Doc” McNiff

Obituary: John T. “Doc” McNiff

April 12, 2024
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John T. “Doc” McNiff, of Hampton, NH formerly of Maynard and a retired Lieutenant of the Acton Police Department, passed away Wednesday April 3, 2024 at the UMass Medical Center in Worcester. He was 77 years old. He was the beloved husband of Christine (D’Errico) McNiff. Doc was…
Portrait of Sharon Cole

Obituary: Sharon FitzSimons Cole

March 24, 2024
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Sharon FitzSimons Cole, of Acton, passed away at the Care Dimensions Hospice House in Lincoln, March 15, 2024 at the age of 86. Born in Warren, PA to the late Sarah Helen (Gaston) and Ogden FitzSimons. Sharon was the beloved wife of the late Michael Bennett Cole, with…
8 hatchling wood turtles on a person's open hands

Wood Turtles Get a Head Start

March 23, 2024
On March 6, six volunteers joined Acton’s Land Stewardship Coordinator Ian Bergemann and Zoo New England (ZNE) Field Biologist Jimmy Welch to create habitat for threatened wood turtles, Glyptemys insculpta, along a brook in Acton. ZNE’s website describes the species as “once the most common freshwater turtle in…
Marie Beam, new CEO of Acton Discovery Museum

Discovery Museum: Advancing Learning Experiences

March 14, 2024
When Neil Gordon, the long-time CEO of Acton’s Discovery Museum, announced he intended to retire at the end of 2023, the Board of Directors of the children’s museum launched a six-month, intensive search for his replacement. But like Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz,” they found their “heart’s…
The author lends a hand to a Wood Frog crossing Fort Pond Road in Acton.

Big Night for Amphibian Helpers

March 14, 2024
After the sun went down on February 28, a wet and unseasonably warm evening, several local residents put on rain gear, head lamps, and reflective vests to report for Amphibian Crossing Brigade duty. This was the earliest such night of assisting road crossings of frogs and salamanders seen…
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