INTRO TEXT COMING TOGETHER IN WESTERN MASS. To municipal administrators these days, the word “regionalization” is what “plastics” was to The Graduate’s Benjamin Braddock: an easy, but just a little […]
B.J. Roche
Posted inEconomy
What works
LOCAL GROWERS COMPETE IN COLLEGE CAFETERIAS It used to be a source of frustration in small towns in western and central Massachusetts that the contract for school milk would go […]
Posted inEnvironment, Politics
Dispatches
HISTORIC HANGAR AS THE NEW WALDEN POND? Ah, the civilized village of Concord. Home of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May Alcott, and historic landmarks like the Old North Bridge, Walden […]
Posted inPolitics
Dispatches
THE $15 MILLION PARKING SPOT It’s one thing to figure out the tax bill for a homeowner’s new deck or rehabbed kitchen, but the board of assessors in the town […]
Posted inPolitics
Dispatches
Pay up—and shut up? Under one school of thought, second-homeowners are a major asset to the Massachusetts economy. They pay property taxes, constantly renovate those second homes, and buy up […]
Posted inEconomy
Pleas for highspeed and wireless Internet await broadband chief
INTRO TEXT when teresa martin, head of the Cape Cod Technology Council, moved from Palo Alto, Calif., to become chief operating officer of a South Shore software company six years […]
Posted inUncategorized
Second Act
Growth & Development Extra 2006 It took a year, back in the early part of the 20th century, to build the four-story, half-million-square-foot headquarters of the General Electric transformer division […]
Posted inEconomy, Politics
Under Control
Consultant Carroll Buracker (left at microphone) gives the Springfield Finance Control Board his grade of the police department: “Dysfunctional with a capital ‘D.'” It was nearly a year after the […]
Posted inEducation
Preschool Promise
Everybody has them, but (it’s just a theory) women of a certain age may have them more than men do—those moments in life when you stop and ask yourself: “How […]
Posted inHealth Care
Being Ron Preston
It’s an early Thursday morning in mid-March, and 11 floors below Ron Preston’s Ashburton Place office a group of Latino and black teenagers holding signs that read marriage = 1 […]
Posted inHealth Care
First, do some good is the motto at this Berkshire agency
INTRO TEXT When Fran Alibozek of Adams learned she had colon cancer three years ago, she didn’t know which was more frightening, the fight she had ahead of her or […]
Posted inUncategorized
Second Chances
Carlos X. Garcia wants to be a radiologist. “At first I wanted to be a nurse, but you have to stick needles into people,” the 18-year-old explains as he presents […]
Posted inArts and Culture, Uncategorized
The glory days of cub reporting
First Job: A Memoir of Growing Up at WorkBy Rinker BuckPublic Affairs, New York, 396 pages. Several years ago I was at a reunion of journalism alumni at the University […]
Posted inEducation
Lost in translation
Today is all about the letter Y, announces Kathleen Harvey to the 15 Latino students who make up her kindergarten class. “Y for yo-yo,” she says slowly, pointing to the […]
Posted inUncategorized
NotSo Green Acres
Every now and then I’ll be talking to my friend Jack, who works in Boston and lives in Newton, and he’ll say: “So, when are you moving back to civilization?” […]
Posted inUncategorized
Starr power at the Springfield UnionNews
For a bunch of upstarts taking on the mayor, Springfield resident Karen Powell and her group, the Citizens Action Network (CANE), haven’t done too badly. They had already stopped a […]
Posted inUncategorized
Holyoke teens take control of their neighborhood
It’s a quarter to five on a Friday afternoon and Holyoke Mayor Michael Sullivan is talking on the telephone about the problems facing young people in his city. There’s a […]
Posted inUncategorized
Lorna Burt is on the Case
“This next case is my worst nightmare,” says Hampden County Superior Court probation officer Lorna Burt as she steers her Nissan Pathfinder off the main drag onto a side road […]