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WEATHER TONIGHT Mostly cloudy. Low of 9.
The Westfield News Serving Westfield, Southwick, and the surrounding Hilltowns
www.thewestfieldnews.com WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 14, 2015
VOL. 84 NO. 012
Date set for Littleville Fair penny social By PETER FRANCIS Staff Writer WESTFIELD – Despite the freezing temperatures that have settled into the air, spring will be here before we know it and the Littleville Fair is preparing for an event that will shake the winter blues away this April. A penny social is scheduled to take place at Huntington’s Stanton Hall on the evening of April 4 with doors opening at 4 p.m., and the actual event running from 6-9 p.m. Refreshments and snacks will be available for all visitors and patrons, and there will be raffles held throughout the evening. At a penny social, or Chinese auction, attendees purchase a ticket and place it in a jar in front of a desired item. Proceeds from the penny social go toward the running of the Littleville Fair every summer and, according to Littleville Fair Vice President Cathie Browns of Chester, the social will only be as good as the number of donations received. “We’re a non-profit, so every little bit helps,” said Browns, who has been involved with the Littleville Fair for 10 years. “Last year we raised about $900 from the social, with another $300 from the sale of snacks and beverages.” Browns added that the event typically brings in between $700-$1,000 every year and that, for a penny a ticket, you can’t go wrong. “Everybody wins something. It is a great family event,” she said. “We hope to make over $1,000 but it all depends on how much money people have to spend after buying their oil for the winter.” Gift certificates to local restaurants are generally a popular item at the social, along with baskets of groceries and Browns hopes that residents and local businesses will donate clean new or slightly used goods to the social. The event is known for drawing folks in from near and far. “Last year we had about 70 people in attendance,” said Browns. “And from as far away as North Adams.” This year’s event will raise funds to help fix the roof of the Littleville Fair’s building in See Fair, Page 8
those who use it are scarcely conscious of it.” — QUEEN CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN
75 cents
Westfield withdraws drainage project Contractors continue to work on the exterior of the new Westfield Senior Center on Noble Street. (Photo by Frederick Gore)
Senior Center Friends seek additional donors By PETER FRANCIS Staff Writer WESTFIELD – The Friends of the Westfield Senior Center, which began in 2010, operates seperately from the Westfield Council on Aging and has now raised $325,000 toward furnishing the new Westfield Senior Center on Noble Street. The facility is expected to be completed in September and the Friends are closer to their goal of $500,000, thanks to pledges from the likes of Westfield Bank ($100,000) and local contractors John S. Lane & Son, Inc. ($50,000), as well as $50,000 secured by Westfield State Rep. John Velis in the 2014 state budget. Friends President Tom Humphrey and members such as Michael Parent are hoping that more city residents will join in the effort. Parent said that donors can spread the donation out over a three-year period. “We’ve probably targeted about 25 percent of the businesses in Westfield,” he said, adding that the group has ’65 percent’ of their fundraising done. “We
pick eight or nine (businesses) in a week and work a little bit at a time, targeting those who we have a potential relationship with.” Donors have the ability to sponsor an entire room in the center, an honor which Parent added will last forever. “Some of the prime rooms are getting taken, so if you’re interested in donating, we’d like to hear from you,” he said. Tina Gorman, executive director of the Westfield Council on Aging, said that the Friends are looking to acknowledge the contributions of everyone who donates to the project, whether the gift is for less than $100 or more than $10,000. “We’re going to have two pieces of wall art, where those sponsors who donate $500 will be commemorated,” she said, adding that windows are also available for $1,000. “Then there will be a second wall and a tree with leaves and each leaf will be $100. Anybody who makes a donation to the capital campaign, your name will be somewhere in
section at the south bank of Powdermill Brook and is within the Conservation Commission jurisdiction because part of the work is occurring within the 200-foot buffer zone of the brook. Gene Crouch of the Vanasse Hangen Brustlin (VHB) Inc. Watertown office said that sedimentation of Powdermill Brook has raised the level of the water at the drainage outfall. “Right now, even during normal flow, the pipe is half filled with brook water,” Crouch said. “A lot of the flooding in the intersection is due to water backing up from the brook.” Cressotti said that when the brook is higher following a rain event or snow-melt,
See Drainage, Page 3
Trant to retire after 20 years with school dept.
it actually uses the drainage system as an overflow. “The brook is flowing through the drainage piping system to the Westfield River,“ Cressotti said. Cressotti said the intersection reconfiguration will improve traffic flow and alleviate the current drainage problems at the intersection. The plan is to widen both streets to create dedicated left turning lanes, both northbound and southbound, on North Elm Street, and to widen the throat of upper Notre Dame Street at the intersection to accommodate turning movement by commercial See Intersection, Page 8
See Trant, Page 3
See Donors, Page 3
Disturbance yields unusual encounter By CARL E. HARTDEGEN Staff Writer WESTFIELD – City officers may have been reminded, early Sunday morning, that when things are complicated it’s worth the extra effort to find somebody with a clear head to speak with. An incident began at 4:37 a.m. Sunday when a caller from the East Main Street McDonald’s called city police to complain about a customer at the drive-up window. The caller told a dispatcher that the occupants of a vehicle at the drive-up window were refusing to leave and were yelling at the workers who could not serve them chicken during the breakfast hours. When Officer Effrain Luna arrived, within minutes, the vehicle had left but just minutes after he left the employee called again to report that the car had returned and the occu-
By DAN MORIARTY Staff Writer WESTFIELD – The Conservation Commission voted last night to allow the city to withdraw its application to open a piped drainage system running under the fairway of the sixth hole at Shaker Farms Country Club. The drainage pipe, according to club owner Dan Kotowitz, carries “a huge amount of runoff” that is being collected by the drainage system from the Falley Drive neighborhood and is flooding the course near the sixth green. The drainage pipe under the fairway, installed at some time in the past, either by the city or the country club owners at that time, has collapsed and is causing water to back up, flooding the fairway.
By PETER FRANCIS Staff Writer WESTFIELD – Barbara Trant will be retiring at the end of January after 20 years of faithful service to the Westfield School District as founder and organizer of the volunteer organization VIPS, or Volunteers In Public Schools. “I started at the school department in the ’91-’92 school year and I was selected at that time to start a program to help the schools,” she said. “At the time, I was the chair of a parent committee and a group of us ended up starting the program and it has just grown and grown into the program it is today.” Trant said that the program was necessitated by budget cuts in the late ’80s. “They cut all the librarians, aides and services they had and a lot of us as parents felt that we had something to give to help,” she said. “The first thing the program did was to thank the people that had jumped in to help and then we started building on that.” What started as a small initiative has now ballooned into an endeavor with more than 100 volunteers assisting in classrooms and school offices each week, helping with all manner of work, from library assistance to clerical office work, to helping students learn to read. A Springfield native and alumnus of then-Western New England College, Trant worked as a
Intersection improvements reviewed By DAN MORIARTY Staff Writer WESTFIELD – Last night, the Westfield Conservation Commission initiated its review of the city’s plans to reconfigure the intersection of North Elm and Notre Dame streets, a project which includes improvements to the stormwater management system. The Commission voted to continue the public hearing at least until its Feb. 27, meeting because the state Department of Environmental Protection has yet to issue a file number for the work. City Engineer Mark Cressotti said the road improvements, which include stormwater drainage, begin just north of the inter-
“Dignity is like a perfume;
pants were banging on the drive-up window. Luna reports that he found the vehicle nearby where it was parked in an East Main Street parking lot and the occupants started to walk the manageable distance to the owner’s home. A supervisory officer, Kevin Bard, arrived to speak with the trio who had been in the car and attempted to explain that the restaurant does not serve chicken McNuggets during breakfast hours, even if the option is listed on the menu board. Bard reports “The occupants had a very difficult time understanding this concept due to their alcohol consumption.” “I stopped trying to reason with these individuals because their minds were in such a disarray and their brain cells were not registering with reality”, Bard wrote and reports that he went to the registered address of the car to find a responsible See Encounter, Page 8