Town Meeting: No Conservation Restricton or Bus Depot on Landfill Site

On an opening night that drew nearly 1,000 voters—most of whom stayed until midnight—annual Town Meeting worked through budget business, school transportation articles and its consent calendar.

  In a five-hour opening night, Concord’s annual Town Meeting on Monday  voted to put neither a conservation restriction nor a bus depot on the landfill site at Walden Woods. It did, however, approve a non-binding petitioner’s article requesting the town’s school committees to keep Concord’s school bus transportation department on the grounds of Concord-Carlisle High School. Here’s a quick rundown of the actions taken at Town Meeting on Monday, April 22. Be sure to check back on Patch for more in-depth coverage of the meeting and, in particular, the school-transportaiton related articles. Article 2, Consent Calendar In one sweeping vote, Town Meeting unanimously approved articles 3, 4, 5, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31…

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Landfills, Buses, Bottles and Cats: What's Your Top Issue at Town Meeting?

Concord's annual Town Meeting begins at 7p.m. tonight, April 22, at Concord-Carlisle High School.

Hot-button issues aplenty at Concord's annual Town Meeting and at least couple of them could come up tonight. After the early-agenda budget business comes a cluster of high-intrest articles that could impact school transportation in the immediate future. In Article 12, which the Walden Woods Project has been pushing pretty hard on of late, Town Meeting could authorize the selectmen to sell a land-use restriction to Walden Woods along with a commitment to limit future activities at the landfill site. Following that is Article 13, which would authorize the use of monies to develop a transportation building on the former landfill site – a use that wouldn’t fly if Article 12 is approved. Sticking with the schools, Article 15 is a petitioner’s …

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Reverend E. Raleigh Pimperton III

9:02 am on Monday, April 22, 2013

Patrick, The water bottle ban sets such a good example; the practice should be institutionalized at Town Meeting. In other words, the Selectmen should pronounce this week that something will be banned at each Town Meeting; it will be up to the citizenry to pick the item. We should not waste time banning no-brainers such as nuclear weapons. Like single-serve water bottles, the selections should …   more ›

Letters to the Editor

LETTER: Citizens Transportation Committee Members Rip Walden Woods Bus Depot Ad

With a "they said, we said" debate brewing, CTC members write that they don't appreciate the Not In My Back Yard attitude Walden Woods has adopted when it comes to the possibility of a bus depot on the landfill site.

To the Editor, We were surprised to see the following statement on a recent postcard from Walden Woods titled "A Bus Depot in Walden Woods?" An independent Citizens School Transportation Committee Report concluded that the bus depot should remain at the Concord-Carlisle Regional School campus. This is not an accurate reflection of the CTC's conclusion nor of the current situation. CTC's report says: The transportation department should reside in a central location that can support all the necessary functions--maintenance, administration, fueling, bus parking, etc. The current location, on the campus of CCHS, meets these criteria better than any other available site the Committee considered. And CTC's presentation to the School Committee …

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The 12 Most Popular Concord Patch Posts of 2012

Accidents, elections and Apocalypse Nope: A look back at the year that was in Concord.

  It’s almost impossible to be objective when considering the biggest stories of any given year. An issue of the utmost importance to one person or group may matter not at all to another segment of the population. And so, as we look back onthe year at the year that was in Concord, we're leaving the deciding up to you – or to UVs, to be more precise. What you’ll find below are the top Concord Patch posts in terms of pageviews, which is to say these are most widely read stories, polls, updates and photos galleries from 2012. It's an eclectic and surprising list, to be sure.  What you won’t find in the list below is our coverage of the school transportaiton controversy, the CCHS Building Committee's stumbles, Hurricane Sandy or the infamous "…

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Concord Boy Hit By Car After Getting Off School Bus

The incident reportedly occurred Wednesday, Nov. 14, and was reported by WBZ on Friday evening.

A 9-year-old boy was reportedly recovering at home in Concord yesterday after being struck by a car while trying to cross the street Wednesday afternoon. WBZ is reporting the boy’s bus driver overshot his house and dropped him and his brother off at an intersection about 100 feet farther up Barrett’s Mill Road. Then, the bus reportedly turned off its flashers as the boys crossed a the roadway between two cars, at which point the 9-year-old was struck by a minivan that wasn’t going very fast, WBZ reports. From WBZ: The boy went to Children’s Hospital as a precaution. His older brother was unhurt. But police say the abnormal drop-off spot was clearly the start of trouble. "Normally they would get off the bus with its lights flashing and …

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Patch Facts

Five Things: Transportation Operation to the Landfill Site?

A quick look at what you need to see, do and know today in Concord.

1. Selectmen To Discuss Relocating Transportation to the Landfill Site: The Board of Selectmen are scheduled to meet tonight, with an open session starting at 12 p.m. at the Town House and its agenda includes -- in addition to the aforementioned item -- discussing the Town House Brownstone Repair Project and reviewing the town projects on the CPA projects list. 2. Jazz Quintet Concert: Kicking off the Concord Conservatory of Music's faculty concert series is a Jazz Quintet Featuring Concord Conservatory Faculty at 7 p.m. tonight at the school’s performance space in the West Concord Union Church. 3. Today In Public Meetings: According to the town website, other public meetings posted for today include the Community Preservation Committee at…

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Giving Back To 'Mr. G'

A Concord parent is setting up a Give Forward site to help support the family of Gary Garafola, a bus driver whose impact went beyond the routine.

  They met him because he drove a school bus, but they remember Gary Garafola as a "larger-than-life" legend whose impression lasts a lot longer than the few minutes in which he entered their lives each school day. Garafola, or “Mr. G.” as he was known to the students and parents along his bus route, died last month after being struck by a car on Sept. 22 while walking his dog in his hometown of Townsend.  In the years prior to his death, Garafola worked as a school bus driver—bus #33—and also taught driver’s education classes in town through Concord-Carlisle Community Education. His job was to drive students to and from school every day. And he did it with style. So much so that Mr. G made such an impression that parents along his route …

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CCHS Building Committee to Study Keeping Bus Depot at High School Site

Study should take place over the next few weeks, officials said.

The Concord-Carlisle High School Building Committee agreed last Tuesday to commission a study of the impact of retaining the transportation department’s bus depot on the high school site as part of a new building plan. Approval of the study was one of two significant revelations during the Sept. 4 meeting. The other was Chairman Stan Durlacher’s admission, in response to a question from the public, that Concord voters actually approved a school building project for which the presented design could not be completed for the dollar amount attached to the project. As it was explained during the meeting, renderings shown and approved previously depicted an $82 million schematic design, with a value engineering that showed where costs could be …

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Concord, Concord-Carlisle Bus Routes for 2012-2013

CPS and CCRSD have posted 2012-2013 bus routes on the district website. Find them there, or print the PDFs posted here.

For the students of the Concord Public Schools and Concord-Carlisle High School, the 2012-2013 school year starts Tuesday, Sept. 4. And, though much remains unsettled regarding the future of the districts' transportation department, the kids still have to get to school somehow. For many students, especially the younger ones, that mode of transportation is the big yellow school bus. And for the parents of said students, school bus schedules are as important a part of the back to school checklist as notebooks, backpacks and a new pair of kicks. To that end, 2012-2013 bus schedules have been posted to the district website, the latest update being Aug. 29. (Printable versions of the PDFs also posted to your right.) Along with the caveat that …

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