Blogs

Civic
Agenda

Next week in Westwood, we have meetings of FinCom, the Zoning Board of Appeals, the Disability Commission, and the Sewer Commission. If you subscribe to the email list from the town, Town Clerk Dottie Powers will send out a list of all the meetings, some of which include links to online agendas. This is great, but what I would like to do with this weekly "Civic Agenda" column, is pull out one particularly relevant meeting that people in Town might be interested in attending. When you, readers of this site, learn of things, please drop me an email at datkinsg@gmail.com and I will post something here.

For this week, I took a quick look at the agendas and found the following:

None of this is "earth shattering" news, but I have been wondering what would happen with that house I walk past every day across from Fairview St. And, perhaps, if one wanted to see what types of things the Sewer Commission does as you consider who to vote for...you could check out their meeting.

House
Hunt

There are six open houses in Westwood this weekend (so far), including 29 Spruce St, barely a block away from Martha Jones Elementary. 4/2.5/1890sf @489K. Open house Sunday, 3/14, 12-2pm. This is a great location--set back from Oak Street, convenient to the school and a short walk down Oak Street to Buckmaster Pond and the Sheehan School Soccer fields. After checking this one out, swing by 148 Oak St--a block further down Oak St. 3/2/1900sf @535K. Open house Sunday, 3/14, 1-3pm.

In the Downey school district, 402 East St will be open from 1-3 on Sunday 3/14. 4/2/1988sf @459K. This house is on the sidewalk side of East Street, making it an easy walk along East St to Smith Drive and down to Downey Elementary. This Islington commuter rail stop is just across East St and a short block up Carroll Ave.

Disclaimer: Please verify dates and times of open houses--the information here is current from MLS as of Wednesday night and reflects an arbitrary selection of homes--no endorsement, agency, etc. is meant to be implied.

Wednesday's
Parent

Don't miss the Westwood Recreation Department's "March into Summer" open house this Saturday. Each Spring, the Rec Department hosts an open house to help residents learn about the many summer programs available for all ages. Registration for programs can be done online immediately but if you register on either Saturday or Sunday and pay in full you will receive a 10% discount.

Everyone should have received a pink flyer in the mail listing all the programs, but if you have lost yours, download a PDF version from the town website. Then, go to the online registration system to reserve your space.

Read the directions on the town website...then go to the online registration system and click Register for Activities. Then, locate the category of activity such as "Playground/Summertastics" and click on the plus (+) to display the individual classes. Click on the class, then locate the "Register" button at the bottom of the screen. You may need to scroll down further within this window to find the correct section when there are multiple times offered. Click the button and register for the first class--afterwards you will be able to sign up for more without having to re-enter your information.

The Rec Department programs are a great value. If you can afford/predict your schedule to pay all in advance (cash, check, Visa/Mastercard), the extra 10% savings this weekend adds up--for example an entire summer of "7:30-5:30 Playground" costs $1360 - $136 = $1224 for 7 weeks of day-long "games, sports, crafts, outside water play and more."

Come to the open house on Saturday, March 13, between 10am and 2pm to learn more, meet staff and instructors, and get answers to any questions.

I'm not going to bother returning bottles anymore. The last straw for me came this Monday as, after driving around for a couple of weeks with a trunk full of beer bottles rattling on every bump, I finally decided to locate the redemption center I had heard of in Walpole. It is located at 747 Main Street (1A). I've called the phone number many times--no one ever answers, but I figured at 10am on a weekday--they had to be open. I was wrong.

For those who care, the hours of operation are Tuesday-Friday, 9am-4pm and Saturday, 9am-3pm. But be warned...after driving 6 miles down Route 1A, you will be greeted by this sign:

That's right...you will not even get your full 5 cents per bottle because the redemption center takes part of the deposit to pay their operating costs.

Now I know this sounds like an embarrassing waste of time and that's exactly my point. Retailers do not accept bottle and can brands they don't sell. Grocery stores, of course, can't take back beer bottles. My variety of choices means I ended up going to the Blanchards in West Roxbury as the only location that sells all the brands I had. I did net $8 for my trouble, and it was fun to hear all those bottles smashing. But I think, from here on out, I will just just put the bottles out in the recycle bins and hope the people who rummage through them don't wake me up.

Westwood Community Access Television (WestCAT), the town's non-profit public access television corporation, long in the planning stages had its first opportunity last night to provide live gavel-to-gavel coverage of a town meeting. An overflow crowd in the high school auditorium for a Special Town Meeting, viewed a presentation on the need for a new library, participated in heated discussion and overwhelmingly voted to approve the $13-million in construction costs. WestCAT recently hired an Executive Director and purchased equipment to launch a public access channel that will covering town meetings, events and provide an opportunity for local residents to showcase programming endeavors. WestCAT's state-of-the-art equipment was employed in the coverage. ED Greg Moberg manned the camera which provided a live feed set up by WestCAT board member, Dave Atkins, that could be seen 'live streaming' on WestCAT's website. With the high school auditorium filled to capacity, WestCAT's live internet feed was piped to the small auditorium for the benefit of the overflow crowd. Those who watched seemed very impressed with WestCAT's first effort at town coverage.

"We're extremely excited that we were able to provide coverage of our first Town Meeting and doubly so because our live streaming experiment actually solved a potential problem for meeting organizers", said WestCAT's President, John Craine.

Still in the formative stages, WestCAT's short range goal is to provide coverage of Selectmen, School Committee and other town meetings. The group is also working with Comcast and Verizon to get the programming on the local cable channels. In the meantime, video from town events will soon be available on WestCAT's website www.westwoodtv.org.

WestCAT is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit corporation.

The following video is a live feed from Town Meeting. This is a test by Westwood Community Access Television (WestCAT) to evaluate how meetings can be webcast....

Thanks for watching! (live video removed now that meeting is over)

The registration period for K-Ball has been EXTENDED thru March 28th. Go to http://www.westwoodlittleleague.com and click on "Register Online" on the left side of the screen to register today!

Boys and girls who are currently enrolled in kindergarten are eligible to play K-Ball--no exceptions will be made for younger or older players. Teams are generally 12-14 players per team.

The entire focus is development.  Kids are taught the basics of proper fielding & throwing mechanics, and learn to hit from a tee. Games are typically 3-innings where each team bats once through the line up each inning.

Games begin in late-April and run through early to mid June.  All games take place on the School Street fields and are held Monday - Friday at 5:30pm with some games on the weekend.  Every effort is made to avoid conflicts with spring sports such as soccer.

ALSO:  If there are any parents who would like to volunteer to coach, please indicate that with your information during the registration process.

Too much of nothing
Can make a man ill at ease.
                             ~ Bob Dylan

Your neighbors might ask you, how can you oppose this project, when we've been planning it for ten years? We've already invested a lot of money in these plans. I'd turn the question around and ask, how can we plan a new library for ten years, at such a high cost, and come up with a plan for Colburn school that's no better than this one? From the earliest proposal in 2000, we knew that a new library would affect the Colburn school. In 2004, a year before the school district administration moved their offices to the new high school, we knew the building would stand empty in 2005. So it has stood for nearly five years. We have had five years to decide what to do with this empty landmark; and this is the best we can do: mothball the building, put it on rails, move it again, and then decide what to do? That's not a plan - that's procrastination.

It's plainly procrastination to let a well constructed, historic building deteriorate for so long, then spend so much nmoney on a plan that's not actually a plan. Everything about the building says don't let me go downhill anymore. Please don't let this happen to me. Everything about the library directors' proposal says we don't k now what to do with the building. We want to push the problem down the road to see if someone else can solve this nuisance for us. The proposal might not be so wasteful if we were not talking about $300,000 in extra cost. The proposal might not be so insulting if we were not talking about a building that stood as Westwood's handsome historical symbol for so many decades.

Do you want to be among the voters who condemn the Colburn school to destruction?

I know it's way too early to think Spring is here, but this weekend's weather certainly gets everyone thinking about warmer times ahead. Sunday should be a repeat of Saturday, so get outside and enjoy it.

• Check out Greg Agnew's Dedham Country Store (open 10am-2pm in Dedham Square)
• go over to Hale Reservation for the family walking club from 1-2:30pm
• Or just hop on a bike and ride or walk around the neighborhood.

Little League and Spring Soccer will be starting soon...and I'd really like to add some sports coverage to this site. If you have any suggestions or would like to submit articles about local sports, let me know.

It's hardly news, but managing childcare is a challenge in Westwood or anywhere. The Early Childhood Office provides many resources including the Resource Directory (latest hardcopy version available at Main Library) which provides a starting point for researching options...but ultimately, every family is going to have their own requirements and will have to navigate the system as best they can.

When we first moved to Westwood, I worked in Boston and my wife raised our two children...then we had our third. We figured out the whole preschool lottery application process and had good experiences with St. John's Nursery, Dedham Community House, and Mothers' Morning Out. But our needs changed and we now find ourselves evaluating full-time options including Knowledge Beginnings and Next Generation Children's Center.

I'm not going to post "reviews" here but I'm going to start a weekly item I'll call "Wednesday's Parent," where I'll share a tip or two related to resources for families. I'm sure one could do an entire blog on that (and many people have) but I'd like to tag things that are specifically relevant and useful to Westwood. Feel free to send me suggestions...