Due to increasing costs and state funding that isn’t keeping up, the Franklin Regional Transit Authority is looking to change rates and routes, and it wants to know how this could impact riders.
The FRTA is looking for public opinions in a series of meetings this month. Those who may be affected by modified or eliminated routes and increased fares are asked to attend.
“All transit authorities are facing the same unfortunate situation of having to increase fares or reduce service,” FRTA Administrator Tina Cote said recently. “We’ve been level-funded for the fourth year in a row here.”
We’d encourage anyone who uses the FRTA or cares about those who do, to attend one of the many hearings scheduled. You may not be able to forestall cutbacks but you can affect how they are made, and who knows, maybe someone will have a novel idea that will make a difference. Go to FRTA.org for the meeting times. Meetings will be held at the John W. Olver Transit Center in Greenfield and Montague Town Hall in Turners Falls.
Public comments may also be sent by email to tina@frta.org or michael@frta.org, by phone at 413-773-8090, ext. 102, through the FRTA website or in writing to Tina M. Cote, FRTA administrator, 12 Olive St., Greenfield, 01301.
Greenfield Recorder Senior Writer Richie Davis, who has reported on agricultural issues for more than 40 years, has been honored as a “Local Hero” by nonprofit CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture) along with Bonita and Dan Conlon of Deerfield’s Warm Colors Apiary.
The awards were to “honor farms or individuals who exemplify CISA’s mission of strengthening farms and engaging the community to build the local food economy.
We can’t think of anyone who has done that through his work over the decades more than Richie Davis.
Davis, who created an energy and environmental reporting beat at the newspaper when he first arrived, has won numerous awards for his agricultural reporting, including two Associated Press New England awards for overall agricultural coverage, in 2010 and 2011.
Davis, a New York native, joined the Recorder staff in 1976 after several stays as a guest on a Shelburne dairy farm. CISA said of Davis: “his deep care for local farmers and farms and his dedication to clear communication about complex issues are what make him a Local Hero.”
For we New Englanders living in the shadow of the Berkshires, an art director from New Orleans may seem just as foreign and romantic as a restaurateur from Germany.
So, there’s hope for the fans of Elmer’s Store in Ashfield, which is being sold by its proprietor Nan Parati, who came from New Orleans to Ashfield in 2005 to spark new life into a small-town Main Street business.
With no restaurant experience, Parati transformed the vacant, 1835-built country store into a restaurant, art gallery, gift shop and popular gathering place for the community.
Parati plans to sell both her restaurant and the 1795-built Inn at Norton Hill to a couple from Germany. Forencia and Andreas Auer of Frankfort, Germany, visited Ashfield last summer, stayed at the inn and fell in love with the town, as Parati had done years earlier.
When Parati asked the Auers why they wanted to buy her restaurant, Forencia Auers said she has wanted to run a business like Elmer’s for a long time and had looked for the perfect business in many places. She told Parati: “When I came to Ashfield, I felt this was my place.”
Well, that’s a good place to start.
After operating at loss for four of the past five years, Franklin Community Co-op last month painted for its members a picture of a co-op that needs to grow.
Anyone who shops the Main Street anchor that is Green Fields Market knows it’s squeezed for space.
The co-op leaders should be commended for tackling the problem, which in part comes from competition from bigger supermarkets that increasingly are encroaching on the co-op’s locavore clientele.
The co-op is exploring ways to expand that might increase efficiencies of scale and make it more competitive.
That expansion, described to members in a pre-meeting mailing as “a top priority,” has been endorsed by co-op members, who want the store to remain and “grow in place” at 144 Main St., where it has been since 1993.
“It’s important to our members to be one of the anchor businesses downtown,” a co-op spokesman said. As a values-driven co-op, she explained, that sentiment reflects genuine concern about helping downtown thrive.