COLRAIN — The Selectboard shared at its meeting that a grant applied for and received by Town Administrator Diana Parsons was rejected by the Council on Aging.
The $20,000 grant was from the Massachusetts Councils on Aging (MCOA). The MCOA offers several different types of grants, and the one pursued by Colrain was in the nutrition category. Previous Council on Aging Chair Janice Barnes had asked the Selectboard to look into applying for the grant at its May 12 meeting, according to meeting minutes.
The grant would have provided funding for the congregate meals hosted by the council and also could have provided brown bag delivery service for seniors. There also was a possibility that the Council on Aging could partner with Colrain Food For All to deliver groceries if needed.
“The [Aug. 24] COA meeting was pretty frustrating,” Selectboard Chair Katie Korby said on Tuesday. “They voted not to accept this grant, going so far as to call it ‘crazy.’ … There were some folks afterwards who expressed interest in trying this outside of the COA, but I don’t know if that’s possible.”
“I just don’t understand why we turned it down,” echoed Selectboard member Emily Thurber. “I thought it was a no-brainer. … I’m pretty upset about this.”
Colrain resident Joe Slowinski asked what the reasoning was for the rejection of the grant. Korby said she doesn’t fully understand why the council rejected the grant, but that she felt members were confused over why it had been applied for in the first place.
Parsons said that as a courtesy, the town should send the money back to the MCOA. Multiple Selectboard members said the rejection of the grant will make the town as a whole much less attractive for state grants in the future.
With municipalities across Franklin County weighing building projects, such as the proposed new Franklin County Technical School, and western Franklin County towns facing the prospect of consolidation in the Mohawk Trail Regional School District and construction at Mohawk Trail Regional School, Thurber said there are some difficult conversations on the horizon regarding town services.
“We keep having these meetings where [we say], ‘We don’t have enough money and we’re going to have to make some really hard choices,'” Thurber said. “And here we have this grant, and we turned it down. … I just don’t quite understand why we didn’t accept this.”
According to Parsons, part of the reasoning from the Council on Aging regarding why it didn’t accept the grant is that $4,000 from its appropriation for fiscal year 2027 would have been used in congruency with the grant. For FY27, the council’s total appropriation was $13,000, approved at Annual Town Meeting on May 5.
“They stated that they did not want the congregate meals, as they were not good and nobody liked them,” Parsons said. “They wanted to continue to pursue what they liked.”
“Most concerning, a member of the council stated that ‘to vote for this grant would be crazy,'” Parsons continued.
Thurber said the grant would have saved $17 on each meal provided by the Council on Aging, bringing the cost down to $3 per meal.
“It would be a $17 savings per person,” Thurber said. “We’re talking about pinching pennies here people, and it’s like, ‘We’d (the Council on Aging) rather pay for a $20 meal because that’s what we like to do and that’s what we’ve been doing,’ but it’s like, we could get that for $3 and save the taxpayers $17 per meal. … I’m sorry that we’re not going to accept it, I’m very sorry that [Parsons] spent time on this. I feel very badly about that.”
Parsons added that there were questions asked at Monday’s council meeting over who the volunteers in this grant program would be, with Parsons saying that the Council on Aging would be expected to handle it.
“I don’t think they recognized that they’re the volunteers,” Parsons said.
Earlier in the meeting, there were two appointments related to the Council on Aging, with a request to appoint Mike Slowinski and to accept the resignation of Susan Slowinski. Both of these items were tabled by the Selectboard, with Korby saying she’s not comfortable making any appointments to the council following its Monday meeting.
Correction, September 3, 2026 1:33 pm: An earlier version of this story referenced a nonprofit that would provide the delivery service for brown bag meals. Such meals are provided by a different organization.
