Here are brief thoughts on some of the events taking place around Franklin County and the North Quabbin area:
Jeremy Williams of Greenfield has finished 1.2 million steps to honor the many, many volunteers who make pretty much everything that’s not a business work in Franklin County.
Since Jan. 1, Williams has traveled through Amherst, Bernardston, Buckland, Charlemont, Deerfield, Gill, Greenfield, Leyden, Montague, Northfield, Shelburne and Sunderland with signs thanking volunteers for their contributions to our society.
Williams began almost each day this year by stepping out of his apartment at Greenfield Gardens wearing a yellow jacket plastered with paper letters thanking non-profit volunteers for their service.
Now he can rest, but the rest of us who aren’t volunteering should consider doing so.
The Shelburne Planning Board is doing its part to provide more housing for the less well-to-do. It has developed a proposal to increase access to affordable housing, a plan that it will unveil on Wednesday.
At the moment, the town requires a minimum lot size of 20,000 square feet in both village districts. The board plans to reduce this lot size to 8,000 square feet in the commercial village district and 5,000 square feet in the residential village.
Planning Board Chairman John Wheeler said that decreasing lot size would create an incentive for more development.
To balance reductions to lot size, the board has also proposed to adopt new design guidelines to “preserve the existing character” of the town. This would require new and existing homes to be built or renovated to reflect the historic character of the town.
Good moves and an appropriate response to growing interest in Shelburne Falls as a nice place to live.
We are impressed with the new Franklin County Compost Cooperative, which seems to be promoting two good things: jobs for former jail inmates and an eco-friendly way for people in more urban areas of Greenfield and Montague to compost.
The worker-owned co-op, which began hauling organic waste to Martin’s Farm in Greenfield, is a project that not only aims to help businesses and residential customers get rid of compostable waste, but also gives former Franklin County House of Correction inmates a chance to run their own business.
The co-op, which now has one formerly incarcerated worker-owner, Gerard Curtis, along with two other tentative worker-owners and a couple of apprentices who hope to become additional worker-owners, is collecting compostable material three times a week from the People’s Pint, Hope & Olive, Magpie, Mesa Verde and the Town of Whately.
Real Pickles and other food processors plan to join, as well, and there are ongoing talks with Artisan Beverage Cooperative and Franklin County Community Development Corp.
These businesses are known for being progressive and green, and so it only makes sense for them to support the new co-op.
Eversource has been accused in the past of footdragging when it comes to hooking up private solar arrays to the grid, but we will have to give the power company credit for establishing several solar farms of its own, contributing to the state’s green energy goals.
A new 7,000-panel solar array in Greenfield is helping Eversource deliver 62 megawatts of carbon-free, renewable energy, for example.
There are also arrays in Montague and Sunderland that are part of the project that has built 19 new solar facilities across the state.
Speaking of being green. Another area non-profit deserves credit for pushing back against our disposable habits by encouraging everyone to repair rather than discard broken household items.
The group, Repair Public, celebrated its second anniversary Sunday in Greenfield by holding one of its repair workshops where people bring items such as small appliances, small furniture, clothing, toys, garden tools and lamps, and learn how to fix them.
Repair Public is a not-for-profit, volunteer, traveling repair clinic in the Pioneer Valley, based on the Repair Café concept from the Netherlands. Its fix-it guides take the mystery out of repairing items that otherwise might get tossed out in our throw-away world.
Recycle, reuse and repair should be our watchwords every day. And we thank Repair Public for helping with that last part.