COLRAIN — The Colrain 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 Council on Aging (MCOA). The MCOA offers several different types of grants, and the one pursued by Colrain was in the nutrition category. Previous COA 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 COA, and also could have provided brown bag delivery service for seniors, as confirmed by LifePath. There also was a possibility that the COA 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 that she doesn’t fully understand why the grant was rejected by the COA, 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 that 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 that 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 COA on why it didn’t accept the grant is that $4,000 from its appropriation for fiscal year 2027 would’ve been used in congruency with the grant. For FY27, the COA’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 COA, bringing the cost down to $3 per meal.
“It would be a $17 saving per person,” Thurber said. “We’re talking about pinching pennies here people, and it’s like ‘we’d (the COA) 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 COA meeting over who the volunteers in this grant program would be, with her saying that the COA would handle this.
“I don’t think they recognized that they’re the volunteers,” Parsons said.
Earlier in the meeting, there were two appointments related to the COA, with a request to appoint Mike Slowinski to the council, and to accept the resignation of Susan Slowinski from the COA. Both of these were tabled by the Selectboard, with Korby saying she’s not comfortable making any appointments to the COA following its Monday meeting.
