Shutesbury election on Saturday features no contests; Town Meeting set for end of May

SHUTESBURY — In a change from customary practice, Shutesbury will hold its town election and Annual Town Meeting on separate days, a little over a month apart.

The town election is set for Saturday, April 26, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Town Hall, 1 Cooleyville Road, while Annual Town Meeting is scheduled for Saturday, May 31, at Shutesbury Elementary School, 23 West Pelham Road.

There are no contested elections on the ballot and no known write-in candidates. For those who vote in person that day, they will continue to get the experience of having their paper ballot go through the wooden crank-turn ballot box that Town Clerk Grace Bannasch says has been in use for town elections since 1934.

One incumbent not seeking reelection is Paul Lyons, the town moderator since 2019. Nettie Anne Harrington Pangallo is the only one seeking the position, writing a statement for the town website that as a public school teacher, she understands the importance of equity, and that “voices and values of our friends and neighbors come together to shape a civil and just trajectory for our future.”

“I believe our Town Meeting is an excellent model for how to sustain respectful, equitable forms of democracy,” Harrington Pangallo wrote.

Following are the other residents seeking election and the positions on the ballot: Selectboard, three-year term, incumbent Melissa I. Makepeace-O’Neil; School Committee, two seats with three-year terms, incumbent Nathaniel Charles Longcope and newcomer Katrina Catalano; Board of Health, three-year term, incumbent Catherine Hilton; library trustees, two seats with three-year terms, incumbents Bradley R. Foster and Michele Regan-Ladd; Municipal Light Plant Board, three-year term, incumbent James Cochran Hemingway; and Planning Board, two seats with three-year terms, incumbents Ashleigh Laura Pyecroft and Robert Keith Hastie II.