Save the date: STM
This week, selectmen approved a date for a Special Town Meeting this fall. Mark your calendars for Wednesday, Oct. 7. The meeting will begin at 7 p.m. at the Andover High School field house, 80 Shawsheen Road.
The warrant for fall Town Meeting will open Monday, Aug. 31, and close Monday, Sept. 14, at 4:30 p.m. The last day to register to vote in the Special Town Meeting will be Sept. 25. To submit a warrant article or register to vote, visit the town clerk's office at Town Offices on Bartlet Street.
Selectmen chose to hold the fall Town Meeting in the field house because they are hoping for a large voter turnout.
— Bethany Bray
Can you hear me now? Yes, finally
North Main Street resident Joanne Landers is relieved to have her phone and internet service back. Last week, the Townsman reported that Landers and eight of her neighbors had been without phone service from Verizon for over a week, starting on June 23.
Service was restored to homes on North Main by Friday, July 3. Landers used her grandson's cell phone during the outage.
A Verizon representative said the outage was due to a gas leak in a manhole they needed to access.
— Bethany Bray
State won't pay for new curbing on Main Street
Despite an appeal from state Sen. Sue Tucker, the Massachusetts Highway Department will not pay to replace new curbing on North Main Street near Elm Square.
The curbing, across the street from the Mobil gas station on North Main Street, was installed last year as part of the state's Route 28 redesign project.
Town officials contend the curbing is too wide and occasionally restricts the flow of northbound traffic travelling through the square.
MassHighway denied the town's initial request to have the curbing reinstalled, prompting an appeal of the decision from Tucker, according to Town Manager Buzz Stapczynski.
That appeal has since been denied by the state.
"If they're going to do it, we have to pay for it," Stapczynski told selectmen recently.
— Brian Messenger
Praise for retiring educators
We asked people last week if they had memories of this year's retiring educators, several of whom have spent decades in Andover.
Jillian Flannery, AHS'05, was one person who responded: "As a 2005 Andover High graduate I have nothing but good things to say about the teachers who retired this year. Mr. [Peter] Anderson one of the kindness, most well spoken, and funny men to grace the halls of AHS. He was not only apart of MY adolescent years but my father's as well [as a teacher] and students to come are missing out on having a great leader at the high school. "Mr. Craig Simpson, I have nothing but thanks for him and Ms. [Kathy] Cook - both of whom taught the Odyssey class and opened my eyes to so many things - both inside the classroom and in preparing for college. I wish nothing but great things for not only these teachers but for all the teachers who retired this year. And good luck to Mr. Simpson and Ms. Cook in their happy and exciting life in Santa Fe, they deserve it!"
Gem collection
Julie Scolnik of the Andover Chamber Music Series just recorded a CD, Bejeweled: encore gems for flute and harp, with harpist Franziska Huhn. She calls it "a collection of beautiful, poignant classical movements including works by Satie, Faure, Ravel, Donizetti, Grieg, Liebermann, and others... This compact disc is a treasury of alluring miniature pieces that have special meaning for me. There is a personal story behind each one - the moment when I first discovered it and claimed it for my own."
It is available at three Andover stores: Night and Day at 63 Park St., dresscode at 2 Elm Square and Andover Optical at 42 Main St.
It costs $15, and there are discounts for multiple copies.
Andoverites get on their bikes
On Aug. 1 and 2, 44 residents from Andover will ride in the 30th annual Pan-Massachusetts Challenge, the nation's pioneer charity bike-a-thon that claims to raise more money than any other athletic fundraising event in the country. The residents will be among the more than 5,000 cyclists who will ride with the collective goal of raising millions of dollars for lifesaving cancer research and care for adult and pediatric cancer patients at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute through its Jimmy Fund.
