■Swimming pools, beaches and backyard puddles everywhere have been popular during this week’s heat spell, and perhaps the most popular is the Look Park swimming pool. Youngsters have been lining up to use the diving board, while hundreds of other splash in the water below or bask in the brilliant sun at the pool’s edge.
■The city police and personnel board sat down with a state mediator Tuesday to discuss the unresolved police pay issue, and there were indications that the police were braced to accept a lower pay package than they had wanted. The city has offered a 7 percent raise now and 3 percent in January. Police have asked for 15 percent now and 20 percent in January.
■In a split vote, the School Committee last week approved a plan to renovate the lighting system in Northampton High School this fall. Some committee members suggested putting off the lighting project to address immediate health problems associated with poor ventilation in the classrooms.
■The 4th Annual Honor the Earth Powwow will be held Saturday and Sunday at the Three County Fairgrounds. The powwow will feature dancing, a teepee village, storytelling, food, silversmiths, basket makers, carvers, pottery, knifemakers, deerskin and elk clothing.
■With the state of the economy weighing on all aspects of care, Cooley Dickinson Hospital has made arrangements to outsource its outpatient behavioral health and substance abuse programs by the middle of next month. The hospital announced that Clinical and Support Options Inc., a community-based provider headquartered in Greenfield, will assume management of those programs on Aug. 16.
■Northampton’s efforts to buy the Bean and Allard farms took a significant step forward Thursday when a state committee awarded a grant to help preserve the site’s prime agricultural land for farming. The grant does not come with an exact dollar amount but should be in the $1 million range.