■Patrick M. Goggins was named director of recreation for the city by a unanimous vote of the Recreation Commission meeting last night. At 24, Goggins becomes the youngest department head in the city’s history.
■The Board of Investment of the Nonotuck Savings Bank has announced that John R. Surgen, son of John and Josephine Surgen of Spring Street, Leeds, has joined the bank staff as an assistant to President William G. Kimball. Surgen attended local schools and graduated from Northampton High School. He is a 1971 graduate of Columbia University.
■Residents of lower Spring Street in Florence want to make one point clear: no sidewalk, please. In a petition to the city’s assistant engineer, 11 residents say they oppose the proposal to build a sidewalk along the road, in part because it would “detract from the area’s rural setting.”
■The director of the University of Massachusetts Fine Arts Center, Frederick Tillis, is one of 10 recipients of the 1997 Commonwealth Awards. Tillis is the only winner from the Pioneer Valley area. He said today that he was both surprised and honored by the award.
■Police continued to search into the night Friday for a man who robbed the Florence Savings Bank branch at the corner of King and Finn streets earlier in the day and fled with cash. Northampton police said the suspect walked into the bank around 4 p.m. and handed the teller a note saying the bank was being robbed.
■Friends and colleagues say Greg Speeter, founder and former director of the Northampton-based National Priorities Project, was a rare combination of visionary and everyman, a person whose legacy is an organization that brings the reality of the federal budget home. Speeter died Thursday at the age of 68 after a long battle with cancer.