■If you are a bicycle owner, heed this word of caution — lock your bicycle when it is not in use. Most of the complaints of stolen bicycles at Look Park in Florence result from youngsters failing to lock their bikes, Brian Elliott, park manager, reports.
■The Northampton school department now has a business administrator. He is Joseph Bobbin, a Northampton resident. He will earn $13,500 a year to supervise the business and technical details of the $5 million a year school department.
■Mayor Mary L. Ford is moving to outline early next week how the city and a volunteer-led effort to aid the homeless can work in greater harmony with Northampton’s neighborhoods. Ford planned to devote her time yesterday and today to consulting with people involved with efforts to base the Emergency Cot Shelter program at 123 Hawley St., in the Ward 3 neighborhood just east of downtown.
■Olwen O’Herlihy Dowling is leaving her post as director of the Center for the Arts less than a year after taking the job. The board plans to appoint an interim director while conducting a national search for a permanent replacement.
■Students begin arriving in large numbers at the University of Massachusetts today, but if last year’s staggered move-in is any indication, traffic backups will be a thing of the past. Amherst Police Capt. Christopher Pronovost said Wednesday that his department is no longer concerned about the flow of traffic, as most freshmen arrived today and upper-class students come back Sunday and Monday.
■Fish can’t do math, but they do know when they’re in hot water, according to the Connecticut River Watershed Council. The Greenfield environmental group Wednesday released an evaluation of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant’s effect on river water temperatures, arguing it shouldn’t be allowed to use river water to cool the plant.