■The annual Smith College bike sale was held yesterday on the campus as students sought out a good transportation buy. Some 500 bikes in various states of repair were on sale during the day.
■Thelma P. Whiting, suburban editor of the Gazette, has won an honorable mention in the annual news writing contest sponsored by the New England Associated Press News Executives Association. Mrs. Whiting was honored for a series she wrote on Route 9 road salt and its effect on the water supply in Goshen.
■Six months after the last director of school maintenance resigned, the Northampton School Department has found a new one. John Poudrier will move up one position from a custodian shift supervisor to director of school maintenance, the position once held by John Hamel.
■The Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter High School has opened for its second year with double the enrollment and staff, almost twice the building space and expanded course offerings. Along with the normal growing pains is an increasing expectation that the school prove that its experimental approach to teaching and learning is working.
■A power failure during Tuesday night’s storm apparently wreaked havoc on the city’s wastewater treatment plant, causing 500,00 to 1 million gallons of untreated wastewater to dump into the Connecticut River over a nine-hour period.
■The Northampton City Council Thursday gave the mayor the authority to adopt changes in health insurance benefits offered to its 900 employees, a move the head of the city’s largest union argued would circumvent the collective bargaining process.