50 Years Ago
- Part of Main Street will be blocked off Saturday for the annual Farmers’ Market and Muster Days. A pedestrian mall will be created on Main Street from King and Pleasant streets to Old South Street, featuring farm produce, handicrafts, and other activities.
- Some 30 junior high school students have signed up for a sex education program developed during the past year by representatives from five local churches. The five-week program was developed by the churches because of “the need expressed by many parish families, a need to hear the church’s opinion regarding sex,” according to the Rev. Dennis Winslow, curate of St. John’s Church.
25 Years Ago
- The Planning Board has extended the deadline to submit plans for a project that would break up the property and develop the Hill & Dale Mall on King Street, the former site of the Price Chopper supermarket, until Nov. 9. The initial plans seek to divide the property into two lots including a large lot on which the mall building is located, and a smaller lot along King Street, which could serve as the site of a new building.
- Blasting could resume at a Turkey Hill Road quarry by next Tuesday, residents learned at a meeting last night with city officials and representatives of the blasting company. About 40 residents of the Turkey Hill Road neighborhood, who have been distraught over the quarry operation on their secluded road, left the informational session without the one assurance they had sought: that blasting would stop.
10 Years Ago
- The Northampton City Council voted Thursday night to adopt a single tax rate for commercial and residential property in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2016, keeping with a long-standing Northampton practice. Northampton Assessor Joan Sarafin said the tax rate will be $16.16 per $1,000 of assessed property value, an increase of 36 cents from the current rate.
- U.S. Rep. James P. McGovern made a 10-stop tour of businesses, farms and historic sites across central and western Massachusetts on Friday. Valley stops included Historic Deerfield, the Eric Carle Museum in Amherst and the Tunnel Bar in Northampton. McGovern told a reporter that the aim of the tour was to explore new ways to drive tourism to a unique area of the state that is sometimes forgotten by tourists.