Stabbing at Ned’s Point

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At approximately 4pm on Tuesday April 24 the Mattapoisett Police received a report of a party that had been stabbed at the Neds Point lighthouse. Officers from the Mattapoisett Police Department located the victim who was transported to Rhode Island Hospital by EMS. The victim is in stable condition. The initial investigation revealed that this is an isolated incident and both the suspect and victim were known to each other, therefore there is no threat to the public. The case is ongoing and all names are being withheld at this time. The case is being investigated by the Mattapoisett Police Department.

Anyone with information please contact The Mattapoisett Detective Division at 508-758-4145.

Mattapoisett Police Department Press Release

Gonsalves Now Resigns as Tree Warden

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Former Selectman and now former Tree Warden Steve Gonsalves has resigned from his elected position as tree warden, Town Administrator Paul Dawson announced during the April 17 Marion Board of Selectmen meeting.

In his April 10 letter to the board, Gonsalves simply stated that he was resigning “effective immediately” and provided no further information.

Gonsalves could not be reached the night of April 17 after the meeting and did not return a voicemail request for comment in time for deadline.

Gonsalves resigned as selectman on February 22 after a bout of contention with the other two selectmen and the town administrator, but had in a follow-up interview expressed enthusiasm for continuing to serve the Town in the capacity of tree warden.

The board accepted his resignation and will begin accepting letters of interest in the position by Marion registered voters, who can be appointed to serve until next year’s annual election when that appointed person may run for election for the remaining one year of Gonsalves’ three-year term. After that, a run for election for the full three years may follow.

Anyone interested in serving as tree warden may contact the Board of Selectmen through a letter of interest.

In other matters, the board approved the process for a wetlands delineation at the end of Benson Brook Road in preparation for the scheduled construction of one of the three sludge lagoons at the wastewater treatment plant.

The area, specifically, is near the water tower where an existing leaf pile abuts the site where construction will commence.

“To move that we need to do a wetland delineation … because there are wetlands back there and we need to make sure we do this properly so we don’t further complicate things,” Dawson said.

Also during the meeting, the board approved Susannah Davis’ request to place two benches and a trash barrel near the retention ponds at Sprague’s Cove, now that the proposal has received approval from the Conservation Commission.

An accidental “melding” of two articles on the warrant was pointed out to Dawson, he said, and quickly rectified because the printer had not yet printed the warrant. The warrant was temporarily removed from the Town’s website, but it is now back on for residents to view ahead of the May 14 Annual Town Meeting at 6:45 pm at the Sippican School.

The next meeting of the Marion Board of Selectmen is scheduled for May 1 at 7:00 pm at the Marion Town House.

Marion Board of Selectmen

By Jean Perry

 

Nasketucket Bird Club

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A Spring Warbler Workshop, sponsored by the Nasketucket Bird Club, will be held on Thursday, April 26at 7:00 pm. This is our annual refresher course to get ready for the colorful spring birds. Sights and sounds of the summer visitors and migrants will be presented by the club’s president, Justin Barrett.

The meetings, open to the public and handicapped accessible, are held at the Mattapoisett Free Public Library, located at the south door entrance on Barstow Street in Mattapoisett.

Check our website at: http://massbird.org/Nasketucket/ or email our President Justin Barrett at jmbarrett426@gmail.com

Spring Rummage Sale

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The Church of the Good Shepherd, 74 High Street, Wareham is having their annual Spring Rummage Sale on Saturday, May 5from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm. Items include clothing, coats, shoes, white elephant items, books, domestic items, puzzles, games, toys and small furnishings. The sale is to benefit many of our outreach programs and ministries of the church.

LWV Annual Candidates’ Meet and Greet

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The Tri-Town Area League of Women Voters will hold an Annual Candidates’ Meet and Greet and Town Warrant Review on Sunday, April 29from 1:00 – 3:00 pm at the Mattapoisett Free Public Library.

Attending candidates will be given time to formally introduce themselves as well as talk about their reasons for running, experience and credentials. This event offers an opportunity for candidates to interact with the people of Mattapoisett in an informal setting. Light refreshments will be served.

MAC Auditions for Seascape

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The Marion Art Center has announced open auditions for all roles in the upcoming production of Seascapeby Edward Albee, a drama (dramedy) in two acts about a retired couple enjoying a day at the beach when they meet a sea creature couple. The witty dialogue examines the theories of being human and evolution. The play won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was nominated for the 1975 Tony Award for Best Play and the 1975 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Play.

Auditions will be held on Saturday, May 12, at 10:00 am, and on Sunday, May 13, at 7:00 pm, at the Marion Art Center, 80 Pleasant Street (the corner of Main and Pleasant Streets), in Marion, MA. Performances will be Thursday, August 9; Friday, August 10; and Saturday, August 11; as well as Thursday, August16; Friday, August 17; and Saturday, August 18. All performances will start at 7:30 pm.

Director Kate Fishman will be casting one male and one female who “read” above age 60, and one male and female who are comfortable in body fitting costumes and physically agile.

Auditions will consist of a cold reading from the script, and actors auditioning for the parts of the sea creatures will be asked to perform on all fours; they may also be asked to make sound effects. No prior acting experience is necessary. Both accomplished and aspiring actors are encouraged to audition.

Selected participants can expect two to three weekday rehearsals during June, July and early August. Rehearsal scheduling will be flexible and take actors’ needs into consideration. This is community theater, and as such, no compensation is offered for these roles.

Marion Art Center, started in 1957, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the performing and visual arts. For more information, contact the Marion Art Center at 508-748-1266, marionartcenter@verizon.net, or visit www.marionartcenter.org.

Patricia L. “Patty” Frost

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Patricia L. “Patty” Frost, 76 of Marion, MA, passed away Saturday, April 7, after a 15 year struggle with Parkinson’s disease. She was the wife of 56 years to Nick Frost of Marion. She was the daughter of the late Mark and Irma (Hummel) Lytle.

She was an active community member of the towns of Essex, CT; Nantucket, MA; Bozeman, MT; and Marion, MA. Her passions included her family, running, biking, playing the flute, piano, tennis, paddle tennis, the beach, skiing, cooking, gardening and reading.

She held leadership roles in several organizations supporting her favorite causes. These included Planned Parenthood of Connecticut; local school boards; conservation and planning for Sconset, MA; the local library; and her church. She also was very proud of serving as the Editor in Chief of the Hood College Newspaper. She will be dearly missed.

In addition to her husband she is survived by three daughters; Ashley Gebhardt, Kimberly Scurry and Courtney Frost. She was also survived by five grandchildren and many loving relatives and friends.

In lieu of flowers, donations in Patty’s name may be made to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research at www.michaeljfox.org.

Funeral services will be private.

DI Team Does It Again!

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In little more than a month, three Tri-Town Destination Imagination teams will be heading to Knoxville, Tennessee May 22-26 to compete at “Globals,” the finale to a long and challenging journey. The Lightning Bolts, a team from Rochester Memorial School, will be heading to Tennessee for the second year in a row.

Destination Imagination is a volunteer organization that promotes teamwork and teaches kids the creative process while working together to develop a solution to a problem. The teams may choose a challenge from a series of topics: technical, scientific, engineering, fine arts, improvisational and service learning.

Sarah Cecil is the team manager for the Lightning Bolts, the youngest of the Tri-Town teams made up of a group of seven 6th graders from Rochester Memorial School. The team has been competing together for four years, and this is their second trip to Globals.

The Lightning Bolts members are Theo Cecil, Eva Hartley, Matthew Kennefick, Aleeya McCarthy, Grace McCarthy, Alice Prefontaine and Andrew Wronski.

This year, the team chose a Fine Arts challenge in which they were required to write, direct, and perform a two-act musical play. The play, about an explorer who unwittingly stumbles upon a portal to another planet and infects the inhabitants with what proves to be a fatal disease, is told through parody and with ingenious costume design. The team designed skirts using hula-hoops and plastic container tops, which took almost 80 hours with a hot glue gun.

Jennifer McCarthy, one of the team’s founders and mother to current team member Grace, said, “I’m excited for them. Last year, I thought it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but then they did so great this year.”

The competition encourages and reinforces cooperation and creativity. This team has been together since third grade, has grown as a team, and knows each other very well. Cecil remarked that the kids have learned each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and they support each other tremendously.

“I’m amazed,” said Cecil, “at how they are not afraid to speak in front of adults.”

The teammates have learned to be “risk takers” and to be unafraid to try new things.

Developing their project requires a great deal of research and problem solving. In addition to writing the play and making the costumes, the team must design and build the set, which at times involves hours of work on an idea that may not actually be incorporated into the final project.

DI challenges highlight how well a team works together. Cecil related a story of the Lightning Bolts from the 2017 Globals, in which the team competed in the Instant Challenge.

“In an Instant Challenge, they are in a room with judges and given a task to perform,” Cecil explained. “The team is judged on how well they work together, creativity, and how well they solve the challenge. The team does not know the task when they walk in the room and have to think quickly to solve it … challenges are timed. Last year at Globals, this team placed second to China (by .25 of a point) for the Instant Challenge, so they were second in the world at their age level.”

Cecil’s daughter Alice said she liked being part of the team because it allowed her to be friends with people she might not otherwise be grouped with at school, adding, “You see different sides of people – it brings out your creative side and I like that!”

To reach Globals, a team must compete and win at the local level in Dennis Yarmouth High School and the regional level at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. The trip to Knoxville, TN is an expensive one – the team’s project must be brought to Maine where it will then be shipped with other teams’ projects to the University of Tennessee. The teams will travel to Tennessee and stay in the dorms for the duration of the competition.

The Lightning Bolts have a Facebook page that details all the fundraising activities they have planned to defray the costs of going – which can be as much as $6,000, not including airfare, which will be roughly $750 per participant. The Lightning Bolts are hosting an online Facebook Auction as well as the opportunity, for the cost of $20, to “flock” a friend with a flock of pink plastic flamingoes in their yard for 24 hours. You can visit the GoFundMe page for the team from Old Rochester Regional Junior High, the DI Dazzlers (and sparkle), to help raise money for their trip to the Globals. The team from Old Rochester Regional High School, H Squared, has a donation page at YouCaring.com.

Cecil is clearly very proud of the Lightning Bolts, and all of the Tri-Town teams, saying, “They spent months researching, planning, building and writing. DI has taught them so much about taking risks, team work, and given them self-confidence to succeed at their dreams.”

By Sarah French Storer

Sippican Budget Ready for Town Meeting

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The Marion School Committee approved the Sippican School fiscal year 2019 school budget on April 11, and Superintendent Doug White gave an overview of the FY19 budget and its driving factors.

The FY19 budget rings in at $6,058,909 – a 2.19% or $129,800 increase over the FY18 budget. Driving the budget were some increases in staff contractual agreements accounting for $53,519, as well as an increase in staffing for integrative technology at $26,659, and an increase of $22,800 in physical education to bring that position up to full-time in order to bolster the school’s health program within the present instruction.

Other increases include the contracted services line item up $23,729, special nursing up $34,033, and special education transportation up $44,932.

In all, the district decreased the special education budget by $159,000 with reduced out-of-district services and state-funded circuit-breaker reimbursements. Breaking it down further, White said spending on special education staff was reduced by $107,729 due to a shift in services and how the district can accommodate services within the building, a 50% reduction in that area of the budget.

Overall, the special education budget is down 4.6% or $88,614.

Contracted services in the district, including utilities, is up 30% or $157,985; however outsourcing its custodial services saved the district $107,000.

Business Administrator Patrick Spencer said some sources of funding have offset the budget, including grants of almost $120,000 and a number of revolving accounts, including the Principal’s Account with $37,000 that provides further support for the budget.

Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction Elise Frangos highlighted further grant funding for the district, including $35,105 from the state to support the economically disadvantaged population at Sippican School, which was increased by over $7,000 from FY18. Funding such as this, she said, requires data from the district to the state to demonstrate that benefits from the use of such funding have been documented.

“…We feel we get a lot of utility out of using these grants to support children and teachers,” said Frangos. “There are indicators expressing to us that, while [the disadvantaged student population] can increase in our community, there is somewhat of a worry that these grants may disappear. That’s something to think about.”

Total budget for special education is about $1.8 million, and $4.2 million is allocated to regular education and operations.

“A lot of work went into the budget,” said School Committee Chairman Christine Marcolini. “We’re very proud of the things we’re looking to support,” she said, adding in a word of thanks to the Town for its support. “Thank you for listening and for really taking a good look at we are looking for next year in and supporting our vision.”

The next meeting of the Marion School Committee is scheduled for May 23 at 6:30 pm in the Sippican School community room.

Marion School Committee

By Jean Perry

 

Friends of Mattapoisett Council

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Dear Editor:

The Friends of Mattapoisett Council on Aging hold several luncheons and events throughout the year at no cost to the public. These events are possible because a small group of volunteers worked very hard to make it happen.

March 31 was the Annual Pie & Bake Sale, which was a resounding success. I would like to thank the volunteers who worked so hard to bake the pies and other goodies, the Mattapoisett Police Department for loaning us their electronic sign, and all the other volunteers who helped make this event a success.

Special thanks go to Mary Scott whose never-ending energy and guidance has made this event a success for many years. She also celebrated her 91st birthday on April 14.

We are always looking for more people to share the fun with. If you’re interested in learning more about how you can be involved with The Friends of Mattapoisett Council on Aging, please stop by the Mattapoisett Council on Aging Center located at 17 Barstow Street.

Thank you,

Don Bamberger

Member of the Board

 

The views expressed in the “Letters to the Editor” column are not necessarily those of The Wanderer, its staff or advertisers. The Wanderer will gladly accept any and all correspondence relating to timely and pertinent issues in the great Marion, Mattapoisett and Rochester area, provided they include the author’s name, address and phone number for verification. We cannot publish anonymous, unsigned or unconfirmed submissions. The Wanderer reserves the right to edit, condense and otherwise alter submissions for purposes of clarity and/or spacing considerations. The Wanderer may choose to not run letters that thank businesses, and The Wanderer has the right to edit letters to omit business names. The Wanderer also reserves the right to deny publication of any submitted correspondence.