This week the Nashoba Valley working group convened by Gov. Maura Healey in October blessed the creation of a nine-member subcommittee whose job is to determine the services a reconstituted ER would need to provide and to find a means to pay for them. 

Fire Chief Rick Sicard came before the Capital Planning and Investment Committee at its Nov. 20 meeting in the hope the committee would get the ball rolling on a new fire station. But the project is proving to be a conundrum. 

The nearly $2 million the town received in American Rescue Plan Act funds in 2021 has now either been spent or committed to projects. 

Citing a districtwide need for a curriculum that will better support students with disabilities and special education needs, the Harvard schools will implement a new literacy program at the start of the 2025-2026 academic year.

Mandy Ostaszewski, finance and nutrition support specialist for the Harvard Public Schools, was promoted to school business administrator by unanimous vote of the School Committee.

Gov. Maura Healey and Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll announced Nov. 22 that Navjeet Bal has been appointed president and CEO of MassDevelopment, the state’s primary economic development agency. 

Harvard’s landfill problem just got much bigger. Solid waste from the old landfill was thought to be contained in the area behind the trash bins at the Transfer Station. But test borings found solid waste under most of the Transfer Station and the western half of the DPW facility.

Rising costs and lagging revenues are creating conditions for yet another budgetary storm in fiscal 2026.

Harvard’s ambulance service is requesting funds to help purchase a second ambulance for the town—but not because it intends to put two ambulances into service. 

Department of Public Works Director David Smith has been on the job for only about a month, but already he has plans for improving the department. 

At its Nov. 21 meeting, the Capital Planning and Investment Committee considered requests totaling $662,000 from the schools. But less than a quarter of that amount was for new projects. Almost 80% was either for the continuation of an ongoing project or for requests that had not been funded in past years.

When Annual Town Meeting rolls around again next spring, voters might want to consider packing a lunch. At its Nov. 19 meeting, the Select Board voted to return to a single-session Town Meeting, to be held in the spring.

It’s a rare occasion when the town finds $100,000 to spend on almost anything it needs, but that’s what happened when the Devens water connection design engineers realized that police details needed for the duration of the project had been funded twice.

After months of negotiation, the Massachusetts House and Senate, meeting in special session last week, passed and sent to Gov. Maura Healey the $4 billion “Mass Leads” economic development bill she proposed in February, including two provisions that could dramatically increase housing in Devens.

The tax bills of most property owners will jump in January to cover the rising cost of town government, including the Proposition 2½ override approved by voters last spring.

The Select Board’s quest to find land for athletic playing fields has expanded to include the possibility of using the town-owned land behind Hildreth Elementary School, known as the Small land, for two playing fields and a ball field. 

Here are the sites currently under consideration by the Select Board for additional athletic fields.

While the Parks and Recreation Commission continues its search for a location to install new athletic fields, an existing facility has outlived its expected lifespan and needs to be revived—the McCurdy Track and the playing field inside it. 

The fiscal 2026 budget request that School Committee members voted to approve last Monday was about $465,000 smaller than the budget the committee had discussed just a week before.

It was no surprise that Harvard, like Massachusetts, supported the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris. But Harvard joined only a few other towns in the state to say “no” to ballot Question 2, which asked if the state should drop the requirement that high school students pass the grade 10 MCAS test to graduate.