More than 70 residents, including many former and current members of town boards, joined a Planning Board hearing by Zoom Monday evening to weigh in on a proposed overlay district for a vacant 16-acre parcel on Ayer Road that sits across the road from Dunkin’ Donuts.

At its regular biweekly meeting Tuesday night, March 21, Select Board members voted unanimously, 5-0, to approve the 2023 Annual Town Meeting warrant compiled on their behalf by Town Administrator Tim Bragan and Assistant Town Administrator Marie Sobalvarro, as well as the fiscal 2024 budget recommended by the Finance Committee two weeks ago.

At least two town boards will have new faces after Town Election May 9. However, most incumbents whose terms are expiring intend to run again. And so far, none of the races is contested.

At their Wednesday evening meeting last week, Finance Committee members voted unanimously, 4-0, to allocate money to the schools that they had previously recommended be held as surplus.

While Harvard residents and officials have spent more than a decade closely studying the implications of resuming jurisdiction of Harvard’s historical lands at Devens, the town of Ayer, which sits at Devens’ doorstep, has not.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced March 14 that it is proposing maximum contaminant levels for PFAS in public water supplies. 

The Harvard Public Library would like to have a permanent outdoor space in which to offer its programs, and the library’s board of trustees has begun the work of realizing that wish. 

The emergency intake center at the Bob Eisengrein Community Center at Devens for families and individuals in need of housing has closed.

When town and school administrators put down their scissors at the end of February, nearly half a million dollars had been snipped from the fiscal 2024 budget, eliminating talk of a looming tax override. While some of those snips were inconsequential or covered by other funding sources, others represented lost services for the coming fiscal year. 

The Select Board spent little time Tuesday night on next year’s spending budget, returning the document to the Finance Committee for further work after the School Committee said that the surplus in the most recent spending and revenue forecast for fiscal 2024 should be allocated to the schools.

Common scams were the focus of a Council on Aging talk on fraud prevention last Tuesday at Hildreth House. The featured speaker was Marc Gravelle, a vice president from Rollstone Bank & Trust headquarters in Fitchburg.

What a difference a week can make. Seven days ago town officials were struggling to wring hundreds of thousands of dollars from next fiscal year’s $33 million budget and considering a tax hike greater than the annual 2½% allowed by state law. But now, a projected $700,000 deficit is gone, as was any talk of a tax override.

On Feb. 24, the Capital Planning and Investment Committee reviewed the 24 requests it had received from various town departments for fiscal 2024. The numerical coincidences ended there though, as six requests were voted down, and circumstances had changed on another two, eliminating the need to fund those.

The Planning Board will open a public hearing Monday, March 20, on a proposed bylaw to create a smart growth district on Ayer Road. The bylaw was introduced by landowner Lou Russo as part of Minco Development’s proposal to build a rental apartment complex at 203 Ayer Road,

The report from the town’s Commission on Disabilities, which was issued last December, showed all the public buildings in Harvard need a good many fixes, large or small, to bring them into full compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Out of the 302 school districts in Massachusetts, Harvard is one of just 16 to qualify for federal funds from the Afghan Refugee Support to Schools program. 

A Harvard legend, her name appears twice among the women record holders listed on the blue banner that hangs in the Bromfield gym: fastest school times ever for the 1-mile and 2-mile indoor track events, both recorded 45 years ago in 1978, the year she graduated.

If it feels as if the teacher contract negotiations have been going on forever, that’s not far wrong. After signing the current one-year contract in January 2022, the two negotiating teams have continued their efforts, meeting six times throughout the spring of 2022 in an effort to lay the groundwork for a three-year contract to take effect Sept. 1 this year. 

Renovations at the new home for Harvard’s senior center and Council on Aging on Lancaster County Road will soon be complete, pending delivery of a few items that have been delayed by the supply chain problems that have plagued the country since COVID-19 began.