Bill Barton, chair of the Town Administrator Search Committee, updated the Select Board at its April 30 meeting, and the news was good. When the deadline for applications passed last week, 34 resumes were in the hands of the committee for review.

Last week the Select Board asked the state Department of Revenue to increase the excluded debt voters approved last year for the project that will enable Harvard to draw its municipal water supply from Devens.

Fire Chief Rick Sicard announced at Tuesday’s Select Board meeting that the Fire Department will not burn down the house at 235 Still River Road as a training exercise. 

Harvard just got a new option for dining and entertainment right across the town line in Boxborough. 

MassDevelopment CEO Dan Rivera resigned abruptly last Friday, April 26, leaving the quasi-state agency that directs commercial and residential development at Devens without a permanent leader.

The town will lose both Town Administrator Tim Bragan and Assistant Town Administrator and Human Resources Director Marie Sobalvarro on July 1. Sobalvarro announced this week that she is leaving to take the town administrator job in Bolton.

Ingrid Nilsson, the school district’s assistant superintendent for finance and operations, resigned earlier this month, shortly after the town voted on the budget and override.

Starting in the next few weeks, riders on the free Montachusett Regional Transit Authority shuttle to and from the commuter rail station in Littleton will be able to park at two locations in town.

Select Board members listened attentively this week to a report that advocated combining Harvard’s Fire Department and Ambulance Service into a single organization. 

The Massachusetts Legislature announced this week it will host a hearing on Gov. Maura Healey’s “Mass Leads” economic development bill at the State House on Tuesday, May 7. The bill includes two provisions of concern to Harvard and Devens residents.

Charlie Sennott, a former Bolton Road resident and advisor to the Harvard Press, was the recipient this week of the 2024 James Foley Press Freedom award.

A yearlong attempt by the Fourth of July Committee to ban political and other speech that some bystanders might find offensive from the town’s annual parade came to an end last Thursday.

The town needs an additional $2.3 million for the project that will connect its town water system to the Devens water supply, leaving the Water Commission and the Select Board with few good options.

In about two years, if all goes well, the town’s public water will come from the treated wells in Devens. 

A 16-court badminton facility and two landscaping businesses are slated for the commercial district on Ayer Road.

The history of fires in Still River has left neighborhood residents with admiration for the Harvard firefighters who extinguished those blazes. But it has also left some residents reluctant to let the Fire Department burn a house in Still River as a training exercise.

Last week the Environmental Protection Agency set a nationwide standard for PFAS—more commonly known as “forever chemicals”—in drinking water. The latest tests on Harvard’s town water, supplied by two wells on Pond Road, passed all the new regulations, although one of the regulated substances passed by only three-hundredths of a milligram per liter.

Town Administrator Tim Bragan, set to retire July 1, has already left the building, but the search for his replacement is just beginning.

Bids for the water main portion of the project to connect Harvard to the Devens public water system were opened April 16, and the news was not good.

Harvard firefighters provided aid last week when a truck burst into flames after crashing into a health center in Devens.