Belmont’s Brumal Birds Will Soon Abound

 Environment, Newsletter, November/December 2024  Comments Off on Belmont’s Brumal Birds Will Soon Abound
Oct 282024
 
Belmont’s Brumal Birds Will Soon Abound

By Fred Bouchard. Photographs by Shawn Carey. We’ve changed tactics for getting familiar with our bird buddies of the brumal (pre-vernal, i.e., winter) season. We’ll pair like with like—woodpeckers, raptors, songsters, and feeder favorites. For more information, research any species by visiting ebird.org.   Downy Woodpecker / Red-bellied Woodpecker Woodies are mostly non-migratory. While flickers and sapsuckers head South, the rest abide with us—quite vocally—year-round; in leafless months we get to see them better. Of the five remaining, three mainly stay in forested areas: the mid-sized Hairy, the majestic Pileated (“Woody”) and the rare Red-headed Woodpeckers. Our likelier winter peckers [READ MORE]

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BCF Community Service Opportunity

 November/December 2024, Traffic  Comments Off on BCF Community Service Opportunity
Oct 282024
 

I hope to recruit a high school student to work with me on a Belmont traffic project for community service. The project will use the rotary at the intersection of Grove, Blanchard and Washington Streets to estimate the effectiveness of similar rotaries at the entrance to McLean Hospital at Mill Street, and at the intersection of Concord Avenue and Common Street at Belmont Center. I am a retired electrical engineer with an advanced degree from MIT. I did a traffic study in 2017 with a high school student to estimate Belmont’s cut-through traffic during the morning rush hour. Here are [READ MORE]

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Belmont Serves Subdues Center Knotweed

 BCF Events, Environment, November/December 2024  Comments Off on Belmont Serves Subdues Center Knotweed
Oct 282024
 
Belmont Serves Subdues Center Knotweed

On October 14, stalwart Belmont Serves volunteers—working with Belmont Conservation Volunteers—took shovels and snips in hand to clear a massive Japanese knotweed infestation on town-owned land abutting the railroad tracks, the site of the future community path Thank you to everyone who pitched in.

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Letter to the Editor: Traffic at McLean

 Newsletter, November/December 2024, Traffic  Comments Off on Letter to the Editor: Traffic at McLean
Oct 282024
 
Letter to the Editor: Traffic at McLean

To the Editor; On June 26, Belmont Town Meeting approved the amended Traffic Monitoring and Mitigation Agreement between Belmont and McLean Hospital. Part of the agreement is to improve the intersection of McLean Drive and Mill Street. The plan is to install adaptive traffic signals at the intersection that use a camera and software to control the lights based on what is needed on a moment-by-moment basis. In 2017, a high school student who needed community service credits and I spent the summer counting cars to estimate the cut-through traffic in Belmont during the morning rush. We did good work. [READ MORE]

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Belmont’s Student Bikers Cut School Traffic

 Bicycles and bike paths, November/December 2024  Comments Off on Belmont’s Student Bikers Cut School Traffic
Oct 282024
 
Belmont’s Student Bikers Cut School Traffic

Test and photos by  David Chase This fall, we solved a school crowding problem by moving two grades from the middle school to the new combined middle and high school. However, with almost 50% more students arriving every morning, this move aggravated an already-bad traffic problem on Concord Avenue. The new combined school has 2,128 students. If each one of them traveled in a car through the single-lane Goden Street entrance, the line would take over an hour to clear. Fortunately, that doesn’t happen; many students carpool, many walk, many get dropped off a short distance from the high school [READ MORE]

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Profiles in Belmont: Peter Struzziero

 November/December 2024  Comments Off on Profiles in Belmont: Peter Struzziero
Oct 282024
 
Profiles in Belmont: Peter Struzziero

By Elissa Ely Eight hundred people a day used to visit the Belmont Public Library on Concord Avenue when the building existed, and few of them ran into Peter Struzziero, the library director. Even fewer run into him now. You would need to hang a right off Grant Street onto tiny C Street, past Department of Public Works trucks and equipment, into a cavernous but immaculate town garage the size of a warehouse, and through a door that appears out of nowhere. It’s a little like spelunking, except there are windows. The library’s reconstruction project is well underway, hopefully to [READ MORE]

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Town Meeting to Decide MBTA Zoning

 Construction and Housing, Newsletter, November/December 2024  Comments Off on Town Meeting to Decide MBTA Zoning
Oct 282024
 
Town Meeting to Decide MBTA Zoning

Below are three articles on the MBTA Community zoning (3A rezoning) proposals that will come before Town Meeting this November. An Overview of 3A By Taylor Yates This fall, Belmont Town Meeting will consider a plan to comply with the MBTA Communities Act, a law passed by the state to increase the supply of housing across 177 towns. Each town, including Belmont, is required to zone for a specified amount of multifamily homes across a specified number of acres. Belmont must zone for at least 1,632 homes across a minimum of 27 acres. After two years of work by both [READ MORE]

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Autumn Avians Brighten Belmont

 Newsletter  Comments Off on Autumn Avians Brighten Belmont
Aug 232024
 
Autumn Avians Brighten Belmont

By Fred Bouchard This is a selective survey of Belmont birds that you might observe in Belmont from October through December, or even into winter as our climate warms. Four arbitrarily selected environments highlight our tour: two of the town’s “birdier” (and, coincidentally, more visited) locales, Rock Meadow and Clay Pit Pond, Belmont Backyards, and Little Pond. Rock Meadow: American Goldfinch, Northern Cardinal These familiar endearing species share the common trait of sexual dimorphism: gals and guys don’t dress alike! Male goldfinches’ plumage shouts “yellow and black!” in the breeding season, when their conical seed-searching bills turn gray to pink, [READ MORE]

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Belmont’s Victory Gardens Remain Vibrant

 Environment, History, Lone Tree Hill, Newsletter, Open Space, September/October 2024  Comments Off on Belmont’s Victory Gardens Remain Vibrant
Aug 232024
 
Belmont’s Victory Gardens Remain Vibrant

By Jeffrey North Victory gardening in Belmont has never been more popular (local food production activity during World War II notwithstanding). One of the largest and oldest continuously active community gardens in the Boston area, Belmont’s Rock Meadow Victory Gardens consists of 132 garden plots of varying sizes, typically ranging from 12 by 12 feet to 50 by 50 feet. The gardens cover about three acres of land at the Rock Meadow Conservation Area along Mill Street, between Trapelo Road on the south and Winter Street on the north. After glaciers retreated 10,000 years ago, Native Americans burned the land [READ MORE]

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Belmont’s Trees Enrich Town Streetscape

 Newsletter, September/October 2024  Comments Off on Belmont’s Trees Enrich Town Streetscape
Aug 232024
 
Belmont’s Trees Enrich Town Streetscape

By Vicki Amalfitano, Lucia Gates, Eva Hoffman, and Adam Howe What makes you feel at ease when you drive down a town street? Would it be as comfortable on a hot summer’s day without shade trees? Tall, beautiful oak, maple, and birch trees; magnificent beech trees, flowering dogwood, magnolia, and cherry trees enrich our streets and yards. They fill our senses with their beauty, and they cool our homes. They take in the carbon dioxide we breathe out, and they release the oxygen we breathe in. We are grateful for the trees’ benefits and their positive impact on the value [READ MORE]

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Profile in Belmont: Wendy Murphy

 Historic Preservation, History, September/October 2024  Comments Off on Profile in Belmont: Wendy Murphy
Aug 232024
 
Profile in Belmont: Wendy Murphy

By Elissa Ely “What is that house?” Wendy Murphy thought the first time she saw the mansion at 661 Pleasant Street: elevated, magisterial, remote, uninhabited, yet somehow alive. “Is it haunted?” The William Flagg Homer House is neither inhabited nor haunted, though it is alive with architecture and art. As president of the Belmont Woman’s Club, Wendy became one of its protectors. Her decade-long tenure exceeds term limits, though not for lack of a successor search. “I’m like a general contractor,” she says ruefully, “and the problem with being productive is that no one wants to be that busy.” The [READ MORE]

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Vision for a Better Belmont: Paul Joy

 Newsletter, September/October 2024  Comments Off on Vision for a Better Belmont: Paul Joy
Aug 232024
 
Vision for a Better Belmont: Paul Joy

This article is the sixth installment in a series of interviews with Belmont leaders about their vision for Belmont’s future. Jeffrey North conducted this interview. It has been edited for length and clarity. – Ed. Belmont’s Economic Development Committee (EDC) was formed in 2020 by the Select Board following the completion of the Belmont Business Strategy. Its role is to develop, implement, and update the recommendations in the Belmont Business Strategy, in conjunction with town staff and departments.    BCF Let’s start with how you see the Economic Development Committee’s (EDC’s) vision and strategic role in fostering Belmont’s growth and development. [READ MORE]

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Town Works to Make Streets Safer for All

 September/October 2024, Traffic  Comments Off on Town Works to Make Streets Safer for All
Aug 232024
 
Town Works to Make Streets Safer for All

By Sue Bass If you’ve noticed more speed bumps on Belmont’s streets, it’s not your imagination. They are a small clue to a new direction the town hopes to take: to slow traffic and make our roads safer for pedestrians and bicyclists. Two major projects are on the horizon, if construction money can be found: signalization and pedestrian amenities at Huron Avenue and Grove Street, and two roundabouts at Concord Avenue and Mill and Winter Streets. The Winter Street roundabout will need some political magic in addition to money. Meanwhile, two quicker projects are about to get underway. A $432,000 [READ MORE]

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Belmont Boasts Bounteous Birds

 Environment, July/August 2024, Newsletter  Comments Off on Belmont Boasts Bounteous Birds
Jun 252024
 
Belmont Boasts Bounteous Birds

By Fred Bouchard Most of us try to cozy up to Mother Nature now that we’re increasingly climate-conscious, especially during longer days and presumably carefree hours of summer. Whether you’re in the garden, open spaces, or on woodsy walks, our home town offers a variety of eco-friendly locales to commune with Ma Nature’s little winged ambassadors. I offer four likely places, each hosting two not-obvious, strictly seasonal denizens that you might readily identify with your attentive ear and sharpened eye. We go from high altitude to low, and throw in an easily overlooked hotspot in nearby Cambridge. A good guide [READ MORE]

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Profiles in Belmont: Robert McLaughlin, Sr.

 July/August 2024  Comments Off on Profiles in Belmont: Robert McLaughlin, Sr.
Jun 252024
 
Profiles in Belmont: Robert McLaughlin, Sr.

By Elissa Ely There is a temperament best suited for success in law, especially in the area of litigation. There is a temperament best suited for success in life, especially in the areas of personability and contentment. It seems unlikely that the two temperaments could coexist serenely in one character. Please meet Bob McLaughlin: indispensable town exemplar, and proof of the possible. He is chair, co-chair, or member of vital Belmont committees almost too numerous to count; senior and managing Boston law firm partner; white-haired scuba diver, water-and-downhill skier; sailor and seven-continent traveler (with no wish to see a penguin [READ MORE]

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Concord Bike Lane May be Increasing Cycling

 Bicycles and bike paths, Bike Paths, July/August 2024, Traffic, Transit  Comments Off on Concord Bike Lane May be Increasing Cycling
Jun 252024
 
Concord Bike Lane May be Increasing Cycling

By Dan Eldridge This August will mark two years since the restriping of Concord Avenue, a project that repainted the lines on the road to switch the positions of the biking and parking lanes. Separated (sometimes called protected) bike lanes are against the curb and are usually separated from traffic by bollards, islands, or raised platforms: there are no plans to install bollards on Concord Avenue. In each case, a barrier is created so cyclists will encounter fewer vehicles and feel more secure. In the case of Concord Avenue, separation is indicated by painted lines and parked cars only. Separated [READ MORE]

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Vision for a Better Belmont: Jeff Birenbaum

 July/August 2024, Newsletter, Town Committee Meetings  Comments Off on Vision for a Better Belmont: Jeff Birenbaum
Jun 252024
 
Vision for a Better Belmont: Jeff Birenbaum

The stated goal of the Planning Board is to protect and preserve the character and the quality of life that defines Belmont (www.belmont-ma.gov/planning-board). Jeff Birenbaum is chair of the Belmont Planning Board. BCF How would you define Belmont’s character and quality of life, in a few sentences? Birenbaum Belmont, Massachusetts, is known for its great neighborhoods, excellent schools, vibrant community life, and keen sense of history. Its character and quality of life are shaped by its close-knit community feel. Residents value Belmont’s suburban charm, cultural diversity, recreational amenities access, and commitment to environmental sustainability. Preserving these aspects while responsibly managing [READ MORE]

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Belmont Carbon Emissions Down 14%

 Climate Change, Environment, July/August 2024, Solar Power  Comments Off on Belmont Carbon Emissions Down 14%
Jun 252024
 
Belmont Carbon Emissions Down 14%

By Roger Wrubel, Brian Kopperl, and James Booth According to the Belmont Energy Committee’s most recent inventory, the town’s carbon emissions dropped from 177,000 tons to 150,000 tons per year between 2014 and 2021. The drop, which measures emissions from gasoline, natural gas, fuel oil, and electricity, results from residents shifting away from home heating oil to other energy sources, driving more fuel-efficient vehicles, and drawing their electricity from a cleaner New England grid. Except for the shift away from fuel oil, none of these reductions are happening at a pace sufficient to reach zero emissions by 2050. The committee [READ MORE]

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Profiles in Belmont: Farmer Tim

 Environment, May/June 2024, Newsletter, Open Space  Comments Off on Profiles in Belmont: Farmer Tim
Apr 302024
 
Profiles in Belmont: Farmer Tim

By Elissa Ely Choosing a favorite vegetable or melon, if you happen to be Farmer Tim Carroll, is like choosing a favorite child. If he’s eating a cantaloupe from his farm, cantaloupe is his favorite. When he’s eating a cherry tomato, the cantaloupe steps aside. “I’m not a fennel guy,” he says, but with such respect that no fennel could resent him. There are dozens and dozens of vegetable children in Farmer Tim’s world. Since 2015, his Dudley, MA, farm has grown multiple varieties of up to 50 kinds of produce each August through October. The season starts aboveground with [READ MORE]

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