Program begins June 1 at 5:00 p.m.

Mayor Katjana Ballantyne and the Somerville Schools GSA invite all community members to honor LGBTQ+ Pride Month by joining the annual Pride flag raising ceremony on Thursday, June 1. The ceremony will begin at 5:00 p.m. on the City Hall Concourse and include remarks from Mayor Ballantyne, City of Somerville LGBTQ+ Liaison Izzy Starr, and representatives from the John F. Kennedy School GSA.

After a five-year closure due to soil contamination,the remediation process concludes at Conway Park.— Photo by Bobbie Toner

By Beatriz Leite

Last Thursday evening, the City of Somerville gathered through Zoom for the last community meeting to conclude the remediation process at Conway Park. The park and the adjective splash pad officially reopened on May 27 after being closed since 2018 after research revealed soil contamination.

By Ana Celerier Salcedo

Following the formal recognition of the Gilman Square Neighborhood Council, members and community members of the Union Square Neighborhood Council voiced their concerns regarding transparency in the city planning and development department.

By Khoa Tong

The Somerville Pedestrian and Transit Advisory Committee (PTAC) held their monthly meeting on Thursday, May 25, hosted by Alessandra Seiter, chair of PTAC. The primary focus this month was to present and discuss with the Somerville Traffic and Parking Department their plans for automated parking enforcement as well as reviewing the Committee’s letter to the mayor and City Council on FY24 budget priorities.

The Somerville City Council Traffic and Parking Committee will hold a virtual (online) public hearing on Wednesday, May 31, on the City of Somerville Bike Network Plan. The hearing will start at 6:00 p.m. Community members may submit testimony either at the hearing or in writing. The hearing will offer an opportunity for community members to share thoughts, ideas, and concerns about the Bike Network Plan. The plan was developed via a one-and-a-half-year public engagement, research, and analysis process. Visit the city’s website to learn more about the plan and how to attend or submit testimony at www.somervillema.gov.

By Ana Celerier Salcedo

On May 23, Demetrios Vidalis, the Director of the Water and Sewer Department, and Stephen Haynes, the Director of Finance for the Water and Sewer Department, presented the finance committee with a rate proposal increase plan for fiscal year 2024.

Eagle Feathers #280 –Somerville Firsts

By Bob (Monty) Doherty

Memorial Day is an American federal holiday which honors those who died while serving in the United States military. It always falls on the last Monday in May creating a three-day weekend and unofficially launches us into June and the beginning of summer.

Mayor Ballantyne has submitted her proposed budget for the fiscal year 2024. City officials must now work together to hammer out a final budget, one that comes as close as possible to serving the wants and needs of as many of us as is practical and doable.

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Review by Off The Shelf Correspondent Lee Varon

It sounds cliché to say of a book that the author’s words leapt off the page. Yet I can’t think of a better expression to describe the feeling I had when reading the poems of Susan Sklan. The letters on which all of these poems are based, are actual letters written by Sklan’s grandmother who lived in the Warsaw Ghetto before her presumed death in the Treblinka concentration camp. Most of the letters Sklan’s grandmother wrote were to her son (Sklan’s father) in England. He escaped Warsaw to England when he was seventeen, a few weeks before war began. After the war he immigrated to Australia, the only one of his immediate family to survive. These lucid and beautiful poems are reflections on the letters of her grandmother, and often contain her grandmother’s own words.