New England Public Radio

Online Ridicule Follows Re-branding Of ‘Pioneer Valley’ As ‘West Mass’

For decades, the three counties of Massachusetts along the Connecticut River  — Franklin, Hampshire and Hampden — have been collectively known as the Pioneer Valley, but some boosters of the region decided the moniker is old-fashioned and confusing. So the Greater Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Economic Development Council of Western Massachusetts spent $80,000 to hire a consultant from Oklahoma to re-brand this region.

The result: “West Mass.” It was launched with a two-minute video.

That video, and the brand, have been met with criticism and mockery on social media.

To hear a defense of “West Mass,” we spoke to Greg Chiecko, the director of sales for the Big E, and a board member of the visitors bureau.

To hear Henry Epp’s interview with Greg Chiecko, click the audio player above.

Outgoing PVTA Administrator Reflects On Funding, Service and Future

Later this year, the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority will be in new hands. Mary MacInnes is stepping down later this spring. She’s led the agency since 2006, overseeing public transit in Hampden and Hampshire Counties.

MacInnes took over at a tumultuous time. The previous administrator was ousted after the PVTA’s offices were raided by federal investigators in a bid-rigging scandal. MacInnes said the agency is in a strong position now, compared to when she took charge.

Click the audio player above to hear PVTA Administrator Mary MacInnes interviewed by New England Public Radio’s Henry Epp.

Local Marchers Head To DC In Planes, Trains, Automobiles — and Buses

This weekend, a few thousand people from Western New England will travel to the national Women’s March in Washington, D.C. It’s planned for the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Their goal: To show support for racial tolerance, women’s rights, and other issues organizers say the incoming administration falls way short on.

On a recent morning, Lindsay Sabadosa asked her 10-year-old daughter Kala to get a folder from her car, which has doubled as her satellite office these past few months.

“I actually pulled all the muscles in my shoulder because my purse is so heavy,” Sabadosa said, “because I’ve been carrying around just mounds of information [about the march].”

Mostly from her kitchen table in Northampton, Sabadosa has coordinated transportation for hundreds of women from Western Massachusetts who want to march in Washington. It’s the anchor event in what has bloomed into hundreds of so-called “sister marches” in Greenfield, Boston, New York and beyond.

“We are up to 616 sister marches,” Sabadosa said, as she refreshed the march website on her computer. “That’s around the world.”

Sabadosa, a French-Italian translator who supported Hillary Clinton, said she decided to attend the D.C. march with her daughter in the days just after the election, when a Facebook post launched the event.

“I actually thought it was the best idea,” Sabadosa said. “It would be very healing to go to this march, so I booked our hotel room.”

National organizers predict at least 200,000 attendees — with local volunteers like Sabadosa helping them get there.

Sabadosa said the inspiration she draws from people willing to make the 400-mile trek is matched only by her anxiety getting them there safely. She’s helped book flights, trains, buses, organized ride-shares in private cars and juggled an active waiting list.

“Right now I’m working on bus-ticket swaps,” she said.

Many chartered buses are going there and back in 24 hours. A Springfield lawyer named Chris is getting on one just after midnight before Saturday’s event. She said this will be her first political march, and she asked us not to use her last name so her relatives won’t find out she’s going.

“There are family members who would just absolutely not support this because they support Donald Trump and have taken the kind of ‘get over it’ attitude,” she said.

A former independent turned Democrat, Chris said she’s marching primarily to defend the First Amendment rights of the press and people who might disagree with the new president.

Shirley Edgarton of Pittsfield said she’s marching against what she considers Trump’s pledge to discriminate against Muslims, immigrants and other groups.

“This is more than politics,” she said. “This is about humanity.”

Edgarton is a cultural proficiency coach for the Pittsfield public schools. She’ll be chaperoning six female students on a bus to DC.

“I want young women I work with to understand they have power, voices and civic responsibility to themselves as well as others,” she said.

Edgarton, who is African American, said she heard criticism that march leaders could have included more people of color in the early organizing, but that didn’t turn her off.

“I’m OK with marching under the banner of women,” she said, “because we do need to exercise sisterhood also.”

And organizers hope that sisterhood lasts long after the marchers come home.

The Short List: MA Transportation, Workers’ Buyout, ‘Vile’ Messages At Amherst College

NEPR'S WEEK IN REVIEW

What made The Short List this week?

  • A transportation conference was held this week at MIT in Cambridge called “Reviving Federal Investment in Public Transit: Build Subways, Not Submarines.” Former Massachusetts Governor Mike Dukakis, and his Secretary of Transportation and current MIT Professor, Fred Salvucci, presented at the conference that panelist Matt Szafranski attended. At first glance, it seemed pretty Boston-centric, but Matt said, they did not forget about Western Massachusetts.
  • Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker’s voluntary separation program for state workers had 900 takers. Certain branches of government will feel the losses sooner than others.
  • Amherst College joined the ranks of Harvard, Columbia, Yale and Princeton this week, as the men’s cross country team was found to have circulated  messages described by College President Biddy Martin as “vile.”

Click the audio player above to hear New England Public Radio’s Carrie Healy explore these issues with the Springfield Republican’s Ron Chimelis and Matt Szafranski of Western Mass Politics and Insight.

Hilltowns Addiction Treatment Center To Open In October

In October, a new addiction treatment facility will open on a 600 acre campus in Western Massachusetts.

The center, to be called Swift River, is being billed as a residential detox facility, and will treat opiate and heroin addicts, as well as those with alcohol problems.

It’s taking over the former site of the Swift River Academy in Cummington and Plainfield.

Andrew McKenna is with the for-profit addiction treatment business, based in Nashville, that will operate the center. He said it will benefit the Pittsfield area and the hilltowns.

“Economically, it’s going to be helpful because we’re bringing in local people to run the facility; practitioners, clinicians, you know, medical doctors, nurses, the whole gamut,” McKenna said.

McKenna added that the inpatient unit will open in October, with an intensive outpatient treatment program to be phased in later.

 

Related:

In April, 2016, Plainfield’s ZBA Issued A Special Permit To Treatment Facility

Massachusetts Department of Public Health August Release Of Opioid Related Overdoses In State

Increase In ‘Chronic Emergency’ Hunger, Despite Positive Economic Indicators

For the first time since the Great Recession ended in 2009, the numbers show that western Massachusetts is seeing a decline in individuals seeking food assistance.

In the Hampshire County hilltown of Huntington, on Thursdays in this church basement, waves of clients weave through pantry shelves choosing food items.

“I think on a regular basis we serve well over six hundred to seven hundred people in a in a month, easily,” says Kristan Faul, operational director at the pantry. “The region that we serve is the Gateway School District, basically; there’s actually seven towns that we serve, in general. But we do have some people around the area that do come from as far as Sandisfield or Otis to our food bank even though they’re almost 45 minutes to an hour away.”

There are hundreds of organizations like the Huntington Food Pantry across western Mass that provide food to people who need it.  And the umbrella agency for these emergency food providers, the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, provides the bulk of the food.

The number of people using pantries or feeding programs actually went down in the last year — by about 26,000 people. But the Food Bank’s executive director, Andrew Morehouse, says those who do still need emergency food — the hardest to employ, those with kids and the elderly — need it more often.

“We call that chronic emergency food assistance these are folks who are repeatedly running out of earned income or public benefits, whether it’s welfare payments, their SNAP benefits or Social Security in the case of an elder, and therefore can only rely on a bag of groceries from a local pantry.”

The raw numbers don’t explain why there’s an increase in frequent food pantry visitors in western Massachusetts, or the decrease in overall users. So I called Mark Melnik at the UMass Donahue Institute. He specializes in socio-economic issues.

“Economic indicators as they relate to Massachusetts have been generally positive,” Melnik says. “So we’ve seen robust job growth, decrease in poverty rate in general, increases in median household income and so on.”

But that economic recovery has been uneven, Melnik says. And that means the people who haven’t been helped by the recovery — but still face other rising costs (such as, Melnik says, the high costs of rent, heating homes), they need to access emergency food more and more.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelling Mark Melnik’s last name.