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Rich Mucci came before the Winchester Select Board on June 15 with a gift: a roughly $200,000 amphitheater, privately funded by the Rotary Club of Winchester, that the club wants to build behind the Winchester Public Library to mark its 100th anniversary next April.
The board approved the concept unanimously.
Mucci, presenting in place of centennial committee chair Jack Keane, described reclaimed granite benches arranged as stadium seating around a brick-paver performance stage wired for electrical service, with low landscape lighting set into the granite.
Zen Associates designed the project.
The library would manage programming and rentals and write the policies for them, Mucci said, and Rotary has offered to weed the brick stage at least once a year. He told the board the Conservation Commission had approved the plan and the library trustees had voted to move forward.
“Why can’t everybody give us presentations like Rich here that address everything that we could possibly ask?” Bill McGonigle said before moving to accept the concept; Michael Bettencourt seconded.
Michelle Prior pressed for a long-term plan to fund wear and replacement, not just weeding, and Mucci said Friends of the Library money could help.
Bettencourt asked that the design account for disability access to the seating, which Mucci said he would raise with Zen.
Formal acceptance, Town Manager Chris Senior noted, would come after the amphitheater is built.
Solar cash moves forward
Money moved earlier in the night, too. Comptroller Stacie Ward asked the board to advance $1 million in lieu of borrowing from free cash into the Solar Panel Fund.
“We’re here tonight because we need some cash,” she said.
The town holds a $7.943 million authorization for solar panels, but Ward said it needed cash to cut deposit checks after June 30 and before July 4 to preserve federal-credit eligibility. S
he said the town was not going to borrow for the project in July and expected to wait until March to see how much it needed.
The board approved the advance.
Partial relief on a $16,000 bill
The board also granted partial relief on a water and sewer bill that climbed to about $16,000 after an underground irrigation pipe leaked at the Winchester Swim and Tennis Club.
On the town manager’s recommendation, members waived the sewer charges — the water never entered the sewer system, Senior said — leaving the club to pay $6,823 for water that was used.
Mucci, who is also the club’s president, said it would pay quickly.
Paras Bhayani moved to accept the recommendation and McGonigle seconded, but Prior abstained.
“I’m concerned about precedent, but I’m not going to vote it down,” she said.
Appointments fill the agenda
A long run of appointments filled much of the meeting. The board appointed Fred Huber to the Wright-Locke Farm Conservancy, for a term expiring Oct. 31, after interviewing Huber and Dana Karlsson and calling both exceptional.
“These are like the two most qualified candidates for a single board opening I’ve seen in like a year,” Bhayani said.
Members said they wanted to explore other routes for Karlsson, including moderator or conservancy appointments or a possible added seat.
The board appointed Mark Scott as an alternate to the Board of Appeals, having interviewed him earlier.
For the Wildwood Cemetery Advisory Committee, members found no other reasonable candidate for a long-vacant seat, waived the one-year waiting period and reappointed Allan Eyden, who has served three terms.
The board also began interviews for two seats on the Affordable Housing Trust. Three candidates appeared during the available meeting record, and Brady said a fourth candidate, who had a conflict, would be called later before deliberations.
Grants and gifts accepted
Routine acceptances carried real programs behind them. The board accepted with gratitude a $6,660 grant from Beth Israel Lahey for a care navigator running monthly clinics for Mandarin-speaking patrons; $5,074.43 from the Mystic Valley Public Health Coalition to the Health Department for Winchester Coalition for a Safer Community youth substance-abuse programming; $1,350 from two local bankers to the Recreation Department’s Packer-Ellis tennis court gift account; a $27,900 grant from the state Division of Conservation Services to the Conservation Commission for work tied to the Forest Ridge acquisition; a $13,720 Early Education and Care stabilization grant for a recreation child care license; and $2,050 from the En Ka Society for Concerts on the Common and the Battle of the Bands.
Some business waits
Not everything got a vote. A Beacon Hill update from Sen. Jason Lewis and Rep. Michael Day was postponed because neither lawmaker was available.
Late in the meeting, Recreation Director Nick Cacciolfi began presenting a proposed fee update for the Manchester/Bigelow courts, telling the board that in-town groups renting the courts were paying disproportionately for limited use compared with the per-participant rate charged for season-long field use; the meeting record cuts off before any vote.
What comes next is concrete. Rotary plans to source granite over about two months and build alongside the library’s ongoing project, then return so the board can formally accept the finished amphitheater.
Ward said the town was not going to borrow for the solar project in July and expected to wait until March to see how much it needed.
And the court fee proposal remained on the table as Cacciolfi’s presentation continued.
Will Dowd is a Massachusetts journalist who covers municipal government and community life for Winchester News. He is also the founder and editor of The Marblehead Independent, a reader-funded digital newsroom.
