How your neighbors save you money ... and make life more fun.

How your neighbors save you money ... and make life more fun. 08/14/2011

Moving furniture into storage.

It can be easy to complain that taxes are too high, that nobody does anything right, and that everything costs way too much for way too little. So here's the other side of the story.

As you probably know after quite a few years of discussion, some cordial and some heated, Pittsfield has finally decided it's time we meet ADA, clean up the mildew, and fix the roof of our old school house. The old school house is now the home of our all volunteer Roger Clark Memorial Library; soon it will hold fresh town offices on the first floor, and the library on the second.

We looked at rates for storage and quickly decided that money should be spent on books and programs for our community, not storage space. Would you believe we've managed to pack up the whole library, and we're not paying one cent for storage? Step one, we invited patrons to hoard books, and hundreds of books have found temporary homes around our community. Step two, volunteers took a hard look at our collection. Books that haven't been looked at in years were put aside for our annual book sale. So were books that were factually out of date. Step three, volunteers put all the remaining books in boxes that went to dry safe storage in your neighbors' homes. Last our volunteers, with a few paid hands, loaded all our shelving, chairs and tables onto the hay wagon so it could be driven over to the barn to wait.

That's right. Other than exactly the cost of a few cardboard boxes and $150 cash, your volunteers packed up and stored your library. And we weren't alone. Did you know your volunteer firefighters don't just put out fires? They spent hours last week packing up the old school house. Pretty cool.

So, we care that much about providing our town with a great space, great books and great programs. We know you do too, and enjoy a great party, so please reserve your spot for our pig ... I mean big ... annual fund raising party at the Clear.

~Marion

Comments

Jan

08/15/2011 08:43

An inspiring and wonderfully written reminder of the kind of good people do every day, in communities large and small (in this case, quite small!). Well done, Pittsfieldians! Thanks for sharing the word, Marion.