I moved to Canton because it featured democracy at its most basic, the town meeting, held annually. And I have watched it devolve over the last 22 years.

Like last Wednesday’s town meeting in which there were eventually more people on the town’s payroll there than interested citizens. One scene of the various Canton Babbages conferring about a set of Russian dolls, amendments within amendments, and how to allow discussion, was juxtaposed in my mind with the famous painting in Faneuil Hall where our better educated, more moral forebears were writing the Articles of Confederation. They strained at a camel and brought forth a flea, but was it ignorance or a carefully staged scene so that the engaged but enraged honest citizens would get disgusted and leave?

And this perversion of the democratic process resulted in exactly what they wanted: another development in town, partly for the elderly with no nursing home to take care of those 85-year-old citizens in “independent and assisted living” units. Another plan enriching a few with no exit or alternatives at critical points of failure. Where do we dump those elderly when they need a nursing home? Where are the charnel houses of Dickensian London when you need them?

Questions to the developer were answered with, “That’s still under discussion” for quite vital and pertinent aspects of this deal. Of course, the lawyer/moderator most likely to get rich from this charade kept saying: “Me, myself and I have studied this for ages, and we have decided that it is best for the town.” The “me” being the Board of Selectmen, the “myself” being the Finance Committee, and the “I” being the Amen choir, those commission volunteers chosen by the BOS.

With my frequent “nay” votes, I represented the absent 90 percent of Canton citizenry who have become so disgusted with this Kabuki theatre they no longer attend. This only served to prevent the moderator from declaiming “passed unanimously.” Since rules have been intricately written to prevent discussion, I had no opportunity to comment on the sum of the many loans we gave the Finance Committee the right to pursue (you can only comment on the article as written before you, which was often changed right before the meeting). Standing before the mic, politely waiting to be recognized by the moderator, I was ignored. Another close vote was taken by the barbaric method of voices yelling over one another, before I could ask for hands to be counted.

Blessings on the concerned citizen who said, “I come faithfully to town meeting year after year, and year after year, you give us last-minute changes to the warrant that change the substance or even contradict the articles within it. I will vote “no” until we get the right to study this matter and have a public hearing on this changed article, not this hurry-up stuff that gets this town into trouble.”

Wonder if he was talking about the disastrous Canton Torture Center, aka the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center, where children are legally tortured with portable electronic devices by “attendants” hired off the street and have made Canton notorious throughout the civilized world. The selectmen welcomed the paroled Matthew Israel and his army of PR flacks to the town 20 years ago, still up there on Route 138 torturing emotionally disabled children at $225,000 a head.

As modified Articles 16, 17 and 18 were hammered into acceptance, it was obvious that we the people are considered unnecessary impediments to the serpentine tentacles of Canton’s rulers, which reach throughout all the commissions, consolidating power in the few. When will we stop this charade and go to representative government?

Sincerely,

Alice C. Brown

According to a recent report in the Boston Globe, the Blue Hills Ski Resort on Route 138 in Canton has been operated by Ski Blue Hills Management, LLC for the past six years. The company’s five-year contract expired this past season. According to the Globe report, Vero Piacentini, the company’s general manager, said they would like to return, but with a long-term contract.

The Globe story also noted that the official name of the Blue Hills Alpine Ski Run is the William F. Rogers Ski Slopes, named by the Metropolitan District Commission in 1951 after William F. Rogers, a longtime Braintree town moderator who loved the area so much he was nicknamed the “Father of the Blue Hills Reservation.” The ski slope was first developed in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps and improved in the 1960s by widening the two slopes and adding a third. A lodge was built and man-made snow was introduced to extend the skiing season. Edward M. Lambert Jr., commissioner of the Department of Conservation and Recreation, told the Globe that the state is considering extending the term of the contract. He describes the Blue Hills Ski area in Canton as a “great amenity to the region.”

John Friel recently resigned as the Council on Aging chairman. John has been involved with Canton seniors for over 15 years and has been a driving force in obtaining a new senior center.

The Norfolk County Sheriff’s Department has been doing a great job picking up roadside debris along the entrance and exit ramps of Route 128, 138, and along Route 95 in Canton with inmate labor. Some suggestions have been made that the state should clean up the strip of land between the north and southbound lanes of Route 95.

AAA offices are now carrying E-Z pass transponders. New account transponders are free, but a credit or debit card is needed for the initial load of $20 and future reloads. The closest AAA offices to Canton are in Westwood and Rockland.

Canton High School placed three hockey players on the Patriot Ledger All-Scholastic boys’ hockey team: seniors Rich Nee and Pat Ward and junior Brian Brooks. CHS finished the season 16-4-2 and made it to the Division 2 south sectional semifinals.

Brothers Josh Edwards and Nic Edwards of Blue Hills Regional School in Canton also made the Patriot Ledger All-Scholastic team. John, a senior, finished his high school career with 230 points while his brother Nic, a junior, has 184 points with a year to go. They led Blue Hills to a 14-4-4 record and a 14^th straight Mayflower Athletic Conference title.

The property at 519 Washington Street was recently sold to the T&B Company for $625,000 by Sarra Properties. For years, the building that was once home to Mario’s Restaurant and Rosario’s Restaurant was owned by Richie Sarra. Today, T&B Pub occupies the building.

It has been estimated that Massachusetts consumers make over $6 billion a year in online purchases. It has been estimated that the state lost $387 million in state tax revenue.

Wrigley Gum Company recently introduced a new caffeinated gum called Alert Energy Gum, a product that includes as much caffeine as a half a cup of coffee in one piece and promises the “right energy, right now.” The eight-piece package equates to four cups of coffee in your pocket. Wrigley labelled the product for adult use only. However, on May 9, Wrigley “temporarily” stopped the production, sale, and marketing of its gum because of the Food and Drug Administration’s investigation into foods with added caffeine. We’ll see what happens.

A bill recently passed by the state senate would increase funding for local roadwork under the state Chapter 90 program. According to the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, the town of Canton will receive $1,155,480, an increase of over $340,000 from last year’s allocation.

The 2014 Massachusetts state budget is listed at $34 billion.

Meghan Lennon and Meaghan McKenna made the Patriot Ledger All-Scholastic girls’ hockey team. Lennon, a four-year starter, finished her career with 119 points while McKenna, a three-time All-Scholastic, wrapped up a brilliant high school career with 136 points that included 98 goals.

Canton High School junior Sam Larson made the Patriot Ledger All-Scholastic boys’ basketball team. The 6’2” captain averaged 17 points per game and shot a team-high 77 percent from the free-throw line. Larson’s teammate and co-captain this year, senior forward Andrew Mansfield, was listed as a Patriot Ledger honorable mention.

Facebook has over one billion users worldwide. It is the most widely used social media site by individuals. MAC is on Facebook so he can keep in touch with his son, daughters, their friends, his friends, and the rest of the world.

The chuckle of the week: All day long the employees of a construction crew had to endure the boasts of one of its more physically fit workers. “I’ve been lifting weights since I was 10. That’s why I can carry these heavy loads without getting tired,” the man said. A scrawny kid holding a broom then said, “Here’s 50 bucks that says I can push a load in this wheelbarrow to the back gate that even you won’t be able to push back.” “It’s a bet,” the muscular worker said as he threw down his money. The two shook hands, the kid grabbed the handles of the wheel barrow, rolled it toward his nemesis, and said, “Get in.”

This is all for now folks. See you next week.

Joe DeFelice can be reached at manaboutcanton@aol.com.

With the help of Troop 77 scouts and scouters along with members of the community at large, I was able to execute my Eagle project at the DPW garage last summer. The Eagle project consisted of painting a significant number of fire hydrants off of main roads and painting the salt shed. The salt shed holds winter street salt during the other three seasons of the year. It is very important to have the salt stored under a permanent roof because it is water soluble.

Because salt dissolves in water, it can get into natural water supplies. Water sheds are underground natural water storages. The acting agents in the winter salt are pollutants and can contaminate these water sheds. To prevent this wide-scale pollution from occurring, it is important to keep the maintenance of town salt sheds up to par. You may have noticed another attempt to help the town prevent water pollution when we painted “No Dumping” on the town’s drains.

Water pollution is a huge problem in today’s society because we don’t always think about the consequences of our actions on nature. Boy Scouts of America has developed a slogan that embodies the efforts made in our troop’s Eagle projects: “Leave No Trace.”

Sincerely,

Eagle Candidate Vicente Chappuzeau

Former Senior Patrol Leader, Troop 77

The town of Canton may become only the second community in Massachusetts to raise the legal age to purchase cigarettes and other tobacco products from 18 to 21. As first reported by the Canton Citizen last month, the Canton Board of Health verbally agreed to increase the age after hearing about the hazards of underage smoking from Dr. Jonathan Winickoff, professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and Dr. Lester Hartman, a senior associate with Westwood-Mansfield Pediatrics and a self-proclaimed antismoking crusader. MAC agrees and has always been completely against smoking. Needham, the first town in the state to raise the legal age to purchase cigarettes to 21, saw the high school smoking rate drop from 13 percent to 5.5 percent since implementing the age increase in 2006.

It looks like it worked in Needham; however, on the other hand, research is replete with explanations for why some people start to smoke and others do not, and none of it relates to the age limit. Research found that peer pressure, a youngster’s social group, and the influence of friends, particularly for girls, is the single most important factor in the decision to smoke. Public health officials and antismoking advocates still agree that by raising the minimum age to 21, it will drop the number of cigarette users, and that is a good thing.

The Canton Rotary Club will hold a 75^th anniversary gala on June 11 at the Blue Hills Country Club. This year, retired Fire Chief James Fitzpatrick will be honored with Rotary’s “Service Above Self Award.” Tickets are $40 per person and available at the Canton Fire Department, Pratt Realty and Maxie’s Deli, or by calling 781-575-6557.

The second annual Canton Lions Club Yard Sale will be held this Saturday, May 18, from 9 a.m. to noon at Galvin Insurance, 1209 Washington Street.

The Electrical Workers Union recently picketed the new $30 million South Shore YMCA facility being built in Quincy. Sean Callaghan, business agent for IBEW Local 103, said the winning $1.6 million bid submitted by Suburban Electric of Canton includes substandard wages and benefits while Y officials say it was simply the best deal. The initial Local 103 bid was $2 million while Aspire Electrical, also from Canton, a union contractor, came in second with a bid of $1.7 million. Some people say that the union crosses the line into bullying and intimidation when picketing business and job sites. Last year, Local 103 of the IBEW also questioned the construction of the solar farm built in Canton on the property of the old town dump off Pine Street. Canton townspeople, as well as the Board of Selectmen, and in particular its chairman at the time, John Connolly, had to endure weeks of letters to the editor and postcards sent out by the IBEW Local 103 denouncing the construction of the solar farm by non-union contractors. Today, the project has been completed and is up and running — and the town seems to be reaping the benefits.

On April 24, the Federal Reserve unveiled its redesigned $100 bill complete with several new security features. The coolest part of the new bill is the 3D vertical ribbon just to the right of Ben Franklin. You will see little bells inside it, but if you tilt the note up and down, they change to “100” images. You can also get the bells and 100s to move side by side or up and down. It is interesting to note that two out of every three $100 bills are believed to be held overseas, and that several million dollars worth of bogus “Benjamins” are smuggled into the United States yearly by our good friends in North Korea. The new $100 bill will go into circulation starting on October 8, 2013.

The General Motors battery-powered Chevrolet Spark mini-car can travel up to 82 miles on a single charge. It will go on sale in July for about $30,000.

The price of oil has dropped this past month due to lower-than-expected demand in the world’s largest economies, the United States and China. According to oil experts, a decline of 10 cents per gallon translates to $13 billion in savings at the pump.

Absolute Landscaping of Canton will be cleaning up and taking care of the flower beds in the center of Canton. The company will donate their time and materials to beautify downtown Canton.

Most of us probably never heard of Stanley A. Dashew, an inventor and entrepreneur who recently died at the age of 96, but MAC is sure that most of us carry in our wallets his invention: the plastic credit card. Mr. Dashew and a team of engineers developed a machine with a keyboard that could emboss plastic cards with a customer’s name, account number, and an expiration date. They also built an imprinting machine that could capture all the information contained on the card and print out a receipt to be signed by the customer. Mr. Dashew holds 40 patents. At the age of 94, he instilled his insights about life and business in a book entitled “You Can Do It: Inspiration and Lessons from an Inventor, Entrepreneur and Sailor.”

Mr. Dashew once said, “It is about whether you pick yourself up after a failure and proceed forward anyway. Anything is possible with the right attitude and a dose of hard work.”

This is all for now folks. See you next week.

Joe DeFelice can be reached at manaboutcanton@aol.com.

Despite the understandable reluctance of local pols and their followers to support Ed Markey in this primary, I am sure we all recognize that the right choice was made by the people of this state. Markey will lend the gravitas, awareness and progressiveness that our country needs as he joins his friend Elizabeth Warren in the Senate.

But he can’t get there until he wins the general election June 25 against the Republican candidate, a Scott Brown clone with the same money backing him. Please, you voters who told me, “I voted for Scott Brown because he was so good looking, so that was the same reason I’ll vote for Ed Markey,” educate yourself on the issues. Fortunately, we had Lynch’s record to compare against his flip-flopping words. With this newly minted Republican, we have no record to look at, only the history of Republicans to march in lockstep to whatever pro-rich, pro Big Oil, pro NRA, pro Big Pharma brainwashing their money can buy.

We folks from Massachusetts have the brains and analytical skills to determine who will protect women’s rights the best, who will support environmental laws to produce alternative energy and diminish Monsanto’s ability to poison our earth with their pesticides, etc.

Where were the banners last Tuesday proclaiming that it was an election day? We were open until 8 p.m. and few people came. I think they don’t mean to and many are waking up today saying, “I forgot all about it. I was so tired from working or whatever issue came up.” Next time, let’s put those banners on every entrance to the town: Neponset Street, Washington Street, Dedham Street.

June 25 is the next important election day. Thank goodness, we know that every vote you make counts, since we are not hampered by town borders on that day. Today we can rejoice because once again we have given all Democrats a leader who is respected by the administration and his peers in the Senate for his work in getting the American Disabilities Act passed, for voting for your right NOT to be denied coverage for existing conditions, for taking BP to task for its continuing pollution of our nation’s beaches and buffer lands, for supporting women’s reproductive rights, etc.

Remember, the polling booth is private. Once inside that booth, you can vote however you wish, regardless of what external forces have manipulated you otherwise. You are an American and can exercise one of the few rights we still have, the right to vote — the right to determine who among us is strong and resilient enough to withstand the paralysis that now afflicts our Congress.

Thank you for voting.

Alice Brown

A $754,000 project to replace windows at the Hansen Elementary and Galvin Middle School skyrocketed to $2,345,000 following the discovery of toxic contaminants and asbestos found in the window caulking at both schools.

According to Canton School Superintendent Jeff Granatino, and thanks in large part to Canton Finance Director Jim Murgia and School Business Manager Ken Leon, the Massachusetts School Building Authority will pay 45 percent of the cost. The contaminants do not pose a danger in their present dormant state. Construction to replace the windows will begin at the end of the school year in 2014, with an expected completion date of September 2014.

The new chairman of the Canton School Committee is Cindy Thomas. Reuki Schutt is the new vice chairman.

The last day of school in Canton will be Friday, June 28, due to the many snow days this past winter.

The town of Canton’s fiscal year 2014 operating budget general fund is $74.7 million, an increase of 3.3 percent over last year. The school operating budget for fiscal year 2014 is $33.32 million, a 4.3 percent increase compared to the current year’s budget.

The town of Canton will hold its annual household hazardous waste collection day on Saturday, May 11, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the DPW garage at 150 Bolivar Street. Collections will include tires, batteries, motor oil, oil paint, solvents, and other hazardous waste.

The Canton Garden Club will also hold its annual plant sale from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Canton Public Library on Saturday, May 11. Proceeds will benefit the club’s scholarship fund and town beatification projects.

The Canton CPA tax surcharge of 1 percent will begin in fiscal year 2014.

The Canton Public Library is looking for a custodian.

According to Don Rodman, president of the Rodman Ride for Kids, in 2012, “Our fundraising collaborative raised over $10.3 million” to support the at-risk children our affiliated charities serve. Over 100,000 children received services in 2012. The Rodman Ride for Kids is ranked number one in the United States among all single-day athletic fundraisers benefiting kids.

An article titled “Ginger and Me” by Jeanette Lehman of Canton appeared in the April/May edition of Reminisce Magazine on Page 24.

Voters at annual town meeting will be asked to approve borrowing $810,000 to replace a fire department ladder truck with the ambulance fund paying for the debt service.

The Community Preservation Committee will ask town meeting voters to exclude $100,000 of assessed value for each commercial taxpayer (similar to residential taxpayers), subject to ballot approval.

In case you missed it, National Licorice Day was on April 10 and National Arbor Day was on April 26. Also in April were National Pest Management Month, National Pecan Month, National Soy Food Month, and National Physical Therapy Month, according to the Boston Herald. In addition, April 22 was Earth Day and April 24 was Administrative Professionals’ Day.

A Boston crime writer, Casey Sherman, has sold the rights to his 2005 Boston Strangler book, Search for Boston’s Most Notorious Killer, and plans are to develop it into a television series. Canton native Chad Hoffman, former ABC network drama head, plans to turn it into a miniseries or a full TV series. Hoffman produced a number of hits for ABC, including “Twin Peaks,” “China Beach,” and “Thirty Something.”

Congratulations to CHS freshman Stephanie Milne for making the Patriot Ledger All-Scholastic gymnastics team.

CHS juniors Chris Sullivan and Quinn Merrigan both made the Patriot Ledger All-Scholastic wrestling team. Quinn won the Division 3 state championship in the 138-pound class while Chris placed second in the Division 3 states in the 132-pound division. Both are repeat All-Scholastics.

Canton is not alone when it comes to candidates (or lack thereof) running for office. The town of Whitman also had no contested races. In fact, for two seats on the School Committee, only one person came forward to run, while three Planning Board spots drew only two candidates … another sad state of affairs.

According to the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, the average income per person in 2010 in the state of Massachusetts was $34,330.

One of MAC’s favorite high school coaches, John Lee of Walpole (MAC worked in Walpole for 20 years), will be memorialized with the construction of the John E. Lee Press Box at Turco Field. Former players and friends raised $200,000 for the project. Groundbreaking will take place in June, and the facility will be ready for the 2013 football season. The legendary Hall of Fame coach amassed a career record of 212 wins, only 33 losses, and seven ties between 1968 and 1993. It included six Super Bowl appearances with four victories. Lee, who will turn 80 in October, still lives in Walpole.

We have to learn to be our own best friends because we fall too easily into the trap of being our own worst enemies.

This is all for now folks. See you next week.

Joe DeFelice can be reached at manaboutcanton@aol.com.

The day that our vacation turned deadly we were expecting Lisa and Mariel to return from touring the country. Steve and I were leaving the beach when we suddenly heard radios being turned up everywhere. “Something’s happened,” I said to Steve. In Israel, when bus drivers turn up the volume of their radios, it means trouble.

We learned that there had been a skirmish on the Lebanese border. Israeli soldiers had been killed, some taken hostage. The next day the katyushas made their appearance. And so the nightmare began.

Steve and the girls had never been in a war-time situation before. Mom and I tried to reassure them, but I knew that this was different. I had spent years being suspicious of every stray, ownerless package but had never experienced this intense, random bombing. When the first people were killed, the first houses and stores blown up, we realized that the only safe places were bomb shelters.

We stayed glued to our TV sets even though we could hear the bombs and their reverberations in the streets. Still, it felt like it was happening someplace else. The next day we were told that it was safe to go out for a few hours to shop for food. As we walked to the supermarket, Lisa asked me, “Mom, how do they know it’s safe?” I didn’t want to tell her that there was no such thing as safe, so I made up some reassuring lie.

The days were surreal. One afternoon I stood in front of our building and watched the aftermath of an explosion down the street, feeling as if I were watching TV. The tension ebbed a bit during the nights — until a bomb went off in the next street in the middle of the night, causing me to almost hit the ceiling.

At the end of that week I forced Shatz and Lisa to go home. I hoped that once they left I could convince mom to go back to the States with me. Though Mariel and I stayed on, mom refused to budge. She insisted that there was no way that she was going to abandon her country. I cajoled, pleaded, yelled, pulled out my hair, all to no avail. Mom wasn’t going anywhere. Mariel and I had no choice but to take off without her.

We got home on a Friday, and by Sunday we saw pictures of the apartment building next to mom’s sheared off at the corners by a bomb. That finally shook her up. She agreed to come to us. Mom stayed for three weeks, protesting the entire time. She kept telling us that she felt like a traitor, that she should be home when her country was in trouble. We couldn’t understand why she couldn’t simply relax and enjoy the unexpected holiday with her family. “How are you going to help if you’re in Israel?” we would ask her. “Are they going to give you an Uzi and send you to the front lines?” But she was adamant. She wanted to go home.

Fast forward to April 15, 2013. For the first time in years, Steve and I planned a trip for April vacation week visiting Lisa and Matt in California. Mariel had come in for the weekend as well, and it had been wonderful. On Monday we dropped her off at the airport for her return flight and went for a stroll near the ocean. Suddenly my phone buzzed — a text from Mariel telling us that a couple of bombs had exploded at the Boston Marathon finish line. We were stunned. Everyone took out phones to search for news. We stood there in the beautiful sunshine, listening to the ocean, eyes glued to phone screens filled with horror. And that’s when it hit me — I needed to get back home to Boston.

I knew I was being ridiculous. There was nothing I could do; no one was going to put me on any front line of anything. I wasn’t a police officer or a doctor. But the pull was so strong and the feeling wouldn’t leave — I had to get back. I didn’t tell Steve or the kids. It was just too ridiculous. But I did finally understand how mom felt all those years ago when she felt that she had betrayed her country by running away.

All that week, wherever we went, I managed to slip the fact that we were Bostonians into any conversation that we had with strangers. I couldn’t understand why I had this urgent need to make my Boston citizenship known to the world. If I could have worn a t-shirt blazing a neon Boston sign, I would have. Every morning I rushed to hear the news. I felt lost, frightened and proud all at once. I may not be Boston born, but after almost 40 years I am Boston bred. This city now claims a bigger piece of my heart than I ever realized. Boston, you’re my home.

The signs of spring are everywhere, Mother Nature is greening the grass, and the trees and shrubs are coming into bloom. Other signs of spring are beginning to blossom on our utility poles around town: The first of several carnival signs appeared last week, soon to be followed by a long season of yard sale signs.

I would like to remind the organizations that are sponsoring carnivals and the homeowners who are having yard sales that the law of gravity has not been repealed. What goes up must come down. These signs should be removed by the persons who put them up no later than 24 hours after the event has ended. All too often they remain on the poles until they fall off and litter the ground.

Please show some civic pride and help to keep our town clean. If the signs are not removed after 24 hours the organizations and homeowners should be fined for littering.

Sincerely,

Frank Labollita

I have, as have most of the citizens of Canton, been reading article after article about the impending large developments being planned for Canton. In almost every article there has been a discussion of 40B units and the effect they may have on our school system and other town services. But I have not heard one word about how many fully accessible units would be designated exclusively for wounded warriors.

Canton is a wonderful town to live in. Have any of the town boards involved with the permitting process given any thought to encouraging the various developers to make some of the units in each development fully accessible for some of our returning wounded warriors? After all, they are the ones that gave so much to make this town and country such a great place to live.

Don’t they deserve to have all of us do something positive on their behalf? With the impending annual town meeting the voters will have a chance to express their thanks to these heroes.

Gregory W. Driscoll

Brooksweld Road

At the annual town meeting to be held on Monday, May 13, voters will be asked to approve a zoning change that will allow the construction of a senior housing community in Canton. The “SHOD” (Senior Housing Overlay District) zoning articles, submitted by attorney Richard Staiti on behalf of Brightview Senior Living, will result in a new building made up of 175 units composed of independent living units, as well as assisted-care and memory-care living units, on land located at 125 Turnpike Street.

The three articles will amend the bylaw, amend the map, and add new definitions under the title “SHOD.” This special type of housing would be reserved for seniors age 62 and older. The land is the present site and operation of AA Will Sand and Gravel. It consists of about 32 acres of land, half of which is wetland. The new building will only use about 10 percent of land and will leave a vast amount of the present land open and untouched.

The land is zoned for residential B and could be built as of right by a developer for single-family homes. In fact, 20 to 35 single-family homes could be built on the property, and with the increasing costs to educate students and already crowded classrooms, senior housing makes sense. Brightview will pay over $235,000 in taxes to the town and also make a one-time cash contribution of over $300,000 to the town in lieu of setting aside affordable units.

Brightview Senior Living owns and operates many senior housing communities in the state, with two others under construction, the nearest one being New Pond Village in Walpole. Both the Canton Planning Board as well as the Canton Finance Committee voted unanimously to support the SHOD zoning articles. MAC urges you to vote yes on Articles 16, 17 and 18 for the senior housing community!

The Canton Rotary Club will celebrate its 75^th anniversary on Tuesday, June 11, at the Blue Hills Country Club in Canton. Retired Canton Fire Chief Jim Fitzpatrick will be the guest honoree.

The Stoughton Zoning Board of Appeals recently approved the expansion of the IKEA furniture store by adding 60,000 square feet for a new warehouse.

According to the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, the percentage of minority students in Canton schools is 23. Milton and Sharon are 30 percent, while Randolph is close to 70 percent.

Former Cantonite Greg Timilty is running for the District 8 spot on the Boston City Council. Greg is the son of Joe Timilty, a former state senator from Canton. Greg’s opponent, Joshua Zakim, is also the son of another famous local politician, the late civil rights activist Leonard P. Zakim. His father is the namesake of the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge.

A sure sign of spring in Boston is the return of the swan boats to the Public Garden. The boats began running for the 137^th consecutive year on Saturday, April 13, and will continue to run through September 15.

The Boston Red Sox public address announcers for 2013 will be operated by a three-man PA rotation system. Dick Flavin, former WBZ-TV host, will work the day games. Longtime sportscaster, also at WBZ-TV, Bob Lobel, will handle most Saturday games, while a newcomer to the sport scene, Henry Mahegan, a 31-year-old Charlestown High School teacher, will be the workhorse, taking most of the night games.

The CBS Sports Scene at Patriots Place in Foxboro was recently named 2013 sports bar of the year. The sports bar has 147 HD TVs.

The Ford Focus was the world’s top-selling car in 2012 with over one million sold. More than a quarter of all Focuses were sold in China, the model’s largest market. The Toyota Corolla was the second best selling vehicle.

The U.S. Department of Energy said it expects gasoline prices at the pumps to average $3.60 per gallon through the summer driving season, which runs from now through September.

If the state budget is approved, the gas tax would rise to 24 cents per gallon starting in July. The three-cent hike would bring an estimated $100 million a year into the state treasury.

The average U.S. state gas tax is 23.44 cents per gallon. In New England, Connecticut has the highest gas tax at 46 cents per gallon.

Robert J. Murphy, the former Canton conservation agent, was paid an annual salary of $48,960 by the town of Canton. Murphy was the conservation agent for Canton for 22 years. He left in November 2012 amid conflict of interest allegations.

The new conservation agent for Canton will be Cynthia O’Connell. She will share her duties with the town of Dedham where she is presently employed as its conservation agent.

According to the U.S. Census American Community Survey, almost 50 percent of Canton residents age 25 or older hold a bachelor’s degree or higher. Sharon and Westwood top the list on the south shore at almost 70 percent, while neighboring Stoughton and Randolph check in at 30 percent.

The town of Westwood will hold a special town meeting within its annual town meeting on May 6 on seven warrant articles related specifically to the University Station construction project. The project borders the town of Canton at University Ave.

If you make a decision for the right reasons, it is never wrong.

This is all for now folks. See you next week.

Joe DeFelice can be reached at manaboutcanton@aol.com.