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Community Corner

Keyser: Good to See Downtown Business Owners Getting Together

A final school budget remains up in the air, a new group is trying to form in Hamilton and downtown business are meeting together again.

It's now the month of May, but Mother Nature is still pushing April showers almost every day. We want sunshine and warm weather, not rain days.

It was an interesting in Hamilton on Saturday morning at the . In other words, where do we go in regards to the school budget? With our neighbors in Wenham not going along with town officials and , Hamilton , meaning that the school system does not have approved budget.

One of the many comments I have heard around town is that the school board, seeing that voters would likely go along with town officials and vote for the present budget, would offer proposals to amend the budget figures to a lower amount and include the give back figure to the town. This possible action would help voters in voting approval of the school budget.

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If this does not happen, it remains to be seen where things will end up, since Wenham voters voted for a higher budget for the schools.

And we recently received a long letter in the mail from some town folks who are interested in starting a group or committee to explore the future of this town and where we go from here, so to speak. In reading this letter, I get the sense it might have something to do with any proposed new housing in the town, as this group said that this not the answer to improving the town. No date was set for the first meeting but a e-mail address was listed for anyone who was interested.

Find out what's happening in Hamilton-Wenhamwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Speaking of groups, we're glad to see the and working on where to go on plans for the downtown area. A plan offered a while back was to add second levels to all the stores, and this would open housing for low income folks to move into the business area. The plan sounded fine on paper, but at the time I talked to folks at the on Railroad Avenue and most everyone said they wouldn’t want to live over stores. The plan also never got beyond the talking stage and was discarded.

One of the big problems in the downtown area is that the water table is high all over the business area and this more or less cancels out basements under any building, so high rise buildings won’t be built there.

Maybe it's time to look at space on Willow Street, since one side of the street is zoned as a business area all the way to Asbury Street.

That’s it for this week, and keep track of town meeting business via Hamilton-Wenham Patch. That’s a wrap!

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