Recognizing the nation of India’s independence from Britain in 1947 and sharing many aspects of their heritage and diverse culture with their children were highlights of India Day, celebrated by members of Needham’s Indian community on Aug. 15.

Hosted by ICON, the Indian Community of Needham, the event brought together some 300 people at Powers Hall to showcase art, music, dance and traditional dress representing many of the 28 states in India. “We are a very diverse culture,” said Anumeha Srivastava, ICON’s communications chair. “Most of the states have some customs and cultures of their own so everyone tried to display that.” The regional costume show was one of many colorful presentations of the afternoon honoring India’s heritage.

For the younger generation, most of whom were born in the United States, it was an opportunity to experience and learn about the variety within Indian culture. Children in different age groups performed three independence day-themed dances and teens served as emcees. They also created pieces for an art exhibition called Indian Independence and Heritage which included drawings of the flag and map of India along with national symbols such as the lotus flower and peacock, which were displayed at the event.

“For most of our young, second-generation children, these events provide a meaningful way to understand and connect with their roots,” said Hemant Chowdhary, president of ICON. “And to do it not just by hearing about Indian culture, but by experiencing and participating in it.”

The attributes of both Indian and American cultures were highlighted in remarks by guest speaker Dr. Ashish Jha, former Biden administration COVID response coordinator.

The event also was an opportunity for the wider Needham community and Chowdhary said he was pleased that many friends and families from outside the Indian community attended. Since ICON was founded in 2019 he said it has provided a platform throughout the year to bring families together and to keep the cultural dimension alive through events often related to holidays, such as Diwali in the fall and Holi in the spring. 

He noted that in recent years some in the Indian community have begun to take a more active role in Needham’s social and civic life.

“Gradually through these we are also trying to say that we want to be an integral part of Needham’s community and we definitely are trying to go beyond just Indian families and interact with the broader community,” said Chowdhary. “So those are all benefits of coming together.”

On a glorious Saturday morning better suited for almost anything other than sitting indoors to discuss municipal planning, the Select Board spent three hours prioritizing a to-do list appropriate for a town contemplating the largest capital project in its history.

The Aug. 15 discussion, framed as a “goals-setting” exercise but more accurately a meeting about choosing among priorities that help meet the board’s seven standing goals, was highly cognizant of the town’s pending obligations for building a new Pollard Middle School. After factoring in expected reimbursements from the state, the town’s financial obligation for the project will be equivalent to the amount the town is expected to spend on everything it does in FY27, or roughly $260 million. 

Given the project will be funded by debt, the interest costs over three decades will inflate that number considerably. 

So, it was not surprising that the Select Board reviewed far fewer town initiatives than it has traditionally evaluated in past goals meetings, when up to 100 or more items were considered. The board discussed 50, and by the end of the process the members chose to list just 23 as top priorities.

Select Board Chair Heidi Frail said the morning’s work would be to try to answer “how do the projects and the tasks that people ask for, or we think are important, fit within these goals. And then, what do we actually have the ability to execute on? How will that work and how much money will it cost?” 

“We’ve got a lot of really big projects that are already in motion and therefore we’ll probably end up pushing a lot of other projects off of the priority list,” she said.

“I think we have to be prepared for some discomfort — the discomfort that it gives us but also the discomfort this gives others as well,” a reference to projects and initiatives that have strong constituencies yet will likely be deferred.

“But there’s only so much time, so much money. We have to be realistic about what we can achieve so that we can achieve the things that we prioritize.”

The backdrop for the decision-making process was the seven goals the board had previously established and opted not to change. Those goals are that Needham be:

• Healthy and Socially Thriving

• Economically vital

• Livable

• Accessible and Connected

• Safe

• Responsibly Governed

• Environmentally Sustainable

What IS do-able?

While Pollard surely will be a massive lift (assuming October Town Meeting and voters in November approve the $325 million project), its debt will not have a meaningful impact on the town budget until FY2030.

Also, the town has been reducing its debt load. Since FY2023, the town’s debt service payments have been dropping — falling from $20.2 million and 9.85% of the operating budget in FY23, to $16.8 million and 7.14% in the current FY26 operating budget.

Consequently, the Select Board generally showed cautious optimism about being positioned to advance certain major initiatives.

“We all want to do everything,” said member Kevin Keane. “But I think the issue is we have to clear the decks just to do the mission critical stuff — and that’s Pollard, Stephen Palmer and the Quiet Zone.”

For Pollard, that support was expressed when the board voted at its Aug. 3 meeting to place the Prop. 2½ debt exclusion override question on the Nov. 3 election ballot. The Select Board vote was 4-1, with member Josh Levy voting against.

While consequential in the long run, that support carries no significant immediate financial impact. The same is true for the board’s intentions to prioritize plans for a possible new use for the Stephen Palmer apartment building scheduled to be returned to town control by next spring.

The Pickering Street property will be under the jurisdiction of the School Committee once its residential use ends, but the schools have only recently initiated the process of studying possible school-related uses.

As long as the School Committee remains in planning mode, the town will continue to manage the wind down and remain responsible for maintaining the building after it is vacated.

Any future use of the property will likely be discussed in the context of an overall townwide facilities master plan. Town Manager Katie King expressed the need for a holistic look at all the town’s permanent buildings and town-owned land. King said the town will seek funding at a future Town Meeting to obtain consulting help to conduct a study. That study could require more than a year to complete. 

As for the Quiet Zone, Town Meeting in May authorized the town to take on $8.2 million in debt to upgrade the town’s five public way commuter rail crossings. The town has reached an agreement with the MBTA and its commuter rail operator, Keolis, to initiate the project. It is also advancing the design for all five crossings while studying the feasibility of a culvert at the town’s sixth rail crossing of the non-public way at the Needham Golf Course.

Support for the day-to-day

The board also discussed multiple aspects of town operations that are focused on day-to-day needs. This includes significant IT projects that have already been funded.

In a project expected to take up to three years, the town will be installing a new Enterprise Resource Planning Software System funded by a $2 million appropriation voted at the 2025 Annual Town Meeting.

The principal objective is to replace the town’s problematic billing, collections and accounting software with a modern, cloud-based ERP system. The town in June chose Tyler Technologies MUNIS system as the single financial system for the town.

“The financial software has huge implications for our residents,” said King of the need to replace the current technology, a glitchy system that has more than occasionally made a hash of issuing water and sewer, real estate tax and excise tax bills.

The town also will be making investments in a cybersecurity upgrade to lessen its vulnerability to ransomware and other outside attacks.

The next step in the prioritization process will be for all five Select Board members to rank their goals as either Tier 1, 2 or 3 and submit that list to King. She will then compile the results for further discussion at the board’s Sept. 8 meeting.

“I feel your pain — prioritization is really hard,” King said. “I just want to set realistic expectations because I don’t want to start from a place where I know it might result in frustration.”

In recent months there have been a number of primary elections across the country in which well-known, established Democrats lost or nearly lost to opponents who were committed to a range of policies considered hard-left: Medicare for All, for example (Sen. Ed Markey is also a supporter), or abolishing ICE and defunding the Department of Homeland Security. Could another such race be shaping up here? In this September’s Democratic primary for Massachusetts’ 4th Congressional District — which includes Needham — candidate Jason Poulos, whose platform includes many hard-left policies, is running against three-term Representative Jake Auchincloss.

Poulos, who at 40 is slightly older than the political veteran Auchincloss, grew up in Sherborn and attended UMass Amherst (on Pell Grants, he likes to point out). But he chose an unusual path for a now-budding politician: he earned his PhD “in political science and computational science and engineering” at UC Berkeley and came back to study AI and health policy at Harvard Medical School as a post-doctoral fellow. 

“I’m very concerned about the impact of AI on the economy and society, particularly job displacement due to AI. And so I’m really pushing for big structural progressive changes to address these needs: Medicare for all to decouple health insurance with employment. The PRO Act, which would extend collective bargaining rights to gig employees. And I’m also in favor of reducing the war machine — $1.5 trillion that the House just voted for the Pentagon budget. I think we should take that money and reinvest it in our communities in schooling and housing and education.” 

Like Angie Nixon, a state representative who won a national Democratic primary in Florida this week, Poulos has far less name recognition and far less money than the other Democratic candidate. He states that the latter is a good thing: He has only accepted small contributions, leaving him with $41,000 to spend in the face of Auchincloss’s $3.5 million, $667,000 of which came from special interest or corporate PACs (more than $2.5 million came from individual donors).

In conversation and on his website, Poulos consistently takes positions that would sound familiar to Massachusetts liberal voters, emphasizing worker protections, canceling student debt, expanding affordable housing, Social Security, and public transit and paying for it by reducing defense spending and raising taxes on corporations and the richest Americans. The primary foreign policy emphasized is to end U.S. military aid to Israel. “American tax dollars must not fund human rights violations,” reads a statement on Poulos’s website.

Together, the policies align with positions taken by candidates running as Democratic Socialists. But Poulos is running, he said, as a Democrat, not as a Democratic Socialist.

“I’m a DSA member,” he said, “but this is not a Democratic Socialists of America campaign.” He joined the DSA when it was helping Starbucks workers to unionize. “I really like their position on labor issues.” Poulos and Auchincloss agree that federal policies — and national politics — have a direct impact on the district.

“When I’m canvassing,” Poulos said, “the cost of housing always comes up. And there are certain levers that the federal government can pull to address this issue. One is the creation of housing supply. I believe that the federal government should have a national housing development board that would have the power to make new investments into affordable housing units. And we see in European countries such as Switzerland, the federal government is involved in creating social housing. We also need federal renter protection. I think we have to do more on getting private equity out of purchasing single family homes. And I think we have to do more about banning algorithmic rental price setting from companies such as RealPage that also artificially drives up rental prices. So there are many levers that the federal government can pull to address the housing affordability crisis.”

Auchincloss (and many others) have described Massachusetts as an “Eds and Meds” economy, and Poulos said he had directly seen the harmful effect of current federal policies on both. 

“I got my PhD from an NSF [National Science Foundation] graduate research fellowship and under the new Trump budget the NSF is halved and the directorate that I got my fellowship under is no longer going to exist. Our campaign manager worked at a lab at Harvard. He had a research job there and his lab’s federal grant got cut.

“Restoring and expanding federal grants, especially in the health care sector is going to be not only beneficial for the 4th District’s economy, it’s going to be beneficial to this entire country’s future as a leader in research and development.”

On Poulos’s key issue, AI’s impact, Auchincloss has advocated for using the tax code to rebalance capital and labor and for creating protections for human content creators. But Poulos brings academic cred — one might call it deep learning — to back up his passion. During his PhD years, he contributed to one of the benchmark tests that the industry uses to assess AI. It’s called Humanity’s Last Exam, and it’s meant to test deep expertise and subtle, nuanced thinking. “The point of the exam was, if an AI model can ‘saturate’ — that’s the word that they use to describe performance that’s 80% or above passing. If an AI model can saturate on an exam like this, then basically humanity is cooked.”

He has not been tracking the progress against that specific benchmark, he said, but he’s pretty sure “they’re becoming increasingly capable of solving these expert-level questions.”

Note: The Observer will cover Rep. Auchincloss and his campaign next week.

School cafeterias have long held the reputation of being a free-for-all. Since COVID, Needham has taken that literally, offering free breakfast and lunch to all students regardless of need. 

When the pandemic shuttered schools and wreaked havoc on food security for many families, the federal government supplemented funding for its National School Lunch Program to offer free meals. In June 2022, when that program reverted to a need-based system, Massachusetts picked up the additional cost and signed it into law the following summer. Now, Needham students can take advantage of two “complete meals” every day. 

The benefits of offering universal free breakfast and lunch are many, said Needham Public Schools Director of Nutrition Services Emily Murphy. “It removes that stigma of categorizing people by their socio-economic status,” she said. “No matter where you come from or who your family is, every kid receives the same meals at school. Research shows that’s not what’s out there for children.” 

The nutritional requirements for a complete meal come from the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Students are required to choose three items at each meal, one of which must be a fruit or vegetable to be considered a balanced plate. Choices include whole grains, protein, milk and fruits and vegetables. Students can also purchase a la carte options. 

Murphy said this has a ripple effect on students being able to pay better attention in class, going to the nurse less, absenteeism and participation in after-school activities. “It’s positive for academics, mental health and for their athletics.” 

She also said she values the “community sense” of the program. “When everybody is treated the same, it creates a much more equal and balanced community setting.” 

In the first few years of the universal meals program, Murphy saw a significant increase in students eating breakfast and lunch at school. Participation has now plateaued, something she hopes to improve across the schools, especially for breakfast. She and her team have worked to improve menus, watching market trends and understanding what children at each level want to eat. They now bake whole grain muffins and breads in house and have generally increased in-house cooking, for example. “Years ago scratch cooking was maybe a vegetable side,” Murphy said. “Now we’re scratch cooking mains multiple times a week.” 

Strengthening the changes and initiatives Nutrition Services has made over the past four years since Murphy has been in the role is her focus this year. With the increase in scratch cooking, the team has added more diverse and “ethnic” recipes to the menu. In an effort to be more sustainable, the schools now have reusable trays and a food recovery program, and the department has added more local vendors. 

“Staff needs training to have all the skills possible and all the tools they need to execute these recipes,” said Murphy. “More deliveries means more people that you’re working with, more foods coming in that need processing. We’ve also had changes to our whole software program and systems. All of that needs continuous program support. We all need to make sure in the nutrition department that they are running smoothly.” 

Each school has its own complexities for where and why participation may be lacking, but overall education and promotion of the program needs improvement, said Murphy. She plans to meet with students and parents to share information, run changes and ideas by them and get feedback, hoping these new lines of communication will help. 

“If we’re purchasing a local whitefish from Boston Harbor, we want to make sure they know that fish is being sourced locally, is extremely fresh, [explain] all the nutritional benefits,” said Murphy. “As a parent, I’d love to know that my school’s nutrition department is doing these things.” 

Note: Public service information about the school meal program is here.

As has been true since surveying began in 2008, this year’s results from the Polco National Community Survey of Needham residents paint a picture largely — but not totally — of sublime suburban contentment.

Over a two-month period in the spring, 562 randomly selected residents answered dozens of questions asking them to rate Needham’s quality of life on a wide array of aspects — the quality of its schools and just about all municipal services, how safe they feel and whether they plan to stay here and would they recommend Needham as a place to live.

While the majority see the Needham glass as far more than half full, and 97% rate it as a good place to call home, a vast majority also wish it cost less to live here. Fewer than two in 10 respondents (18%) gave positive ratings when asked to rate Needham’s “cost of living.” 

Overall, the sentiments of Needham’s residents did not change much since the 2024 survey as more than three-quarters of the responses were “statistically similar” in 2026. There were, however, double-digit declines in measures of trust and confidence in local government as well as upticks in satisfaction with health care services.

Needham is one of more than 400 U.S. communities that participate in the survey, offering the town the chance to benchmark itself against other municipalities. The surveys are done by Polco, which provides community survey and engagement services to public entities.

“One of the reasons I value the National Community Survey so much is that the methodology is consistent,” said Town Manager Katie King. “It’s ‘apples to apples’ every two years that we do it, but also across every community who’s opted into that system.”

King also values it because NCS does the outreach and the random sampling. “It is not necessarily people who are already engaged in government,” she said. “This is probably our most random outreach. So that’s part of why I find the results so valuable. It’s more representative.”

King probably also values the survey because it paints a picture of a community that ranks Needham’s overall quality of life and its municipal services well above national benchmarks. In numerous categories, more than 90% of respondents once again rated Needham as excellent or good, including:

• Feeling of safety (98%)
• As a place to live (97%)
• As a place to raise children (95%)
• Overall quality of life (93%)
• Would recommend living in Needham (93%)

Town services also fared well, with 81% rating the overall quality of services provided by the Town of Needham positively. This was especially true of the public safety departments, with fire (97%) and police (94%) both scoring well above national benchmarks.

The town’s K-12 school system’s 91% positive rating was also well above the national norm, as was the rating for library services (94%).

Residents also expressed satisfaction with the DPW and multiple elements of the town’s infrastructure, offering high marks for sewer services (91%), drinking water (86%), overall quality of the infrastructure (82%) and even stormwater management (76%).

Other findings, however, signaled a degree of local discontent, especially the 10% drops in both “overall confidence in Needham government” from 67% to 57%, and “generally acting in the best interest of the community” from 72% to 62%.

Asked if that concerned her, King said, “I take feedback to heart — always — but in context.”

“I don’t think I needed the survey to tell me that people have a level of distrust in government writ large, and I think local government has always had the highest level of confidence because it is seen and felt and heard so directly.”

“I am regularly thinking about how we are doing business here in Needham, and in a way that instills confidence in our departments, in our staff,” she added. “But we don’t operate in a vacuum. So what people see on TV, or see what’s happening at the state or the national level, absolutely impacts how people feel about town hall.”

The survey also asked respondents how they rated the quality of services provided by the federal government. That number cratered by 30%, dropping from 57% satisfaction to 27%.

Housing and planning — not so much

Needham’s average single-home value of $1.54 million likely contributes to lackluster ratings for the “variety of housing options” (29%) and “availability of affordable quality housing” (17%). 

While those values are certainly influenced by regional and not purely local forces, respondents seem to feel it reflects poorly on the town when it comes to assigning ratings for “well-planned residential growth” (46%) and “land use planning and zoning” (44%).

And it’s probably fair to assume the high cost of housing was a prime driver of the meager 18% satisfaction rate with “cost of living,” a finding King said has her attention.

“There are so many pieces that ultimately determine what it costs to live in Massachusetts, and what it costs in Needham,” she said. “I think our role is to figure out which of those are actually town levers that we have control over.”

“We are regularly looking at our fees and trying to find that balance between recognizing that cost is important and there’s a cost to deliver basic life and safety services, like water and sewer. We have to invest in those systems to be able to support the community and the economy here as well.”

With a key vote awaiting at the end of the month, Needham is positioned to have almost 25% of the $325.4 million Pollard Middle School project paid for by the state.

Even with the town having submitted a design that often strayed from the Massachusetts School Building Authority’s guidelines, the MSBA found that 83% of the 265,572 square feet of the proposed new building would be eligible for reimbursement, creating the opportunity for a maximum reimbursement of $79 million. 

At its Aug. 10 meeting, the School Building Committee pored over a two-page, 11-by-17 spreadsheet written in six-point type that detailed which elements of the project would and would not qualify for reimbursement.

The MSBA identified 43,576 square feet that it would not reimburse. Of that total, 22,005 square feet is dedicated to the planned auditorium and gym spaces.

SBC members expressed a high level of satisfaction with the 83% yield but emphasized that being “eligible” does not guarantee a particular space will be fully reimbursed. 

The reimbursements apply almost exclusively to the project’s $259.6 million construction budget and not the remaining “soft costs” that create the $325.4 million total project cost. 

The MSBA appears to have extended considerable grace to Needham’s design as it did not adhere to  its own guidelines in certain areas. In some instances, the MSBA supported the town’s choice to dedicate more space than the guidelines recommended.

For example, the town’s design proposes 25,140 square feet for special education space. This is 11,050 square feet above MSBA guidelines, yet the entire 25,140 is eligible for reimbursement.

This allocation will assist with Needham’s emphasis on keeping special education students in Needham rather than require out-of-district placements due to lack of space and/or general capability to educate them locally. The schools contend this avoids having to pay expensive out-of-district tuitions and helps students maintain local connections.

Likewise, MSBA guidelines called for Pollard to have 54 general classrooms, yet the design provides just 45. Tamatha Bibbo, Pollard principal, explained that Needham followed its own educational plan for Pollard. This was a reliance by the town on the MSBA honoring its stated policy to recognize “the importance of educational programming, especially as it relates to the effective planning, design, and construction of adaptable school facilities.”

Bibbo said the 45 classrooms will be sufficient for Pollard’s “cluster” model with up to 90 students distributed among five clusters at each of the three grade levels. Three classrooms per cluster will be supplemented by learning labs — spaces that satisfy the MSBA’s openness to “adaptable facilities.”

“What we have done, thoughtfully and intentionally, is we’ve created a school that works for our educational program,” said Bibbo, who often points out that the educational plan for the new Pollard matches what is currently in place at Pollard and the sixth-grade center at High Rock. 

“We will be using every classroom at about 70 to 80% capacity,” she added. “If we built those additional nine classrooms, they would be left empty 50% or more of the day. We didn’t want to do that.”

Tina Stanislaski of HMFH Architects, the project’s design firm, noted the MSBA guidelines are far from a strict template that can’t be altered.

“The generic template that the MSBA has for middle schools is never used,” said Kozlowski, whose firm has completed more than two dozen MSBA projects. “It’s always tweaked one way or the other — classrooms added, taken away, different programs added.”

“They were able to move the money around and help the project in a lot of different ways.”

A busy spreadsheet tells the story

David Billings of LiRo-Hill, an architectural, engineering and construction services firm consulting on the project, led the committee’s review of the spreadsheet for the total project budget. 

This is a document that will go before the MSBA Board of Directors Aug. 26 when it will vote on advancing the project to its next phase — the MSBA’s Funding the Project module.

“This is a not very simple spreadsheet that the MSBA has worked out for the full budget,” Billings said of the document, which answered the question of what a spreadsheet from IKEA might look like.

Billings and others noted that, for several reasons, having 83% of the space “eligible” for reimbursement will not produce an 83% reimbursement rate.

The project is estimated to cost $977 per square foot, but the MSBA caps its reimbursements at $678 per square foot. This reduces the possible reimbursement by one-third.

That gets further lowered when Needham’s reimbursement rate of 42.74% is factored in.

When it meets Aug. 26, the MSBA Board will vote on a project scope and budget that does not factor in budget contingencies, meaning a total of $301,186,196.

“Of that total, $185,035,732 is the “estimated basis” for Needham’s reimbursement. At Needham’s 42.74% rate, the town would be reimbursed $78,977,894, assuming no use of contingency funds. Should the project require contingency spending the total reimbursement could rise to a maximum of $80.6 million.

Two approvals required

Barring some unforeseen circumstances, the MSBA board is virtually assured of moving the project into the MSBA’s Funding the Project phase Aug. 26. This will establish the MSBA’s participation in the project through the execution of a project scope and funding agreement.

The town will then have 120 days to secure the required local funding for the entire $325.4 million budget cost by increasing the town’s borrowing capacity by that amount.

Authorization requires a two-thirds vote in favor at Special Town Meeting in October and a simple majority approval of a debt exclusion override question in November’s general election.

The Nov. 3 override vote will occur regardless of the outcome of the Town Meeting vote.   

A guitar leans against the wall of Matthew DeMarrais’ nondescript metal office at the Needham Recycling and Transfer Station. On a desk behind him is a typewriter of the sort Ernest Hemingway used for his seven novels. They’re all castaways.

The guitar he will give to a music teacher; the typewriter, who knows? Once manager of the much-missed New England Mobile Book Fair, DeMarrais has an affection for writing instruments.

“Trash loads tell stories,” he said. “It might be parents who have passed away or moved to assisted living. Often their children travel up from a distant state with perhaps a week to spare, and as they run out of time, more ends up in the trash. 

“Boxes fall to the floor and photographs from the ‘80s slide out, framed degrees, doctorates and certificates. The guitar came with a bunch of foreign currency.” DeMarrais’ sister is a professor of anthropology, so an interest in people and their lives is natural in this family.

DeMarrais grew up in Needham and cares about the community. Before he came to work at the RTS in December 2014, he worked for an environmental nonprofit called Earthworm. “It was started by MIT kids in 1970 when recycling office paper was not an option. Twenty years later they created recycling opportunities for computers and electronics equipment. All of our work was creative and physical.”

A growing family meant DeMarrais needed a job with better pay and benefits than an NGO could offer, so he accepted a post as assistant superintendent of recycling in Needham. He worked with the crew of 10 employees who process discards, create compost and mulch, and work with everyone from highway builders and roadmakers to landscapers and paper companies. In the past recycling was sold to China, but that market has shifted to buyers in India, Turkey and Vietnam.

As superintendent, he now focuses on budgeting and long-term planning. “We are guardians of public funds, and that creates an obligation. Needham trains us to be exceptionally diligent.”

Needham offers lots of options for recycling, but, he said, Greenpeace put out a study some years ago that showed overall plastic recycling was low. “It was meant to encourage folks to recycle more, but it dispirited consumers.” Yet options to recycle and reuse have increased. In Needham you can recycle everything from gently-used items at the Swap Shop, to that old refrigerator, sharps, paint, bottles, cans, cardboard, food waste and more.

Food waste is a major focus of waste reduction, DeMarrais said. The United States generates around 130 billion pounds of food waste a year — or about a pound of wasted food per person every day. We throw away almost half of every food item we buy. Forty-seven percent of waste comes from households, according to the Department of Agriculture. This in a world where 654 million people are food insecure. One in 10 Americans lack sufficient nutrition, according to the Federal Reserve. And one in five American children go to bed hungry each night, No Kid Hungry reports.

Less than 10% of those who recycle food waste at the RTS remember to remove contaminants like food packaging, plastic or paper. This means that the waste goes for processing in Leominster then to an anaerobic digester in Maine.

Needham collects food waste at schools and cafeterias with 10 gold stars for elementary school kids who tend to be assiduous about recycling, while high schoolers get a, well, you know… DeMarrais is loath to criticize anyone, pointing out highschoolers tend to be rushed and distracted. 

Yard waste is a shining star, not just for the transfer station but for grateful residents who stock up on free compost, mulch and loam. Three to four times a year leaves, cut grass and brush are ground in a huge yellow machine behind the piles of steaming compost, which even in winter is a scorching 160 degrees Fahrenheit at its center.

Chris Willis, the foreman at the garden waste dump site, is “exceptional,” at keeping the area pristine and weeding out items that should not be among garden waste, DeMarrais said.

Although residents tend to be good about not putting trash in garden waste, the small staff at the transfer station still pull coffee and soda cans out of leaf drops. Walking among the compost piles, DeMarrais removes a metal pole and a piece of plank, which he carries with him. After Christmas, around 8,000 discarded trees are dumped. The worst nightmare, though, is the wire in wreaths that has to be painstakingly removed.

Residents are encouraged to leave organic garden refuse. The town doesn’t use pesticides or herbicides in any of its parks or gardens, and it seems residents are trending away from these harmful products among residents. 

The RTS gets some “financial offset” too. The compost is sold to landscapers at $4 a yard. Cardboard waste earns $48 a ton.

From time to time, DeMarrais and his crew also have to deal with illegal dumpers, such as the individual who dumped 300 tires in the woods that had to be removed with front end loaders. Another time, 560 pounds of trash were dumped at Ridge Hill Reservation, the town’s public conservation land.

After posing for photographs, DeMarrais walks over to a bin to dump the plank and pole he has been carrying around. A Rotarian, whose club recently honored DeMarrais, pulls up and holds out his hand to congratulate this humble public servant. DeMarrais then walks back to his office to manage a dispute between a Swap Shop volunteer and a resident; he needs to make the peace.

Charlene Smith is an award-winning journalist and author, a Massachusetts Master Gardener and co-chair of the Needham Garden Club Horticultural Committee