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Date: 8/8/2022
HADLEY – The Hadley Select Board’s meeting on Aug. 3 included approving an entertainment license for the 216-year-old Barstow’s Longview Farm and interviewing and hiring the new Hadley Media director.
Denise Barstow Manz, Barstow’s marketing and education manager, first approached the Planning Board earlier in the week to draft a recommendation for the farm’s entertainment license to the Select Board. The Planning Board recommended the approval of an entertainment license permitting a band to play until 7 p.m., the time Barstow Manz said they always finished playing.
“We didn’t know that we needed an entertainment permit in the past, so I’m here making this right,” Barstow Manz said. “We sometimes have burger nights where we have a band of local, awesome old dudes that come. We do not pay them, and they play for two hours. It’s like one night a month and it’s not every month. They’re done playing by 7 [p.m.].”
The Select Board agreed that it was best to keep a consistent process with previous entertainment license requests in businesses located in the agricultural-residential district and follow the Planning Board’s recommendations.
Barstow Manz said she would prefer not to have any conditions on the license such days of the week or specific times, but was fine with the license expiring at 7 p.m.
“It’s really not a big part of our business,” Barstow Manz said. “It’s something that we’ve offered before on the weekends in the afternoon, or maybe on our Burger Night which happens once a month in the summertime on a Tuesday night and they’re done at 7 p.m. We’ve never gotten any complaints from our neighbors so I don’t know if we need to have any kind of restrictions on the dates or the times or the months, but we would like to keep it open.”
Hadley Media
The Select Board also interviewed and unanimously agreed to hire Alex Lamarche on the spot for the Hadley Media director role after the departure of both former Hadley Media employees in late July.
According to the Granby Media website, Lamarche worked his way to becoming the executive director of Granby Media after being hired in 2017 as the production coordinator. Lamarche graduated from Westfield State University in 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in communication with a minor political science.
Lamarche said he first plans to split time between Granby and Hadley and said he hoped to be fully transitioned by next month or sooner.
“We’re working on a gradual transition; I know you guys need your meetings covered,” Lamarche said. “They have to pluck a new director in Granby so I’m going to make sure they have the resources and help that they need on my end to have an easy, smooth transition.”
Select Board member Molly Keegan said she had spent some time sifting through the Granby Media website and said that it “certainly suggests we have a lot of room for improvement.” Keegan said she would be all in favor of hiring Lamarche if he could bolster the Hadley Media site to something similar.
“I was once told that I make Granby look more technologically literate than we should be,” Lamarche said. “Whether or not that was a joke, serious, or both, I have no clue. But I’d love to get you guys in the right direction toward the 21st century.”
The full meeting is available online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Piz65wRX--I.