There is something almost impressive about watching a four-year public project become a secret overnight. To pull that off, you have to ignore the school children who started it, the public meetings, the State funding, MassDOT, engineers, Board of Selectmen agendas, Planning Board discussions, newspaper articles and eventually an $850,000 Federal appropriation.
Then you open Facebook and discover the shocking truth: Berkley is getting a sidewalk.
Cue the dramatic music. Somewhere, a Netflix producer just sat upright.
We are beginning to wonder whether perhaps folks just don’t pay attention. Renee Gagne’s post certainly isn’t helping us rule out that theory. Here it is. In February. In public. On Facebook. With the funding amount, the source of the funding, the purpose of the project, and even a link explaining the federal program. We regret to report that Facebook’s revolutionary new “read the post before becoming furious about the post” feature remains wildly underutilized.
Nothing screams “secret government project” like Selectwoman Jennifer Vincent explaining the whole damn thing on Facebook, crediting everyone involved and finishing with a yellow heart. Sources jokingly say there may have been a happy cry involved. Very cloak-and-dagger, Jennifer.
Missed it there? How about the Gazette announcement?
And keep reading for plenty more receipts:
Night Meetings: Now With Attendance Required
Even funnier, Berkley recently had a petition demanding the Board of Selectmen return to evening meetings so residents could attend and find out what those sneaky Twits are doing. Cherise Hoak, who authored the petition, was among those demanding the return of evening meetings.
Hoak now asks whether the Twits eliminating night meetings was done “so we couldn’t find out what they are doing,” calling the sidewalk project “pretty damn sneaky.”
There is one tiny problem: the Board discussions about this project referenced below happened at night meetings. Apparently the missing ingredient wasn’t an evening meeting: it was paying the slightest bit of attention to years of them.
As to Mrs. Hoak’s “funny feeling” that people thought this would be “a nice walking path, like around the Common,” that’s exactly what it is. At a June 11 public meeting, the MassDOT consultant described a “pretty unified desire” to connect the Middle School with the Common and library, including because Common events and Town Meeting use the school for overflow parking. You can also see the original drawing submitted for a walking path around the Berkley Common, aimed at supporting seniors, which is why the Council on Aging submitted a letter of support. Apparently Mrs. Hoak’s funny feeling would have benefited from a brief consultation with the facts.
So yes, there is a walking area around the Common. And yes, there is a Middle School connection. So, respectfully, the mystery here isn’t where the sidewalk came from.
Oh, So Now You’re Paying Attention??
Apparently, the scandal is that the project contains the things people asked for. But before we go further into Berkley: Special Sidewalk Unit, readers should see one important receipt: the actual project Berkley submitted for federal funding.
And now that we’re all looking at the same map, not one line cherry-picked from a later preliminary engineering drawing, let’s see what Berkley actually asked the federal government to fund.
The May 2025 (YES, OVER A YEAR AGO) federal funding submission describes a ¾-mile walking path, four ADA-compliant crosswalks and pedestrian lighting connecting the Middle School, Library, Town Hall, Council on Aging and Town Common area. It was supported by the Board of Selectmen and accompanied by letters of support from Senator Dooner, Representative Norman Orrall, school leadership, the Council on Aging, Chamber of Commerce and SRPEDD.
Now look at that yellow line. The Middle School connection the Board supported follows the cemetery pathway toward the Common, not through someone’s private property.
So why are there other lines on the engineering drawings? Because that is quite literally what engineers do. They evaluate grades, ledge, drainage, crossings, property boundaries, costs, and alternative alignments to determine what is actually feasible. A line appearing on a preliminary engineering plan does not magically become a secret replacement project.
The Board has made all these materials public for a reason: transparency. The hope is that residents will look at the information, ask questions, and seek context before reaching conclusions. Renee Gagne appears to have pulled one piece of information from a much larger set of materials from the last few years and, rather than asking what it meant, filled in the blanks herself.
Unfortunately, engineering plans are not Mad Libs. The missing context matters.
The Latest Season of Berkley: Special Sidewalk Unit Then Hit Social Media.
Trees! Ledge! Snow! Lawsuits! Private property! Highway trucks! Children chasing each other! And, lest we forget, wild animals in the woods! At this point, we’re one lost hiker away from an episode of Dateline.
We prefer something less exciting: Receipts. Truth. Context. Not just poorly formed opinions and incomplete information intended to work everyone up.
According to Berkley Public Schools, this began four years ago with students in Scott DeMello’s eighth-grade civics class. They identified a legitimate problem: no safe walking connection between Berkley Middle School and the Town Common. They researched it, presented it, advocated for it and kept working on it.
READ THE RECEIPT — Berkley Public Schools:
And for those imagining the students working inside some secret underground sidewalk evil lair, we have another receipt.
On March 13, 2024, the Board of Selectmen agenda publicly listed: “Board to host 8th Grade Civics Class to discuss crosswalks and sidewalks.” In the minutes document Principal Kimberly Hebert discusses the safety issue and students presenting a safer pathway to the Common. They discussed crosswalk and bridge designs, accessibility, and the fact that the project would require time and money.
So apparently this “sneaky” project was hiding in the most devious place imaginable: a public meeting.
The Massachusetts FY2025 budget later appropriated at least $25,000 “for a sidewalk study that would connect the middle school to the town common.” Not coded language. Not invisible ink. Literally: middle school, Town Common, sidewalk.
READ THE RECEIPT — Massachusetts FY2025 Final Budget:
On August 14, 2024, the Board agenda included “Safe Routes to School Grant Application.” By January 2026, the Board was publicly taking action involving MassDOT technical assistance. In March, the project appeared publicly again.
Then came the $850,000 federal award, and Facebook’s writers’ room really hit its stride. No, Berkley did not reach between the couch cushions of its operating budget and find $850,000 for sidewalks. The federal record identifies $850,000 in Community Project Funding for the “Berkley Town Common Pedestrian Infrastructure and Safety Improvements” project.
READ THE FEDERAL RECEIPT:
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-2026-01-22/pdf/CREC-2026-01-22-bk2.pdf
Does federal funding mean maintenance costs nothing forever? No. Does it guarantee every feature on a preliminary drawing gets built exactly as shown? Also no. Those are fair questions. But “Berkley is broke, why are we spending $850,000?” is a little like yelling at Oprah because you received a free car and are worried about oil changes.
And Thus began Berkley’s Newest Branch of Municipal Accounting: Facebook Forensic Finance.
The Town is “broke.” The “bank account is empty.” We “supposedly do not have any money.” All compelling observations except for the tiny, irritating detail that the construction money being discussed was federal Community Project Funding, not $850,000 somebody found behind the copier at Town Hall and they decided to blow it on recreational concrete.
A Fake Facebook Scandal: With an Assist from the Berkley Highway Department
Then we arrive at June 11, when the Board of Selectmen and Planning Board discussed virtually everything Facebook would later “discover”: snow, trees, ledge, Highway operations, staffing, fencing, private property, easements, sight lines, crosswalks, emergency vehicles, alternative routes and maintenance.
It was the municipal version of Jeopardy!: “I’ll take Things Facebook Says Nobody Thought About for $800, Ken.” And there is one small problem with treating those engineering drawings as evidence of a secret final plan: the engineer repeatedly told everyone they weren’t one.
READ THE RECEIPTS — June 11, 2026:
Thank you Maureen for bringing facts
When the possible private-property/easement issue was raised, the engineer explained that the yellow line could have “a series of different alignments.” Then came perhaps the least mysterious statement in the history of secret government conspiracies:
“This was just our first shot at it.” He immediately explained there were other alternatives. So no, discussing an easement did not mean the Town selected that route. It meant an engineer drew an option, somebody questioned it, and the engineer said it could move. Because as the BOS have made clear by their original grant submission, they did not support this option.
We next entered the engineering-review portion of Facebook, where a conceptual plan apparently became a finished sidewalk, winter arrived early, an imaginary child slipped on imaginary ice, was bitten by a rabid fox while still down on the ground and the entire project was declared “game over.”
Meanwhile, back on planet Earth the engineers were still doing the things engineers do: studying routes, constraints, crossings, walls, grades, property impacts and safety before a final design exists.
And what did the engineer describe as the Middle School connection? A path following “an informal walking connection today for a number of students” that passes through the cemetery toward the Common and library. The goal was to formalize the route students already use. So yes, Dear Readers, somehow we have returned to the cemetery. Apparently Berkley’s cinematic universe has only so many filming locations.
The sidewalk was also criticized because children might use it, chase one another, and potentially enter the road, which is an interesting argument against infrastructure specifically intended to give pedestrians somewhere other than the road to travel.
Then came perhaps the most beautifully Berkley solution of all: why build pedestrian infrastructure when we could simply teach children to look both ways? The irony? This entire project began with Berkley Middle School students doing exactly what we ask of kids: identifying a problem, researching it, and bringing a solution to their local government.
The Kids Understood the Assignment. The Facebook Comment Section is Going to Need to Stay Behind for Tutoring.
By this point, the comment section had reached its philosophical phase: People can’t walk on grass? What is the purpose of a path? And those are perfectly fair questions, if the preceding years of meetings, student presentations, planning work, grant applications, public documents and funding announcements didn’t exist. But they do. That’s really the entire point of this article.
Sure Maria. People can also wash clothes in a river. Civilization occasionally tries to improve upon things. And if you been paying attention for the last 3 years of meetings and announcements – the funds are coming from the federal government.
And Then There are the Wild Animals.
At the June 11 meeting, someone described looking toward the woods and thinking the movement they saw was deer. It wasn’t deer. It was the kids.
The proposed path does not summon wildlife like some municipal version of Jumanji. The Town isn’t calling in Ace Ventura. The woods already exist. The children are already walking through them. The point is to determine whether the route they already use can be made safer and with federal money instead of Berkley taxpayer money.
There is one piece that is not funny. Officials also discussed the wooded route in connection with emergency planning for Berkley Middle School, including an active-shooter tabletop exercise and potentially evacuating students through those woods toward the public-safety area. A defined path does not invent those risks; it attempts to address them.
And somehow, amid all the outrage, accusations and Facebook detective work, the best part of this entire story gets lost: Berkley’s kids did exactly what we teach them good citizenship is supposed to look like. They saw a problem. They researched it. They advocated. They attended meetings. Other classes carried it forward. State money followed. MassDOT and engineers got involved. Eventually, federal funding followed.
And then a handful of “adults” get on Facebook and try to turn the students’ project into the latest political crisis. Is it about the sidewalk, the current Board, who gets the credit, or some lingering disappointment over that 47-day experiment in municipal leadership? We’ll let readers study the timeline and reach their own conclusions. Perhaps that’s the real final exam.
Nobody has to love every inch of any project. But dates matter. Agendas matter. Minutes matter. Facts matter. Preliminary drawings are not final plans. Federal grants are not Berkley’s operating budget. And skipping meetings in 2024, 2025 and not following any news coming out of town hall matters when someone attempts to convince you that a multi-year project suddenly appeared in 2026.
This sidewalk wasn’t hidden. The students weren’t hidden. The meetings weren’t hidden. The funding wasn’t hidden. And despite recent reports, apparently the children weren’t even hidden. And now some people’s agendas aren’t hidden either.
So watch out for the wildlife, Berkley. Just make sure you’re worried about the right kind.
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