SavingSeaFood - Massachusetts Senate budget provision would tether SMAST expansion to New Bedford

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Massachusetts Senate budget provision would tether SMAST expansion to New Bedford

NEW BEDFORD (Standard-Times) May 26, 2011 -- The Massachusetts state Senate has passed a budget amendment today proposed by state Sen. Mark Montigny that would restrict any UMass Dartmouth expansion of SMAST to New Bedford.

UMass has proposed a $48 million expansion to the South End campus of its School for Marine Science and Technology, but the school has locked horns with Mayor Scott W. Lang over the transfer of the property deed.

In 1997, the federal government deeded the parcel, which is the home of the former Naval Reserve Center, to the city, so long as it used the property for an educational use. The university gave the mayor a deadline of May 16 to file an application for deed transfer with the federal Department of Education or the school would look at sites outside the city. The school already rents space at a former AT&T building on Mill Road in Fairhaven. The May 16 deadline – referred to by Lang as “silly,” and “artificial,” – came and went without any paperwork being filed.

Read the complete story by Dan McDonald South Coast Today.

MELISSA WOOD, NATIONAL FISHERMEN: Meting out the meager

May 22, 2012 - Listening to the New England Council's Groundfish Advisory Panel talk about how that industry is going to pay for monitoring costs is kind of like trying to figure out how to pay your bills when you've just lost your job. Though monitoring is important keeping costs down is critical. As Panel Member Gary Libby pointed out, "If we had 100 percent monitoring we probably wouldn't have an industry."

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