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Select Board sends $40M DPW project to Town Meeting
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What happens when three Bose employees team up? Music. Introducing the Highland Woods Project
By Evan Walsh Managing Editor
Vol. 51 | No. 14 | April 4, 2025
Summer Camp & Activity Guide
SHREWSBURY – It was “touch and go” for a moment, but Shrewsbury’s DPW project is moving ahead. The Select Board on March 25 unanimously voted to bring the town’s Department of Public Works (DPW) project to a Special Town Meeting on April 14. Depending on what the town’s 240 elected representatives decide at that meeting, the issue could be brought to a May 6 townwide vote. Though the project cost was originally estimated at $26.8 million in September — not including $5.5 million for improvements to Town Hall — the
Berry begins as Grafton’s first appointed Town Clerk
Grafton | 6 ‘Celebrating our past and growing our future’
DPW | 4
Fire Station project comes in $6.5 million below budget
By Evan Walsh Managing Editor NORTHBOROUGH – Bids have arrived for Northborough’s new Fire Station, and it’s good news for town taxpayers. Fire Station | 5
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northborough | 10
Left to right: Kris Swanson, Ed Aucoin, and Paul Fidlin (Photo/Courtesy)
By Evan Walsh Managing Editor REGION – For years and years, Paul Fidlin, Ed Aucoin, and Kris Swanson were mere background characters in each other’s lives. They’d occasionally run into each other while working at Bose’s Framingham headquarters — maybe they were copied in the same email, saw one another in the hallways, or were invited to the same large-group conference – but working in different departments, interactions between any combination of the three were rarities at best. After Fidlin, Aucoin, and Swanson retired in the late-2010s, it wouldn’t have been surprising if the colleagues-of-colleagues never thought of one another again — but through the allure of the guitar, the power of music, and benevolent friendship, the somewhat-strangers were brought together. Six years later, their band, the
Highland Woods Project, is taking Central Mass. by storm. “It’s funny the way everything worked out,” Aucoin said during one of the Highland Woods Project’s weekly Tuesday afternoon practices in Marlborough. “I thought I was doing something nice. Then I met Kris. Then I met Paul. They have become two of the best friends I have. Then I met others too. … I didn’t expect that. I just thought I was a guy with a guitar.” After retiring, Swanson knew he wanted to do one thing — take guitar lessons. He’d played the guitar in high school, but had taken a 40-year hiatus while he focused on his career. While at a retirement party for a colleague, he mentioned his ambitions. Unbeknownst to Swanson, another colleague had recently spoken to Aucoin about playing guitar. By 2019, Swanson and Aucoin had connected. Unable to get together during the pan-
WEstborough | 26
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