A Look Back, June 25

50 Years Ago

■The Northampton School Committee voted Monday in executive session to approve two-year contracts with the school nurses and the custodians, giving both groups 6.2 percent wage increases the first year and 7 percent the second. The contracts, reached after months of negotiations with both groups, will add some $25,999 to the proposed 1974-75 school department budget of $5.4 million.

■The Northampton Recreation Department will start its first complete week of summer playground activities Monday. The week’s theme will be “Make New Friends.” Arts and crafts projects and special events have been programmed around this theme.

25 Years Ago

■Things are fairly quiet right now in the mayoral race, but at least one candidate has been pounding the pavement, knocking on doors and eagerly meeting voters. Donald Malboeuf says he has been going door-to-door to hand out his campaign literature several days a week for about a month now.

■With only five friars still on the grounds, the Franciscan order plans to put the 513-acre St. Hyacinth College and Seminary in Granby on the real estate market. The property includes a three-story granite edifice on School Street that houses residential facilities, classrooms, a chapel and library. The property also includes a gymnasium, a greenhouse and several outbuildings.

10 Years Ago

■Without installing a single solar panel, the Northampton Housing Authority is projected to save $1.3 million over the next 20 years through a new solar energy agreement. The Housing Authority has signed a 20-year contract that will allow it to purchase energy at a reduced rate based on net metering credits tied to a 6-megawatt solar array in Monson that is expected to come online soon.

■Mayor Domenic Sarno of Springfield is calling for an end to refugee resettlement in his city, saying Somali families are putting pressure on already strained services in Springfield, a onetime industrial center where nearly a third of the population lives below the poverty line.