On Saturday a memo was sent to the Brookfield Select Board, who had declined at their April 1 meeting to renew our rental agreement for the Town Hall second floor Green Room as our studio.

The text of the memo was as follows:

To: The Brookfield Select Board and Town Administrator
From: Sharon Mahoney, President and General Manager, Apple Country Radio Inc.
Re: Apple Country Radio’s lease of the Town Hall Green Room under M.G.L. 30B, §16
Date: June 13, 2026

During your meeting on April 1 of this year, the Select Board unanimously voted to give my organization a 90-day rental extension for our studio after the expiration of Apple Country Radio’s current Green Room contract so that we would have time to work out an agreement that follows M.G.L. 30B §16 and is acceptable to all parties.

That rental extension expires June 30, seventeen days from now.

According to what I’ve researched at M.G.L. and the state-issued Chapter 30B Manual which accompanies this email, the process for leasing municipally owned property in all cases must be originated by the municipality [Page 86 – 94]. If the value of the property to be leased is valued at under $10,000, which I believe is the range under which the Green Room valuation falls, then the requirement is for the town to use “sound business practices” (see Ch. 30B §4c) to “solicit price lists or quotes” and create a “fair and accountable method for proposal selection.”

Chapter 30B allows municipalities to offer property for sale or lease “in order to promote a public purpose rather than to raise revenue” [Page 89 – 90]. I believe that Apple Country Radio, Inc., as an IRS-designated nonprofit broadcast community media organization, falls under that description. In the case of offering municipal property for lease in order to promote a public purpose, the Select Board must follow a number of steps outlined in the Manual.

As a prospective leaseholder who is currently occupying the rooms in question, I need to know what the Town will require for conditions in a new lease agreement. I have not been told the name of the official procurement officer for the Town, if any, so I’m unsure who will oversee formulating those conditions, so I assume that task will fall to the Select Board as a whole. As for the conditions themselves, as of today I haven’t heard from anyone on the Select Board about those requirements. The bottom line is I can’t issue a proposal—the term the Manual uses in this case, as opposed to “bid”—on behalf of Apple Country Radio, Inc. for leasing the Green Room without knowing what documentation the Select Board expects Apple Country Radio to submit—and time is running short.

Please let me know as soon as possible when I can expect to get a set of guidelines from the Select Board so that I may move this process forward on my end. If this is to be discussed in an open meeting, I would like to know what date it will appear on the agenda so that I may attend.

——

Today a Select Board meeting was posted for this coming Wednesday, June 17. The first agenda item reads, “Review and Execute Apple Country Radio Lease Agreement.” We haven’t been asked to submit a bid or proposal in accordance with Mass. General Law Chapter 30B, Section 16, as was insisted upon by Chair Sarah Campbell at the April 1 meeting. We have no draft lease proposal from the Select Board in hand. Indeed, the only reason we know about this meeting is because we’ve signed up for automatic meeting notification. So we have no idea what the Select Board has in mind. 

Nevertheless, we are grateful that the matter has been placed on the Select Board agenda prior to the June 30 deadline, and we’re going to go into the meeting assuming that there will be a good-faith discussion agreeable to all parties, and we are still hoping that the town will grant a two-year lease with an expiration date of April 1, 2028, to bring it in line with the Antenna/Mezzanine lease currently in effect. 

Once again, we urge all listeners and supporters to attend the June 17 Select Board meeting at 7pm in the Brookfield Town Hall Banquet Hall to show your support for Apple Country Radio and our renewal/extension request, or, if you can’t attend, to send emails/letters of support to ALL members of the Select Board (rather than just the Executive Assistant or the Chair) and the new Interim Town Administrator. That way we can be sure the entire Select Board and TA gets to see those letters and emails prior to the meeting. Addresses are below.

As for getting back on the air, we are working on it and hope to have an announcement soon!

The email addresses are:

Executive Assistant: selectmen@brookfieldma.us
Select Board Chair Sarah Campbell: scam02x@gmail.com
Select Board Member Richard Chaffee: rchaffee@brookfieldma.us
Select Board Member Beth Coughlin: bcoughlin@brookfieldma.us
Town Administrator: townadministrator@brookfieldma.us

Thanks in advance for your support of Apple Country Radio!