Bellingham Select Board Votes to Honor Odebashen, Expand Senior Center Parking

BELLINGHAM — June 1, 2026 — Bellingham Select Board honors retiring 19-year member Ann Odebashen and votes on senior center parking, affordable housing, and a defense-firm permit waiver. The board unanimously approved a concept one parking expansion design for the senior center — adding 44 spaces using a $25,000 congressional earmark with a June 30 deadline — over a competing design that would have added 49 spaces but introduced more angled-parking conflicts. Joe Altamonte was appointed to the Cemetery Commission 4-0 with one abstention, declining a stipend on the record. Owen Heron, co-founder of defense engineering firm Acceleration Engineering and a former Navy unmanned-vehicle program lead, won unanimous approval of a permit-denial waiver at 11 Summer Street so he can seek a Planning Board special permit for a shock-testing and prototype manufacturing facility. The board voted 4-1 to support a Local Initiative Program application designating two units at Whitman Acres, 267 Blackstone Street, as affordable housing toward the town's subsidized housing inventory. In her farewell remarks, Odebashen — whose combined service as board member, town clerk, and School Committee member totaled 36-plus years — told incoming officials: "You're one vote. That one vote can be important."