LEYDEN — For the first time in decades, there will not be a Glabach serving Leyden residents.

After Monday’s annual town election, Bill Glabach, 80, will retire from the Selectboard after 24 years in the role and more than 30 total serving in town government on the Board of Assessors and Finance Committee.

A Leyden native who left to attend college and serve four years in the U.S. Navy, Glabach said he was convinced to join the Board of Assessors in the 1980s to fill a vacancy left by his father’s retirement. A decade later, supporters convinced him to run for a one-year term on the Selectboard in 1998, before running unopposed in the 1999 town election. He had also served on the Greenfield School Committee in the 1970s.

“It’s a little feeling of an obligation to step up and do something,” Glabach said of serving on town boards. “Whether it happens to be selectmen or on some other committee, everybody seems to pull a little bit of their own weight.”

While his three-year term expires on Monday, Glabach actually considered retiring from the board in 2020. With the pandemic rolling in right around the region’s election season, Leyden canceled its candidate caucus, which led to Glabach allowing himself to be re-nominated.

This time, however, he said it is “definitely” his last term on the board. Reflecting on his decades of experience, he said the way towns operate and the regulations around them have vastly changed over the years, and he’s seen Leyden go through a “period of transition” in several aspects.

Chief among those was the closure of Pearl Rhodes Elementary School in 2019, which was the smallest school in the Pioneer Valley Regional School District.

“Things were slipping away. We tried to do some things,” Glabach said, noting the district added additional extracurricular programs in an attempt to entice families to town. “We tried to make an effort to keep it together, but when the numbers are in the 30s and some of them were School Choice kids … other towns felt like they were underwriting our education.”

While the closure of the elementary school was a blow to the town, it did lead to one benefit: the Town Offices are now located in the former school and it serves as a venue for the majority of the community’s government meetings.

Glabach said he’s seen the town’s country store close, as well as two gas stations. The Police Department has also been merged with Bernardston’s, and while Glabach wasn’t a full supporter of the proposal in its early stages, he said it’s been working out well.

“It’s a lot of transition to live through,” he said, adding on a brighter note that the town’s character has been retained. “It’s a nice rural setting and people are interested in keeping it that way.”

Chris Larabee can be reached at clarabee@recorder.com or 413-930-4081.

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