Members of the Town of Southborough tricentennial committee mapped a planning structure and early event ideas at their Jan. 15 meeting, assigning leads and asking volunteers to begin feasibility work for several large and recurring events.

The group identified five initial subcommittees: parade; historic events; house tour; community barbecue/music festival; and a drone show (with fireworks still an open option). “A parade is a lot of work,” one committee member observed during the discussion, urging early outreach to communities that have run recent parades.

Dawn, the committee volunteer coordinating the parade subcommittee, said she has two people committed and plans to hold an initial subcommittee meeting in late January or early February to begin vendor and route research. Committee members offered to share materials and contacts: one member said she could provide scanned paperwork from Westborough’s recent parade and put Dawn in touch with Westborough organizers.

Historic events lead Michelle described plans for cemetery reenactments and oral‑history projects that could involve Algonquin High School students and the senior center. Michelle said she is exploring staging reenactments at multiple Southborough cemeteries and training students to conduct and record interviews with long‑time residents. “I think that people need to be aware of people who have been buried in Southborough,” she said, and suggested staged tours and recorded oral histories as a way to share local stories.

Committee members discussed a revived Strawberry Social as a smaller heritage event that could be timed to June and paired with the library friends’ annual book sale, and noted other signature events the committee hopes to schedule across 12 months in 2027. The committee’s stated planning goal is to have a mix of roughly 12 signature events across the tricentennial year, supplemented by monthly smaller activities and partner events.

On the drone show versus fireworks question, volunteers agreed to research costs and feasibility. One member volunteered to present a feasibility and cost range for the next meeting so the committee can decide whether to pursue drones or fireworks. The group noted that drone costs vary widely depending on vendor, customization and fleet size.

Committee members also discussed roles for local groups such as Rotary, theater organizations and schools. The committee suggested reaching out to the Rotary Club to help manage food vendors for a barbecue and to theater groups for indoor winter programming; performers and students were proposed as volunteers for historical reenactments and video projects.

Ending: The committee left the meeting with assignments to recruit more volunteers for each subcommittee, hold initial subcommittee meetings by mid‑February, and return with vendor feasibility estimates (notably for a drone show) and a proposed calendar to guide 2025 fundraising outreach.