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A proposed design for Williamstown's first town flag
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Board of Selectman Chairman Ronald Turbin, right, holds up a copy of the proposed flag design as Selectman Thomas Sheldon looks on.

Williamstown Selectmen Look at Making Five Corners Safer

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
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Police Chief Kyle Johnson suggested larger signage at the accident-prone Five Corners intersection.
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Board of Selectmen on Monday evening discussed how to make the Five Corners intersection in South Williamstown safer after a fatal accident at the site last month.
 
Police Chief Kyle Johnson advised the board about changes he would recommend to make signage more obvious to alert drivers to a reduced speed zone on that stretch of Route 7 and a stop for drivers on Route 43.
 
"I would like to see all of the signs to be oversized," Johnson said. "It's getting the motorist's attention."
 
The board agreed and, at the same time, asked whether there was something that could be done to reduce the number of signs at the intersection.
 
"Visually, it's busy," Selectman Thomas Sheldon noted.
 
Town Manager Peter Fohlin agreed, saying that signs should be placed with an eye toward avoiding "sign pollution."
 
"People can't process all of these things at the same time," Fohlin said.
 
Johnson told the board that the accident, which is still under investigation, appears to have occurred because the driver on Route 43 did not even slow down at the intersection, which does have a stop sign and a blinking red light.
 
"I don't believe we'll ever know the reason why," Johnson said. "We do know from video footage that the deceased [driver] never slowed down. Without a witness in the deceased's car, we'll never know if there was a distraction."
 
Johnson told the Selectmen there is video of the accident from a camera mounted in the Peter Pan motor-coach bus that struck the red Mazda 3 driven by Patrick M. Harrigan, 57, of Rensselaer, N.Y.
 
Fohlin told the board that the roadway feeding into the intersection controlled by the town is the Hancock Road section of Route 43. Route 43 going east from the intersection (Green River Road) and Route 7 (Cold Spring Road to the north and New Ashford Road to the south) are state roads.
 
The town would have a conversation with the Massachusetts Department of Transportation about any changes it would plan for Hancock Road and suggestions for the roads, Fohlin said.
 
The Selectmen offered a couple of suggestions in addition to the signage changes advised by Johnson.
 
Andrew Hogeland asked if a blinking light could be installed on a new stop sign, similar to the flashing yellow light near the entrance to Mount Greylock Regional School up the hill on Cold Spring Road. He also asked whether rumble strips could be installed on the Hancock Road portion to give that much more warning to drivers unfamiliar with the intersection.
 
Johnson was amenable to both suggestions, but again said those are the kind of things the town would want to first discuss with MassDOT.
 
On a lighter note, the Selectmen on Monday began a discussion about a proposal for a town flag.
 
Sheldon told his colleagues that he had been working with a committee of volunteers from the town to address the fact that, unlike most Massachusetts communities, Williamstown has no flag.
 
The deficiency was pointed out in June by a staff member from the office of Sen. Benjamin Downing, D-Pittsfield. The flags of towns and cities from around the commonwealth are displayed at the State House, and the committee sought to add Williamstown to that group.
 
Sheldon, Sally Sussman, Jane Allen, Jeanne Marklin, Sarah Currie, Heather Clemow and Anya Sheldon developed a proposed flag design that celebrates different aspects of the town's character — history, nature, agriculture, art and education — with colorful images.
 
"Many of the flags of other towns have something corresponding to the center figure [in the proposed Williamstown flag]," Sheldon said. "They'll have perhaps a town seal or some other design element in a field of white. This is a somewhat more complex and communicative flag design."
 
The artwork was done by Sheldon's granddaughter, a junior at Mount Greylock, and digitized with the help of Elinor Goodwin of The Print Shop.
 
The Selectmen praised the effort of the committee and the artist but were hesitant to make a final decision on the design without gathering more input from town residents.
 
The board decided to post an electronic image of the flag proposal on the town's website, and Clemow, who attended Monday's meeting, volunteered to design a website to collect feedback from the public.
 
"There are ways we can sort of structure the comments by sections of the flag or overall flag design," Clemow said. "If you just put it out there, you'll get a lot of comments with no constructive ideas of how to make it better. I can set up a website where we let people respond in specific ways."
 
The Selectmen on Monday chose not to sign a deed release for the land beneath Stetson Court, which town meeting two years ago decided to discontinue, ceding control of the dead-end road to Williams College, which is the only land owner on any side of the road.
 
Normally, that town meeting vote would have ended the matter, Fohlin explained on Monday.
 
"It turns out we own the land under the road, which is unusual," he said. "Towns usually just own the right of way. That being the case, the procedure is for the Board of Selectmen to sign a release deed."
 
Hogeland asked Fohlin whether the terms of the deed before the board would give over any of the land on the adjacent Town Green, which runs along Main Street (Route 2). Fohlin said he would get clarification on the question and come back to the board at a future meeting.
 
In other business Monday, the Selectmen designated Fohlin to act in the town's behalf at a meeting next at which Williamstown and nine other Berkshire County communities will have an opportunity to enter an electric supply aggregation agreement. The aggregation plan was approved at town meeting in 2012. Representatives from the 10 towns will meet with a representative from the Colonial Power Group on Sept. 17 at 11 a.m. at Dalton Town Hall to review bids.

Tags: fatal,   flags,   intersection,   MassDOT,   signage,   

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Mount Greylock School Committee Votes Slight Increase to Proposed Assessments

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Mount Greylock Regional School Committee on Thursday voted unanimously to slightly increase the assessment to the district's member towns from the figures in the draft budget presented by the administration.
 
The School Committee opted to lower the use of Mount Greylock's reserve account by $70,000 and, instead, increase by that amount the share of the fiscal year 2025 operating budget shared proportionally by Lanesborough and Williamstown taxpayers.
 
The budget prepared by the administration and presented to the School Committee at its annual public hearing on Thursday included $665,000 from the district's Excess and Deficiency account, the equivalent of a municipal free cash balance, an accrual of lower-than-anticipated expenses and higher-than-anticipated revenue in any given year.
 
That represented a 90 percent jump from the $350,000 allocated from E&D for fiscal year 2024, which ends on June 30. And, coupled with more robust use of the district's tuition revenue account (7 percent more in FY25) and School Choice revenue (3 percent more), the draw down on E&D is seen as a stopgap measure to mitigate a spike in FY25 expenses and an unsustainable budgeting strategy long term, administrators say.
 
The budget passed by the School Committee on Thursday continues to rely more heavily on reserves than in years past, but to a lesser extent than originally proposed.
 
Specifically, the budget the panel approved includes a total assessment to Williamstown of $13,775,336 (including capital and operating costs) and a total assessment to Lanesborough of $6,425,373.
 
As a percentage increase from the FY24 assessments, that translates to a 3.90 percent increase to Williamstown and a 3.38 percent increase to Lanesborough.
 
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