Williamstown Town Treasurer Janet Sadler auctions a smaller trailer at the Spruces Mobile Home Park on Friday. This trailer went for $150.
This story was updated on Nov. 17 at 10:30 a.m.
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Four town-owned mobile homes from the soon-to-be-closed Spruces Mobile Home Park were sold at auction on Friday for a combined $2,725.
Nine more trailers were available in a silent auction. As of Monday morning, no bids were received on those units.
In all, the town has taken possession of 50 trailers at the park since it began the process of closing it under the terms of a federal Hazard Mitigation Grant. Not all of the homes are in salable condition, however.
The homes were left behind by residents who have begun to vacate the park. Not all former residents have had the wherewithal to pay for removal and disposal of their trailers and have sold them back to the town.
An additional 31 trailers have been abandoned since Tropical Storm Irene in 2011. The town has asked a Housing Court judge to award it possession of those homes as well.
Everything - including the pads on which the homes once sat - must be removed from the park by early 2016 in order to comply with the terms of the grant, which calls for the land to be returned to its natural state.
On Friday, Town Treasurer Janet Sadler conducted a live auction of four of the town-owned trailers to a group of about half a dozen bidders. Two sold for $1,200 apiece; the other two went for $150 and $175. The entire auction took less than half an hour.
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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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