Williamstown Selectmen Consider Economic Development Consultant

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
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The Selectmen are considering whether to develop an economic development plan.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Board of Selectmen is considering whether it wants to follow the old maxim: You have to spend money to make money.

Specifically, the board is considering a recommendation from a local entrepreneur that the town look at hiring a consultant to help with its efforts to boost economic development.

Williamstown resident Jeffrey Thomas spoke to the board earlier this month about his role with a North Adams-based nonprofit whose mission is to promote economic development in Northern Berkshire County.

Thomas also serves on the town's Finance Committee and directs an entrepreneurship program at Williams College. He said he has been following the board's recent push for economic development in Williamstown and that there are pros and cons to the "locally grown" approach the town has taken.

"Selecting the right process for developing an economic development plan is important," Thomas said. "I think there are two types of ways you can approach it. One is to bring in external experts to assess the town and deliver a set of recommendations. I think the Affordable Housing Committee took advantage of such expertise.

"On the other hand — and I sense this is where you're going — you can tap into the local community.

"If you bring in people from the outside, you'll get true experts. There will be objectivity. The risk is they may deliver a plan the community doesn't support.

"If you use local people, you won't have the professional level of advice. We don't have that expertise here by and large. But perhaps you'll have a plan with more support from the community."

It is possible to marry the two efforts, he said.

Thomas pointed to the work of the Partnership for North Adams, a private non-profit that employed New York-based HR&A Advisors and SHoP Architects to develop a Strategic Economic Development Plan for the Steeple City.

That plan dovetails with the city's North Adams Vision 2030, a comprehensive master plan adopted earlier this year by the city's Planning Board.


"[Vision 2030] was done with a lot of community input," Thomas said. "[The Partnership for North Adams] plan was developed with private money. They have these two plans, and one might say, 'Isn't there a conflict?' But I'm close to the situation, and they're not. They're complementary and synergistic.

"The Partnership for North Adams plan is useful to attract capital. The Vision 2030 plan is useful for engaging the community."

The former plan cost money. The kind of expert advice Thomas suggested the town might want to consider would cost in the neighborhood of $150,000, he said when asked for a ballpark figure.

Selectman Andrew Hogeland, who was elected in May along with Hugh Daley on twin platforms emphasizing economic development, said he was "comfortable starting with community engagement" and not sure that the town was ready for the expenditure.

Daley said it could be beneficial to engage a third party, even if it meant soliciting a scaled-down version of the kind of plan the Partnership for North Adams received from its consultants.

"Sometimes I do like the objectivity," Daley said. "Lots of things don't get done because [of the perception that] 'You can't do that around here.' What a third-party consultant can do is break down some of those mindsets."

Town Manager Peter Fohlin reminded the board at its Nov. 12 meeting that the time to talk about spending the money is now, before the town sets its fiscal 2016 budget.

While it took no action on the consultant question, the board continues to push forward on the "local engagement" side of economic development.

It has developed a draft Economic Development Plan and posted it on the town's website in an attempt to solicit public comment. On Monday, at 9 a.m. at the Williams Inn, the board will hold a retreat work session to discuss the composition of a new Economic Development Committee, which the Selectmen is looking to appoint.

"Essentially, we're looking for two groups of people," Daley said. "One is a group of people to sit on a public board. They may have a budget to implement these plans. And they're tasked with taking the economic development plan and prioritizing it in terms of feasibility and impact.

"Then there is a second tier — we could almost call actively community-minded people who don't have the time to serve [on a standing committee]. These are folks who might be a realtor, who when the plan is focusing on housing, could be brought in for advice."

 


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Williamstown Select Board Awards ARPA Funds to Remedy Hall

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Select Board on Monday allocated $20,000 in COVID-19-era relief funds to help a non-profit born of the pandemic era that seeks to provide relief to residents in need.
 
On a unanimous vote, the board voted to grant the American Rescue Plan Act money to support Remedy Hall, a resource center that provides "basic life necessities" and emotional support to "individuals and families experiencing great hardship."
 
The board of the non-profit approached the Select Board with a request for $12,000 in ARPA Funds to help cover some of the relief agency's startup costs, including the purchase of a vehicle to pick up donations and deliver items to clients, storage rental space and insurance.
 
The board estimates that the cost of operating Remedy Hall in its second year — including some one-time expenses — at just north of $31,500. But as board members explained on Monday night, some sources of funding are not available to Remedy Hall now but will be in the future.
 
"With the [Williamstown] Community Chest, you have to be in existence four or five years before you can qualify for funding," Carolyn Greene told the Select Board. "The same goes for state agencies that would typically be the ones to fund social service agencies.
 
"ARPA made sense because [Remedy Hall] is very much post-COVID in terms of the needs of the town becoming more evident."
 
In a seven-page letter to the town requesting the funds, the Remedy Hall board wrote that, "need is ubiquitous and we are unveiling that truth daily."
 
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