Letter: Support Hogeland for Planning Board

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To the Editor:

Anne Hogeland is running for the two-year slot on the Williamstown Planning Board, and there hasn't been a more opportune time than next Tuesday's town election, to vote her on it.

The Planning Board is assigned, by state law, to prepare studies on land use, housing, conservation, and business development, to review zoning bylaw amendments and propose some of its own, and to make its decisions based in community support. We need to elect board members who reason with logic and open-mindedness, who are willing and able to do research and build on their own expertise in the law and town planning, who have a clear sense of their responsibilities to the whole town, and who know how to seek compromise, not win personal battles.

Anne Hogeland fills the bill. After graduating Williams College and Harvard Law School, she clerked for a U.S. District Court judge, and practiced law in Boston, Washington, D.C., and Pittsfield, representing non-profit health-care providers. After returning to Williamstown with her husband and three daughters in the 1970s, Anne immersed herself in community service, including as founder of Adventures in Learning after-school program at the Williamstown Elementary School, co-president of the Mount Greylock High School PTO and chair of the High School Superintendent Search Committee, co-chair and manager of the Williamstown Farmers Market, and member of the local Trustees of Reservations committee and Williamstown Cultural District Partnership.

This list shows the broad range of her community interests, for which she has gained full respect throughout the town, particularly for her intelligence, her openness to listening to people's concerns, her talents in managing, and her ability to engage in thoughtful, collaborative planning.



Her outlook for the future of Williamstown is broad, and persuasively positive and optimistic. She asserted on her Facebook page: "The board should be responsible stewards, sustaining the integrity of our landscape, while fully aware of our changing social and economic realities."

On one issue that sits squarely in the lap of the board — aging and housing, she says, "I have a long standing concern about housing and the elderly in town. I've worked closely with older tenants in New York City facing serious housing challenges, which intersect with health care issues. I agree with the Economic Development Committee that we should remove unnecessary zoning obstacles to a full range of housing, including low and moderately priced, multi-family, retirement, and assisted. We have a lot of work ahead!"

Let's vote Anne Hogeland to the Planning Board and watch her go to work to make the board a positive creative force for this town.

Tela Zasloff
Williamstown, Mass.

 

 


Tags: election 2016,   endorsement,   town elections,   


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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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