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Ed Briggs was re-elected to the Williamstown Fire District's Prudential Committee prior to Tuesday's annual meeting.

Williamstown Fire District OKs Budget

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Fire District on Tuesday night approved a $582,000 tax bill that represents a 4.24 percent decrease from the fiscal year 2016 appropriation.
 
The three-person Prudential Committee that oversees the district faced a number of questions but no dissenting votes from the dozen or so residents who attended the annual Fire District meeting at the Water Street station.
 
Most of the questions centered on Article 5 of the eight-article warrant, the item that deals with the operations budget for the district.
 
The omnibus budget is up by about 3 percent for FY17, from $474,710 in the current fiscal year to $488,915 for the year that begins July 1.
 
The committee was asked about its rationale for a number of line item increases, including a 69 percent increase in the "management services" line item, which goes up from $8,000 to $13,500. Although it represents less than 3 percent of the total budget, it accounts for 39 percent of the increase to the operations budget.
 
"The majority of that [management services item] is paid back to the town for doing tax collections and all that service work," explained Corydon Thurston, the district's clerk/treasurer and moderator.
 
In addition, the district has moved some money out of its maintenance and operations line item to the management line item to more accurately reflect how the money is being spent, Thurston explained.
 
Maintenance and operations, or M&O, is one of the larger portions of the budget, at $50,000, unchanged from last year.
 
Prudential Committee member Ed Briggs, who was re-elected to the committee in secret balloting before Tuesday's annual meeting, noted that the district might have seen a dividend in M&O were it not for the fact that maintenance costs continue to skyrocket.
 
"We can't repair the trucks locally," Briggs said. "They have to be repaired, for the most part, by the manufacturer."
 
While in days past, the firefighters could do a lot of the maintenance work on the trucks themselves, today's more sophisticated machines require specialized maintenance.
 
"You know what electronics is — it's money," Prudential Committee Chairman John Notsley said. "When it comes to the pumps and electronics in these vehicles, they have to send a man from the factory, or, in certain cases, we have to send a truck down there [to Connecticut]."
 
Another factor weighing on the upkeep of the trucks: wear and tear from winter roads.
 
Notsley said that ice melting materials used on the roads is wreaking havoc on the undercarriages of the district's trucks — and warned attendees that it is doing the same thing to their cars.
 
"We spray them underneath every time we come back from a call, but in a lot of places they have a machine that goes under the trucks to hose them down," Notsley said.
 
Thurston noted that if the district ever is able to build a new fire station, one of its features likely will be a well under the truck bay to facilitate undercarriage maintenance.
 
The prospect of a new station was raised from the floor of the meeting, when resident Dan Gendron asked the committee what it plans to do moving forward to cooperate with the town on a public safety building project.
 
Notsley reiterated the committee's position that the best location for any public safety facility is the Main Street parcel that the district twice tried to purchase. Both times, the proposal received a majority vote of the town's voters but not the two-thirds "super majority" needed for passage.
 
"As my father used to tell me, they're not making any more land, and they don't make any more land in the center of Williamstown, which is where it should be located," Notsley said.
 
Charles Fox, a member of the town's Public Safety Building Study Committee, told the meeting from the floor that he believes that group will reconvene early this month to continue looking at options for a combined police/fire facility.
 
Unlike the police force, which is a department of town government, the fire district is a separate governmental entity with its own taxing authority, which is why the district's annual meeting is held apart from the annual town meeting, held earlier in May.
 
Twenty-nine ballots were cast in the annual fire district election. Briggs received 27 votes with two write-ins. Thurston was elected with 28 votes (one write-in) for clerk/treasurer and 28 votes for moderator.

Tags: annual meeting,   fire district,   fiscal 2017,   prudential committee,   

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WCMA: 'Cracking the Code on Numerology'

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) opens a new exhibition, "Cracking the Cosmic Code: Numerology in Medieval Art."
 
The exhibit opened on March 22.
 
According to a press release: 
 
The idea that numbers emanate sacred significance, and connect the past with the future, is prehistoric and global. Rooted in the Babylonian science of astrology, medieval Christian numerology taught that God created a well-ordered universe. Deciphering the universe's numerical patterns would reveal the Creator's grand plan for humanity, including individual fates. 
 
This unquestioned concept deeply pervaded European cultures through centuries. Theologians and lay people alike fervently interpreted the Bible literally and figuratively via number theory, because as King Solomon told God, "Thou hast ordered all things in measure, and number, and weight" (Wisdom 11:22). 
 
"Cracking the Cosmic Code" explores medieval relationships among numbers, events, and works of art. The medieval and Renaissance art on display in this exhibition from the 5th to 17th centuries—including a 15th-century birth platter by Lippo d'Andrea from Florence; a 14th-century panel fragment with courtly scenes from Palace Curiel de los Ajos, Valladolid, Spain; and a 12th-century wall capital from the Monastery at Moutiers-Saint-Jean—reveal numerical patterns as they relate to architecture, literature, gender, and timekeeping. 
 
"There was no realm of thought that was not influenced by the all-consuming belief that all things were celestially ordered, from human life to stones, herbs, and metals," said WCMA Assistant Curator Elizabeth Sandoval, who curated the exhibition. "As Vincent Foster Hopper expounds, numbers were 'fundamental realities, alive with memories and eloquent with meaning.' These artworks tease out numerical patterns and their multiple possible meanings, in relation to gender, literature, and the celestial sphere. 
 
"The exhibition looks back while moving forward: It relies on the collection's strengths in Western medieval Christianity, but points to the future with goals of acquiring works from the global Middle Ages. It also nods to the history of the gallery as a medieval period room at this pivotal time in WCMA's history before the momentous move to a new building," Sandoval said.
 
Cracking the Cosmic Code runs through Dec. 22.
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