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Williamstown Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Susan Briggs appears before the Finance Committee on Wednesday.

Williamstown Town Manager Supports Funding Requests From Non-Profits

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
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Finance Committee Chair Elisabeth Goodman and member Charles Fox participate in Wednesday's meeting.
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The town manager Wednesday explained the practice of using town funds to support the operations of non-profit agencies that serve the community.
 
Jason Hoch addressed the town's Finance Committee two days after a member of the Select Board suggested that the town re-evaluate the level of its support to the Williamstown Chamber of Commerce.
 
Hoch said the Chamber, which is in line to receive $46,302 if May's annual town meeting approves, supports the town by providing services he cannot in the Town Hall budget.
 
"We don't have another economic development arm," Hoch told the Fin Comm. "The Chamber is the structured piece. We ask them to do some things that are totally outside service to their members. Marketing to tourists is often at cross ends with some of their members.
 
"One thing I'd urge everyone to think about is: Think of the ask we have for any of these organizations. … If we're asking for three times the amount of work we're paying for, we either have to change what we're paying for or change the ask."
 
The Finance Committee has spent the last couple of months reviewing all the cost centers in the town's $21.8 million budget.
 
At the end of Wednesday's meeting, Hoch told the panel that based on some favorable numbers he has seen since the budget season began, he is anticipating the total spending plan that goes to town meeting would mean a 20-cent increase on the fiscal 2019 property tax rate of $18.05 per $1,000 of valuation. For a $200,000 home, that would mean a tax bill of $3,3650, up from $3,610, a rise of 1.1 percent.
 
That number is subject to revisions between now and next week, when the Finance Committee will receive a final presentation from Hoch wrapping up the budget and setting the stage for the committee's up-or-down votes on all the fiscal warrant articles that will go to town meeting.
 
Five of those articles will deal with the five cost centers reviewed on Wednesday: the Northern Berkshire Vocational Regional School District (McCann Tech), the Hoosic River Water Quality District (the sewage plant that serves North Adams and Williamstown), the Chamber of Commerce, the Williamstown Youth Center and Sand Springs Recreation Center.
 
The last three, non-profits, are the only non-governmental entities that voters will be asked to support at town meeting if the Fin Comm approves their warrant articles. All three non-profits have received town support of their operational budgets in the past; Sand Springs was the latest to seek and gain the support at 2018's town meeting.
 
In response to a letter from a member of the Select Board to the Finance Committee, Fin Comm members Wednesday asked the Williamstown Chamber's executive director to explain why the town should continue to fund the body at a rate equal to 10 percent of the town's share of the rooms and meals tax, as it has done in the past. The $46,302 sought by the Chamber for FY20 exceeds the $32,057 the body reports for membership dues received in 2018.
 
"We provide relief to Jason and Town Hall," Chamber President Antonello Di Benedetto told the Fin Comm. "For $46,000, to have a person to promote the town is a steal."
 
Executive Director Susan Briggs told the committee that promotion takes many forms: from organizing the seasonal information booth on Spring Street to advertising in the May/June issue of Yankee Magazine to cooperating with the non-profit events website Destination Williamstown to publishing a map and guide that Briggs said has been revamped for 2019.
 
"Last year, we distributed 6,000 map and guides," Briggs said. "This year, we've decided to enhance the map and guide to fully represent the town and its businesses with better pictures and descriptions. We're planning to print 15,000 … and distribute not only in the Berkshires but in the tri-state area and into Boston and Hartford and Albany."
 
In addition to the marketing work it does on behalf of the town -- and its members in the tourist trade -- the Williamstown Chamber organizes two of the town's highest profile and most successful public events: December's Holiday Walk and the Fourth of July parade.
 
Both, Briggs said, have been expanded in recent years.
 
"We really are trying to encourage people to come to town earlier and stay later," she said. "We're grabbing the shoulders of the parade. … Overall, we feel [2018 was] one of the most highly attended and successful Holiday Walks in years. We're finding even more ways to elongate the day."
 
The Williamstown Chamber also provides networking opportunities for the local business community and educational programs, including one of those that Hoch mentioned as running contrary to the wishes of some chamber members.
 
In May, the chamber plans an information program for residents who offer their homes as short-term rentals, as with Airbnb, to help residents prepare for July 1, when the state's new short-term rental tax law takes effect.
 
"We realize there is going to be a shortage of beds in Williamstown this summer, and we wanted to tap into the community's extra beds," Briggs said. "We also have to be respectful of and sensitive to the hotel members [of the chamber]. It's a balance."
 
The members of the Finance Committee did not take any action on the Chamber of Commerce' request or the requests of the other two non-profits to make their cases on Wednesday, but the members appeared generally satisfied with the responses from Briggs and Di Benedetto.
 
Likewise, the Fin Comm members appeared receptive to the requests from the Youth Center and Sand Springs, with some committee members complimenting all three of the non-profits for their contributions to the community.
 
Sand Springs is seeking $19,000, the same figure it sought and received from town meeting in 2018 for the FY19 funding cycle. Sand Springs board member and former executive director Geraldine Shen acknowledged this is the first year the voters will be asked to approve two separate warrant articles related to the pool and recreation center.
 
As it has in the past, Sand Springs is seeking funding from Community Preservation Act funds for capital improvements. The Community Preservation Committee already has OK'd a $34,800 request from Sand Springs and sent it to town meeting.
 
Shen and new executive director Adam Cameron explained that the CPA funds are a one-time request for capital improvements -- specifically, a lift that will make the second floor of Sand Springs' building handicapped accessible and, the board hopes, profit-generating.
 
The $19,000 toward the center's operating budget helps allow Sand Springs to lower the cost of pool membership for Williamstown residents and provide programs for area schools; that is how the FY19 grant was spent, Cameron said.
 
Cameron, who grew up swimming at Sand Springs when it was owned by the George family, told the Fin Comm he plans an aggressive membership drive for the year ahead, including an emphasis on the town's older residents. In an effort to continue the center's cooperation with the town, Cameron said he is talking with the Council on Aging about programming that can encourage greater use of the facility.
 
Younger Williamstowners are served by the Williamstown Youth Center, which historically has received financial support from taxpayers toward its operating budget. This year, the WYC is looking for $77,000, the same amount granted last year.
 
That number represents about 16 percent of the center's budget.
 
WYC Treasurer Matthew Sheehy told the Fin Comm that the center's most popular offering is its after-school program for children at Williamstown Elementary School. The center also provides a before-school program for families who need to drop of children earlier than the elementary school's doors open.
 
"Support from the town allows us to do those things and continue the mission," Sheehy said.

Tags: Finance Committee,   fiscal 2019,   williamstown_budget,   

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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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