Letter: Bilal for Williamstown Select Board

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To the Editor:

I am writing to urge Williamstown voters to elect Bilal Ansari to the Williamstown Select Board on Tuesday, May 10. Dr. Ansari has dedicated himself to a life of service, to helping people resolve difficult situations. He listens intently and responds carefully with compassion. He appeals to our best nature. These are essential skills needed at this moment in our town.

Dr. Ansari does not believe that he alone has the solutions to all of the challenges facing our town. Instead, he wants to hear from those comfortable speaking up and also those who, until now, have not felt comfortable nor heard at all. He believes it will take a village to share concerns and work together to make Williamstown a better place for everyone to live and work and grow. But making that happen takes a special type of skilled leadership.

Bilal Ansari is the candidate blessed with that skilled leadership and a stake in our town's quality of life. He has deep roots in this town: his ancestors lived and worked here. He is committed to an approach based in kindness and inclusion. He is the candidate who can and will help us reach a new, inclusive and more equitable chapter in our town's history.

I ask for your vote on May 10 for Bilal Ansari for the Williamstown Select Board. Thank you.

 

Hugh L Guilderson, Ph.D.
Williamstown, Mass.

 

 

 


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Town, Residents Concerned About Forest Service Plan to Use Williamstown Road

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — A timber manager with the U.S. Forest Service told the Select Board on Monday that his office was willing to work with the town to address concerns raised by residents over a plan to haul timber out of the Green Mountain National Forest across the state line in Vermont.
 
An overflow crowd of residents from both Williamstown and Pownal, Vt., attended Monday's meeting at Town Hall, where Stacy Stratton and other officials from the Forest Service laid out plans to cut and remove 1 million board feet of wood — about 2,000 cords — from the woodland just north of town.
 
The sticking point is how officials expect that wood to be removed from the forest: down White Oaks Road, a narrow, twisting residential street that town's director of public works says is ill-suited for the operation.
 
DPW Director Craig Clough was joined at the microphone Monday by nearly a dozen residents of Williamstown and Pownal to question elements of what the Forest Service is calling the "South of Route 9 Integrated Resource Project."
 
Most of those concerns centered on White Oaks Road.
 
Stratton told the board that somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 log truck trips will be required to remove the wood that the service plans to remove from the forest, but that number does not include all the heavy equipment that will need to be taken to the cutting site or the daily traffic from loggers traveling to and from the site.
 
The project itself could take anywhere from one to five years, Stratton said. That number won't be known until the Forest Service puts the job out to bid.
 
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