Letter: DeMayo-Wall Running for Planning Board

Letter to the Editor07:00PM / Sunday, May 08, 2022Print Story | Email Story

To the Editor:

Dear Williamstown Voters, My name is Carin DeMayo-Wall and I am running for the Williamstown Planning Board. I ask for your vote on May 10.

I grew up right here in Williamstown. I attended Mount Greylock High School ('89) and Williams College ('93). I originally left to work at the State House in Boston and I returned to Williamstown 10 years ago. Williamstown was, and is, a wonderful place to live and raise a family. I have seen how my hometown has changed and I have a vision for its more inclusive future.

I was moved to run for Planning Board when I witnessed several families, whose kids were in my own child's classroom at Williamstown Elementary School, make the agonizing decision to move away due to a lack of available housing. Through my volunteer work with the Williamstown Food Pantry, I see the stress that the high cost of housing puts on our most vulnerable populations.

We are becoming a town with a "missing middle." Those at the high end, with significant wealth, can afford to buy the scarce market-rate housing. And a few at the low end might find spots within one of our too-few affordable housing developments like Photech and Highland Woods. But we are losing the middle and Williamstown is left impoverished by their absence. How many of us could buy here today? How many MGRHS grads can choose to stay? How many of their teachers can live in the town they teach in? I say too few. We can come together to solve this housing challenge.

The Housing Trust and Habitat for Humanity have done some incredible work. But their effect can only be felt one family at a time. The Planning Board can address the challenge from the regulatory side, asking, "can our code allow for more inclusionary outcomes?"

At the same time, our open space and farms are core elements of Williamstown's identity. I grew up on my family farm, Bonnie Lea Farm, on North Street. I appreciate the critical importance of open space and farming. With the changing nature of agriculture and the threat of climate change, we cannot afford to lose farmland and we must be creative in how we help existing and new farmers survive here.

Through my work on the Planning Board I will strive to balance the humanitarian and environmental issues we face. I ask for your vote on May 10.

Carin DeMayo-Wall
Williamstown, Mass.

Tags: election 2022,

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Williamstown Finance Committee Begins FY27 Budget Review

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
05:49AM / Tuesday, February 24, 2026

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Finance Committee last week began its review of an "unexciting" fiscal year 2027 budget while continuing to monitor an unappealing trend line that could see the town facing a Proposition 2 1/2 override as soon as FY29.

Town meeting will have the levy capacity to approve the FY27 budget as drafted and presented by the town manager on Wednesday, partly because the spending plan for the year that begins on July 1 includes just one noteworthy increase in discretionary municipal spending.

As drafted, the FY27 budget would result in a projected 7.69 percent in the property tax levy from the current fiscal year — pending the final numbers from the town's largest cost center, the Mount Greylock Regional School District, which will not finalize its assessments to its member towns until March 19.

The town hall side of spending is up by about 2.8 percent in the proposed budget. Most of that is attributable to cost-of-living increases for current employees and fixed costs, like the town's contribution for employees' health insurance.

"The one thing I would say is apologies for bringing a boring budget forward that doesn't have a lot of excitement," Town Manager Robert Menicocci told the Finance Committee. "But with this audience, it's, 'Hey, we brought something really exciting to you guys. The growth is modest given all the pressures that are out there.'

"We're maintaining services as we know them. I think that's really strong news given the pressures that are out there. There's no erosion of services. There's no erosion of staff. We haven't had to go through a cut exercise. Still, that's at the expense of relying on the taxpayer to pay more taxes this upcoming year."

Finance Director David Fierro Jr. told the Fin Comm that most of the increases in expenses are because of the town's negotiated cost-of-living adjustments. He also included an estimated 9 percent increase in the assessment from Mount Greylock and a 10 percent increase in the much smaller assessment from the Northern Berkshire Vocational Regional School District (McCann Technical School).

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