Letter: Williamstown Planning Board Proposals

To the Editor:

An elected planning board member tells us that voting on the zoning proposals at town meeting will let the Planning Board know how we "feel." Any zoning changes passed at town meeting will be "forever," and virtually irreversible. Cite the research that indicates what effect these changes will have.

Perhaps the Planning Board should have spent more time reaching out to all the town's citizenry long before any town meeting. These articles were approved by the Planning Board long before this unnecessarily delayed town meeting will be held. Better yet, place the items for a vote at the town election, even if as non-binding questions if legally necessary. Why are major decisions being made by a small number of citizens at the broken town meeting?

How do all and any articles affect property evaluations and property taxes, but only for some landowners if some but not articles are passed?

Why is a town master plan being conducted if it is totally meaningless?

Perhaps all items should be voted down, as a group, rather than tabled so the Planning Board can start from scratch and ready their proposals for the 2024 town meeting. All town households should be mailed paper copies of the new proposals well in advance of the 2024 town meeting.

Finally, who serves to benefit the most from passing any or all of these failed proposals???

Ken Swiatek
Williamstown, Mass. 

Area Cyclists Gear Up for Dana-Farber Fund-Raiser

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
07:39AM / Saturday, July 18, 2026

Matthew Behnke, left, and ForzaG teammate and Living Proof rider Abraham Landau with a photo of a Pan-Mass Challenge 'Pedal Partner,' a pediatric patient paired with a rider.

The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute calls its biggest fund-raiser of the year the Pan-Mass Challenge.

 

But participants know that the challenge of riding their bicycles 177 miles from Worcester to Provincetown pales in comparison to the day-to-day challenge faced by cancer survivors.

 

"Riding side-by-side, you share stories," Great Barrington's Peter Whitehead said recently. "Everyone has a story, whether it's personal themselves or a family member. There's a lot of back-and forth.

 

"And there's the Living Proof group that gathers together on Saturday afternoon at the end of the ride. All the people who have had cancer or still have cancer. People often at the end of that meeting get up to tell a story, and it's just amazing some of the things people have gone through in their fight against cancer.

 

"It's inspirational."

 

For 46 years, riders have been drawing on those inspirations to power through a two-day ride across the commonwealth and raise funds for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Since 1980, the event has raised $1.125 billion for the treatment and research center, and it accounts for 67 percent of the Jimmy Fund's annual revenue.

 

This year's ride, scheduled for Aug. 1 and 2, includes at least 17 Berkshire County residents among the 6,000 cyclists planning to complete the ride to the tip of Cape Cod.