Letter: Williamstown Planning Board Proposals

Letter to the Editor02:30PM / Monday, June 13, 2022Print Story | Email Story

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.

Tags: zoning,

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Discrimination Against Muslim Americans Persists 25 Years After 9/11

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
07:00AM / Saturday, September 12, 2026

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Dozens of Muslim Americans were among people killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Untold numbers of Muslim Americans have suffered countless acts of discrimination in their aftermath.

"Of course, you'll find several accounts of Muslims from all over the U.S. describing how they went from the unknown kids in the school to being stereotyped or ridiculed for their Muslim names," Sidra Mahmood recalled recently. "However, many Americans forget that the victims of 9/11 were also Muslim Americans.

"I can't forget the time when a classmate broke down in sobs when 9/11 came up in our classroom at the Islamic seminary I went to in Texas, because her father's best friend who was like an uncle to her, died on 9/11."

Today, Mahmood is a chaplain at Williams College. In 2001, she was growing up in Karachi, Pakistan, when terrorists forced two passenger jets into the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan and another plane into the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C. A third plane, which terrorists hoped to crash into a D.C. landmark, was brought down in western Pennsylvania after passengers and crew fought back against the hijackers.

The attacks, which ultimately claimed 2,976 lives, horrified people around the world, including in Mahmood's native land.

"I remember being aghast like anyone who witnessed the fall of the Twin Towers in real time," she said. "However, even as a child, fear gripped me about the possibility of war, especially once we learned that Afghanistan, right adjacent to Pakistan, would be attacked by the U.S. My mother had told me about the 1971 war between India and Pakistan when she remembered hiding in the dark after bomb sirens would go off in Punjab after intentional blackouts.

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